What we Earthfolk focus on is how
these stories reveals the persistence of “dreadful
fear” as the foundational deeply embedded emotion
of the creatively imagined story of “America.”
At the almost simultaneous
historical moment as the special penitentiary penal
space was being institutionally constructed to enable the offender
to intimately encounter his own conscience, the native people were,
in an imitative motion, ingested into the interior
darkness of
geographical America.
However, in stark contrast to the inmate’s confrontation with his personal conscience, the native people’s exile was driven by a desire to remove them from America’s communal and public consciousness and troubled
conscience.
As with the singular act of
August 6, 1945, our Earthfolk focus is on the heartfelt action of
a leader of America, here, President Andrew
Jackson. Regardless of one’s
interpretation of historical events or evaluations of individual,
group or social motives and moral consciousness, Jackson's “On
Indian Removal” message
to Congress in 1830 indisputably institutionalized (that
is, socially
ritualized) a key Dark Story theme not addressed
by the Founding Fathers—namely,
the “dreadful fear” that grounded their
statement that “All
men are created equal.”
Stay with this Earthfolk insight, a moment. Listen to the dark
voice that whispers under its breath as this line is spoken:
it says, “All men
are not created equal.” As they penned this phrase of equality, they
were aware of who was not equal—those labeled as Intimate Enemies.
The property-less and homeless. Women. African slaves. Native first
people.
Continue—Indians
