Today a chill, biting wind blows down from the mountain. I feel in the depths of my body the sorrow and grief over the heart-breaking tragedies our native ancestors encountered again and again at the hands of the colonizers, at the hands of religious zealots, at the hands of their hostile neighbors.
Today I notice outside my window the tiny green buds on skeletal branches, the tender sprouts emerging from barren winter soil, the wisp of rain clouds slowly building in the bright blue spring sky.
Yin and Yang – great tragedy nestled against incredible promise and hope for the future. Two cultures that may not be all that different in facing oppression and poverty and desperation.
Is there a way for us to heal the grief? Can we let go of the blame and judgment we feel for these vicious violations against our ancestors? In all honesty, if we had to walk in the shoes of the invaders, would we have behaved differently? They were a people in desperate need of hearth and home, fleeing from oppression and poverty, and in their desperation, they dishonored the indigenous cultures already present. Fierce greed rises out of lack and fear, does it not?
Yesterday I was at the grocery store. For me, it has become the scene of a great American Tragedy. Prices going up without logical sense. Were you like me, deciding to give up eggs when the price exceeded six dollars a dozen? Turkey for a while became a non-item on the grocery list. This week the store brand of half-and-half jumped up 60 percent while the price of milk stayed the same. Amidst inevitable shoplifting, the store managers feel sorry for themselves. Armed security guards are now part of the everyday scene at the self-checkout lanes.
I doused my frustration over prices with an expensive, grande-sized Starbucks latte, with one Splenda, please, an infrequent treat to myself for running three annoying errands that day. Yes, I do recognize the absurdity. Coffee in hand, I returned to my grocery cart, and was shocked to see that a loaf of bread and container of tomatoes were gone from the grocery bag. It wasn’t the glossy magazine or the fancy jar of apricot jam also in my cart. I thought about desperation and wondered if that person had hungry kids at home. They couldn’t have known I would have gladly given up more than just a loaf of bread in this unintended gift.
I think often about what I call simply “the pumpkin story.” It’s a true story about a group of migrating Choctaws in the middle of the brutal, life-devouring winter of 1831. The Choctaws were the first Southern indigenous tribe to undergo forced removal, a journey on foot thru a great wilderness, almost beyond endurance, both in the body and in the soul. They were facing starvation that winter as they reached the Arkansas Territory, their rations depleted after months on the harsh journey over the Trail of Tears. My imagination conjures up visions of their children clinging to their legs, shaking with cold and crying in hunger.
Then the Choctaws finally see a farm with pumpkins still lying in the fallow field. Despite their great and desperate need, those sweet souls ask, rather than take. They ask permission to eat the farmer’s pumpkins. And the farmer, setting aside greed and fear of a strange people, opens his heart and gives. A gift of food desperately needed but also a gift of hope, desperately needed.
I’m not sure what the morale of the story is, but it’s something all of us still need to learn – about the power of compassion, where neither side is victimized – where each respects and honors the other person no matter the circumstances.
The following is paraphrased from a poem by Andrea Gibson, Colorado Poet Laureate:
Instead of living in our heads
Let us live in our hearts.
Let us live in search of a truth.
Truth that is also the truth of someone we believed we would never understand.
Let us find a song called “Listening” that builds a bridge,
A path between my heart and yours.
And on that bridge, we learn no one in history has ever been an instrument of change.
Each of us is but a single key, a single note
In a song of rapturous harmony that I could not possibly create
With someone who echoes my every belief, who agrees with my every thought.
Blogs about the Trail of Tears
A Journey Through Lineage Trauma and Healing
Further Reading
Andrea Gibson, Colorado Poet Laureate, numerous books; website link
Harmel Deanne Codi, Breaking the Chains: A Journey Through Lineage Trauma and Healing, self-published, 2023; Chapter 1 Affirmations:
“In gratitude, I embrace the healing power of knowledge, using it to break free from the chains of lineage trauma.
I recognize that by understanding the definitions and types of traumas, I can release their hold on my lineage.
With historical perspectives as my foundation, I build a future rooted in strength, wisdom, and compassion.”
Santhnam Sanghera, Empire World: How Imperialism Has Shaped the Globe, 2024; newly published; Sanghera visits Barbados, where he uncovers how Caribbean nations are still struggling to emerge from the disadvantages sown by transatlantic slavery.
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score, Penguin Books: 2015. Van der Kolk is a Boston based psychiatrist noted for his research in the area of post-traumatic stress since the 1970s.
Bruce H. Lipton, The Biology of Belief, 10th Anniversary Edition: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter, and Miracles, Hay House: 2015. Dr. Lipton was on faculty of University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and later performed groundbreaking stem-cell research at Stanford University.
YAHOKE, ikana! Thank you, friends. All my relations!
We are all one if we choose to be!
We can choose to practice tolerance and compassion instead of judgment and ridicule.
Much GRATITUDE for spending time on a Choctaw Journey with me.
Please sign up on my blog page at WordPress to receive notifications by email.
Photo credits: Pixabay Royalty-Free stock
CC/Creative Commons – Republish
Stories from this blog Choctaw Journeys into the Past may be republished or reprinted under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. Please make changes only to shorten the text in a reasonable manner. Please provide proper attribution and a link to this blog page. Noncommercial use only. Do not republish this content behind a paywall.
Choctaw Journeys into the Past 
the link to Karen Clarkson below is broken.
Thank you for letting me know about the broken link. I’m running into a little trouble making the correction and am waiting on a callback from WordPress. In the meantime, here is a better link for Karen and her art – https://clarksonart.com/
Update 3/25/2024 – Link to Karen’s website should now be fixed.