USA, Canada, the false stories we believe are true, and true stories we believe are false

In a recent speech, past US President Obama spoke about there being two different stories of America. (Jump to 43:44)

There is a story about America that includes everybody. It's a story about people who aren't pretentious and don't believe that anybody is worse than them or better than them. That we're all endowed with a core dignity and are deserving of rights and respect, and have to assume responsibility for ourselves individually and our collective lives. And we all play a part.

…

I think right now what we're seeing is a politics that is reasserting a bad story of America which is that even if there aren't technically ranks, we like the idea of cast and we like the idea of hierarchy and some people “this is our country”, “we are the real Americans” and these other folks are the phony and the fake Americans or not even American.

And that story also has a deep history in this country right that says "Okay the the first Americans aren't Americans and slaves are not Americans and women are sort of Americans as long as they're doing what their husbands say. And people of different sexual orientations they're not - we don't even want to hear about them." That story has been part of America as well

I have observed versions of the two stories Obama mentioned, and they come up often in political conversations.

While Obama was focused on speaking about the United States of America, I believe this conversation is really about the entirety of British North America which consolidated into the Governments of the United States of America, and the Dominion of Canada (rebranded “Canada” in 1982).

I know many feel Canada and the USA are entirely different cultures, and many Canadians define themselves as “Not Americans”. I see the difference as more like how many Democrats define themselves as “Not Republicans” and many Republicans define themselves as “Not Democrats”.

I have a core confusion and problem in discussing politics, whether speaking with someone who self-identifies as left-wing or right-wing, and possibly associated with some corporate political brand (New or classic Democrat, Republican, Progressive or not Conservative, Green, etc).

The first problem is that the first story is false, but many people believe it is true. Because they believe it is already true, they aren’t working to change politics, culture, worldviews (or other systems) to make this story true. I believe this would be better as a truth, rather than only a story.

I believe making that transition requires a proper Truth and Reconciliation process, and the first part of such a process is always accepting the Truth to allow you to move forward. Anyone who believes this story is already true hasn’t yet started the Truth part of that process.

The second problem is that the second story has always been true, starting from the European involvement on this continent in the late 1500’s to the present day, and many people believe it is false. They may recognize (and/or admit) it was true in some distant past, but have some other time where they falsely believe there was inevitable “progress” and this changed. They listen only to the myths and propaganda, blindly trust it, and not look any more deeply.

For a large part of my life I was one of those people who believed the good story, and thought that the bad story ended long ago. I then looked more deeply and found something very different.

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See also: Refuse to look away, by Patty Krawec

Perhaps, like Nanaboozho, we can transform our participation instead of being overwhelmed by it. Unfortunately that means refusing to look away, and we want so badly to look away. To not talk about it, not read about it. A conscious refusal to not know, accepting that collective agreement to forget, to sanitize, to make excuses. Refusing to look away from the ways that we are complict (actively involved) and implicated (passively benefiting from) is overwhelming. I get that. There's a reason why looking away is so popular and it's ok to take breaks! We need to do things to remind ourselves that the world is worth saving. But when wiin was confronted with cries of "what have you done?" Nanaboozho did not look away, neither should we.

So what does transformation look like?

It could look like changing your mind. That's usually where transformation begins. We understood something one way, and now we see it differently. I've talked about growing up in the evangelical church, and part of that was the firm conviction that Israel was God's land for God's people. The story I was told about the invasion and occupation is, of course, much different from what actually happened. There, as here, the land was not empty and if you want to understand the colonization that I write about in Becoming Kin you don't need to look any further than Israel and I'm not the only one making that connection. The original Zionists made that connection themselves. I mean, you can look farther. There is a lot of it going around right here at home as well as abroad. In fact, I would like you to look farther and see how all of this violence is connected and interdependent.