The New York Review of Books - USA (2020-11-05)

November 5, 2020 17

The truth that eluded me when I was
growing up is that America—despite
its blind use of force and its shrill insis-
tence on the rights of the individual—
has been shaped by us as much as we’ve
been shaped by it. The Constitution
was, in part, modeled on the separation
of powers found in the political struc-
ture of the Iroquois Confederacy; an
early test of the relationship between
states’ rights and federal power was not
over slavery but over Indian removal
in the 1830s; starting in the mid-1960s
the Supreme Court heard a shocking
number of cases about federal Indian
law involving treaty rights, sovereignty,
jurisdiction, and tort; since 2015, the
resistance of the Standing Rock Sioux
and allied tribes to the Dakota Access
Pipeline has kept the conflict between
the common good and corporate greed
at the forefront of American politics.
The election of Donald Trump in
2016 set Native people back as much
as it set the entire country back. And
it was apathy and cynicism on the part
of many Americans that put us there.
Cynicism, it should be said, is not a
politics. It is a luxury enjoyed by those
for whom “policy” is a rumor, or some-
thing that happens “out there.” But for
Native people and other groups at the
margins, policy is the shape and hori-
zon of our lives. The decisions of the
body politic are borne by the bodies
of the vulnerable: A living wage. Ac-
cess to education. Access to capital.
Clean water or the lack thereof. In-
frastructure and transportation. Af-
fordable healthcare. If you want to see
the real- world effects of policy, visit a
reservation. Or your neighbors. Or the
heartland. To say “Oh, it doesn’t mat-
ter who’s in office, they’re all the same”
is to say that these problems don’t
matter, and that we—the majority of
Americans for whom American life in-
creasingly resembles American Indian
life as it’s been lived for the past 244
years—don’t matter. But we do matter.

If you think otherwise, you yourself

have become a victim of democracy.

What I see when I’m back home on

the reservation, and as I look back over

our lived history, is that Native peo-

ple—against astonishing odds—have

largely refused to fall into cynicism.

We have always been and remain com-

mitted to one another and to a better

future. So do yourself a favor: when

you vote against Trump, remember

that you’re also voting against the

thin satisfactions of the self in favor

of our shared ideals and the common

good. Q

Claire Vaye Watkins

I knew that moving back to California

this summer would be a funeral, but

living the funeral is another thing en-

tirely. Not long after I arrived in this

homesteader cabin- cum- Airbnb in the

Mojave Desert, my grandmother Mary

Lou died. The mountains around me

have been erased by wildfire smoke. I

receive dispatches from friends tear-

gassed by the state. Here in the desert

there are protests in front of the gas

stations. In Joshua Tree someone’s

dressed as a Joshua tree, demanding

protection. In Twentynine Palms, near

the military base, a dozen or so people

stand to say Black Lives Matter, White

Silence Is Violence.

We are mourning the land as we

knew it, though we hardly knew it. I

load my car with water and nonperish-

ables. I check various maps and apps,

mesmerized by the fires in almost every

direction. I remember something Col-

son Whitehead wrote about the World

Trade Center after September 11, 2001:

“I never got a chance to say goodbye.”

Sometimes I think I have been saying

goodbye to this land my whole life.

I wake to the smell of smoke. I have

come home to grieve, an attempt to

fathom the losses I can’t fathom. I try

and fail to grasp the scale of this colos-

sal pain rippling across the world.

This region’s amnesiac narrative

has long erased its native people and

with them any wisdom we might have

gleaned from the land’s long memory,

where fire is something to live with

rather than war against. The existential

irony of the West Coast is that if we are

to stay here, we must get good at leav-

ing. The lucky will live long enough to

watch California burn, Oregon burn,

Washington burn, Idaho burn, Nevada

burn, Arizona burn, New Mexico burn,

Colorado burn, Wyoming burn, Mon-

tana burn, Alaska burn. The question

is how. We must radically reexamine

every given—from housing and private

property to health care, policing, trans-

portation, work, and money—until

all people have access to the tools of

adaptability and resilience enjoyed by

the moneyed, among them multiple

homes and borderless movement.

We cannot “fight” climate collapse

with the same methods of extraction

and exploitation that caused it, the

warmonger’s logic that doubles down

on climate profiteering, hardens bor-

ders, and militarizes the police to pro-

tect industry and property over people

and planet. In this manner catastrophe

will continue to compound, making a

few people very rich while the rest of us

succumb to the cascade effect. As “my”

mountains burn, may the myths of the

American West burn too: the rugged

individual conquering nature; manifest

destiny, that genocidal, ecocidal land

grab disguised as national and spiritual

wholeness.

I’m getting my bearings, learning

my landmarks. The erased mountain

range to the south is Joshua Tree Na-

tional Park, worthy land, set aside and

preserved, “managed.” The range to

the north is a sacrifice zone, less wor-

thy land surrendered to the Marines

for bombing. I hear the bombs. On

still days, I feel them. While I wonder

where my home falls on this spectrum

of American worthiness, this much is

clear: the park is a decision. The base

is a decision. The US military could be

refashioned as a peaceful climate corps

tomorrow if we want it. This is mostly a

prayer—that we might walk the poten-

tially slightly less brutal path on which

Joe Biden is elected and the West burns

anyway. The strongest case for a Biden

presidency, aside from the long cata-

log of the obvious, is that he might, if

mightily pressed, follow through on his

“Biden Plan” for a “Clean Energy Rev-

olution and Environmental Justice”

(essentially a rebrand of the Green New

Deal). The second- strongest case, inex-

tricable from the first, is that a Biden

administration might allow America

to grieve, that a President Biden might

name the dead and fight like hell for

the living, though he seems more likely

to tell us to knock off the malarkey and

get back to work.

Still, I believe it’s possible that, if

we can bring ourselves to truly feel

this long moment of suffering, we can

collectively make a series of better de-

cisions. We could create not a social

safety net but a social canopy in the

land once called the American West.

We could build a society that does

this land justice, honors it, maybe even

gives it rights. We need this land to live,

and today young people want to live so

badly they have persuasively demanded

a complete rebuilding of our society

into one of universal care, one that cov-

ers the cities with solar panels, cancels

debt and rent, insists on truth and rec-

onciliation, accountability, repair, and

democracy. Such supposedly wild- eyed

notions may be what it will take for us

to become as free as our myths have

long claimed us to be. Q

—October 8, 2020

This symposium continues online at

nybooks.com and in the next issue of

The New York Review.

ELAINE BLAIR is a regular contributor to The New York Review.

DAV I D W. BL IGH T is Sterling Professor of American History at

Yale. His biography of Frederick Douglass, Prophet of Freedom, re-

ceived the Pulitzer Prize for History.

CAROLINE FRASER’s most recent book, Prairie Fires: The Amer-

ican Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, received the Pulitzer Prize for

Biography.

VIVIAN GORNICK is the author, most recently, of Unfinished

Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-reader.

MICHAEL GORRA’s latest book, The Saddest Words: William

Faulkner’s Civil War, was published in August. He teaches at Smith.

MICHAEL GREENBERG is the author of Hurry Down Sunshine

and Beg, Borrow, and Steal: A Writer’s Life.

LINDA GREENHOUSE teaches at Yale Law School and is a New

York Time s contributing columnist. A new edition of her book The

U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction was published this

summer.

HARI KUNZRU’s latest novel, Red Pill, and his new podcast, Into

the Zone, have just been released.

MARK LILLA is a Professor of the Humanities at Columbia and au-

thor, most recently, of The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction

and The Once and Future Liberal.

JESSICA T. MATHEWS served in the State Department and on the

National Security Council staff and as President of the Carnegie En-

dowment for International Peace.

MINAE MIZUMURA is a Japanese novelist. Her newest novel in

translation, An I-Novel, will be published in 2021.

DA R RY L PI NCK N EY’s most recent work is Busted in New York

and Other Essays. A new edition of Blackballed: The Black Vote and

U.S. Democracy has just been published.

THOMAS POWERS’s books include The Man Who Kept the Se-

crets: Richard Helms and the CIA and Intelligence Wars: American

Secret History from Hitler to al-Qaeda.

JACQUELINE ROSE is Codirector of the Birkbeck Institute for the

Humanities in London. Her new book, On Violence and On Violence

Against Women, will be published next spring.

ANNA DEAVERE SMITH is an actress, playwright, and founding

member of Black Theatre United.

DAVID TREUER is Ojibwe from the Leech Lake Reservation in

northern Minnesota, and is a Professor of English at the University

of Southern California. His most recent book is The Heartbeat of

Wounded Knee.

CLAIRE VAYE WATKINS is the author of Battleborn and Gold

Fame Citrus.

CONTRIBUTORS