Due to time differences, Obama was sworn in as the new president just after 7:00pm local time here. I originally had wanted to watch it live but was busy and so caught it a short time later thanks to C-Span’s website.
I saw by the numbers on the bottom of the feed that it was going to be a short speech and I expected a few short words of optimism and general platitudes. It was however quite shocking for me to hear a particular phrase about halfway through and it ended up troubling me the rest of the evening.
I woke up this morning and checked the BBC’s transcript just to make sure I hadn’t heard Obama incorrectly.
While referring to America’s past and all of those people who have “carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom” he says this in tribute to them:
For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and travelled across oceans in search of a new life.
For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West.
As far as I’m aware (and I may be wrong), English is the only language where the word “settler” is used as a variant with positive connotations of the universal word: colonist.
I even double-checked on Wikipedia just to make sure and saw I was right:
In almost every real historical case, settlers live on land which previously belonged to long-established peoples, known as indigenous people (often called “natives”, “Aborigines” or, in the Americas, “Indians”). This land is usually settled against the wishes of the indigenes, and then controlled, defended and expanded by force.
Quite simply put, those two mentions by Obama of people who “traveled across oceans” and then “settled the West” are to me, a very strange and galling way to celebrate American history. I realize they are part of American history and made America what it is today but the exact same argument could be said about the enslavement of African peoples.
If Obama had extolled the virtues of those people whom, “for us, they enslaved others to plow the hard earth and bring economic abundance” quite a few people’s heads would’ve exploded.
For anyone of Native American heritage, certainly very little about Europeans “settling” their lands was anything to celebrate or laud, not to mention it being something that brought “prosperity and freedom”.
Things right now for the original Americans are pretty grim – they always rank dead last amongst ethnic groups as the most impoverished. Native Americans have the highest teen suicide rate, the highest high school drop out, the lowest per capita income and astronomical unemployment rates.
Not only that but the only current modern usage of the word “settlers” refers to Jewish colonization of Palestinian lands in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
I did find one other reference in the modern sense of “settlers”, that being Brazilians who go into indigenous parts of their country to “settle” there – i.e. cut down the rainforest and begin farming or mining operations.
Anyway, is this the biggest “deal” in the world? No of course not. It was a pretty ordinary platitude on Obama’s part towards standard American history, especially that disgustingly arrogant concept of Manifest Destiny that seems like it will never die.
Perhaps Obama can do a little good for peace and justice in the world and do the right thing by Leonard Peltier. For me, that would be a step in the right direction.
Pax
