Cambridge 02138
Green energy options, foreign policy, medical errors, military jurist
Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan
Re “The Physics of the Familiar” (by Jonathan Shaw, March-April, page 46):
Mountains, valleys are wrinkled earth.
Glossy grapes shrink into raisins.
Maps of life illustrate old faces—
Because skin folds to fit.
Neurons bend toward memories.
He thinks, therefore we learn.
E. James Lieberman, M.P.H. ’63
Potomac, Md.
Collective Trauma
I am writing regarding “Trail of Tears, and Hope” (by Craig Lambert, March-April, page 39). I applaud the magazine for focusing on this important issue and for highlighting the promising work of Sousan Abadian. All too often the hardships imposed upon indigenous people, in the United States and in other countries, are overlooked or seen as ancient history, and this article does a great job of calling attention to the present consequences of the often shameful treatment of Native peoples since contact.
Yet one aspect of the article that I think deserves clarification is its implicit idea that the wrongs indigenous peoples have suffered are purely historical. As a telling example, the main countries discussed in the article, the United States and Canada, together with Australia and New Zealand, are the only countries that recently voted against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The collective trauma of many Native peoples is made worse by the harms that continue to this day.
Ezra Rosser, J.D. ’03
Assistant professor of law
Washington College of Law, American University
Washington, D.C.
My own experience with Northern Plains and Saskatchewan First Nations leads me to emphasize the paternalistic policies that destroyed a large number of First Nations communities a century ago: by allotting parcels of land in severalty to break up communal holdings and, after World War II, by moving families to tract housing in agency towns, purportedly to facilitate access to schools. There are no places in these tightly clustered subdivisions for children to roam and play, so they sit watching television (in English, losing their own languages). Unemployment is high because the reservations were deliberately placed away from transportation to “protect” the Indians from exploitation by incoming whites. Indians have not been able to develop businesses because they have no collateral for loans, their lands being in trust or highly divided among multiple heirs. On Northern Plains reservations, most of the economically viable land has been leased in large sections to white ranching families, some with five generations on these leased properties. Because of these intractable governmental policies, Indian people quite rightly feel helpless.
May I urge you to do another article that forgoes the feel-good New Age healing jargon and instead…[focuses on] why “healing” will come with economic development created by First Nations themselves, from which will come political freedom from stifling imposed practices.
Alice B. Kehoe, Ph.D. ’64
Professor of anthropology emerita
Marquette University
Milwaukee
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