Strangers for Ancestors #1: Introduction
The Star Theater, Idaho Falls, Idaho, 1912. This was my Wilson family’s theater in Idaho Falls. It was owned by my great, great grand father William Clinton Wilson, great grandfather Jack Wilson, and great, great uncle Bill Wilson. My great grandfather Jack Wilson is standing on the left in the long coat.
Strangers for Ancestors is a new blog series I will be releasing weekly as part of Manifest Differently, a multifaceted project I’m co-curating with poet/artist Kim Shuck in collaboration with Clarion Alley Mural Project (CAMP), Artists’ Television Access (ATA), and Minnesota Street Project (MSP), featuring 38 multigenerational artists and poets. Using literary, visual, and media arts storytelling in conjunction with public programming, Manifest Differently interrogates the expansionist ideology of Manifest Destiny, its legacies of inherited and perpetuated violence, trauma, and addiction, and the outgrowth of resistance and resilience - giving fire to movements for social change.
As noted by historian Dr. Barbara Berglund Sokolov:
While the United States is seen by many of its citizens as a nation of prosperity, liberty and justice for all, American Indian/Indigenous, African American/Black, People of Color, and LGBTQ+ communities have known, lived, and continue to live a very different reality. That experience is the result of the settler colonizer mindset of control, conquer, misogyny, and racism that has been baked into every facet of American society, beginning in the 16th century when the first white/Europeans invaded and built settlements. Thrusting the knife further into this wound, the true histories of these communities have either been systemically rewritten or banned and codified from being told, as demonstrated by the current wave of “anti-woke” legislation being pushed and passed in states throughout the nation.
And while. the aforementioned populations have, and continue to be the primary target of US legislators to remove, enslave, displace, and disenfranchise communities who do not serve their corporate and personal interests, the underlying mentality of entitlement and privilege of those in power has also had a broader reach to poor and working class white communities, and increasingly the middle class. Furthermore, it is the natural world that has suffered the most from this pathological mission of greed and conquest through habitat degradation, resource overexploitation, and invasive species first introduced by white European settlers, and the subsequent impact these practices have had on native ecosystems throughout the world. Ultimately, everyone across the globe is suffering acutely, or indirectly from the violence, addiction, trauma, inequity, and ecocide that is the legacy of Manifest Destiny, later rebranded as the ‘American Dream’, a more palatable and supposedly inclusive and equitable national ethos used to further control and conquer.
My family’s history on this stolen land is a good representation of the stains, scars, and misdirection the country was founded on, as well as the powerful belief in working to ensure truth, equity, and justice that has existed and grown along side it; and the complex relationship between the two.
Strangers for Ancestors will trace my family’s story in America, beginning in 1643 when my great grandfather on my father’s side 11 generations back, Benjamin Wilson was sent as a 7-year-old orphan from England to serve the Massachusetts Bay Colony. On my mother’s side, I’ll reflect on the questions of legitimacy, belonging, and worth she and her sister faced as fraternal twins with different skin, hair, and eye coloring, adopted in Canada by my maternal grandparents at eight months of age. My personal experiences stemming from this history include alcoholism by the age of 14, two suicide attempts at 15, and a brutal assault by my mother’s married boyfriend (aptly named Robert E. Lee) at 16 that forced me to move out on my own and work at Burger King 30 hours/week to support myself while I finished high school. These events would lead to a fierce resistance to succumbing to this vicious cycle, and to a commitment to live and work for equity and justice.
Strangers for Ancestors will also reflect on current events that are continuing to perpetuate this history, as well as those that are leading the way towards a new direction rooted in love, compassion, the interconnectedness of all life, and the current crisis we’re in globally to Manifest Differently.
”The Invaders is a film that uses its large canvas to tell an important story—a story that is fictional in its details, but rooted in achingly authentic history. It opens with the signing of a treaty: the Sioux nation cedes a large part of its territory to the United States, and in return the U.S. government promises to forbid the further settlement of Sioux lands. A scant year later, advance scouts survey the territory for the coming transcontinental railroad, in blatant violation of the treaty. Tensions are inflamed and soon erupt into an all-out war between the Sioux and the Army forces. Commentators who allege that Hollywood Westerns always glossed over the historical truth about the white man’s mistreatment of Native Americans are referred to this and other early Westerns. Without preaching or moralizing, this film lays the blame for the conflagration squarely where it belongs; there’s never any doubt who the “invaders” of the title are.”
- J.B. Kaufman
http://www.jbkaufman.com/movie-of-the-month/invaders-1912