The value of a shared narrative to build unity, and the power of storytelling to build enduring foundations for just and prosperous societies, is nothing new to the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island.
Today in this land, known to the rest of the world as the United States of America, a sense of community and unity is all but a distant memory. In its place resides extreme polarization, entrenched mistrust, and brooding hostility.
A shared narrative empowers the different peoples of a nation to look at the story of their past, and present, and work together to build their future. But you wouldn’t know it from looking at the raggedy, threadbare condition of the social fabric of this nation and its peoples today. Part of the reason for this disunity may be that our elected representatives and their constituents on both sides of the aisle have abandoned the value of the shared narrative and submitted adversarial partisanship in its place.
Presently the nation is slouching toward fascist authoritarianism and the dissolution of its experiment in democracy. To date, the U.S. has scantly ever approached real proximity to its foundational ideals. Nevertheless, the quasi-democratic government of this profoundly unique nation, a nation which daily declares itself, “indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” is being dismantled and thrown on the rubbish heap. In this reality, the contributions and sacrifices of ALL of its PEOPLES are dishonored. If Democracy in America fails, everyone loses.
We believe that, among many factors, a chief cause for the fragmentation of American society today is the lack of a shared and acceptable narrative. One in which no population of our species is forever cast in the role of victim or villain. Without such a shared narrative in which all peoples of this nation take turns as victims and villains, taking blame and taking credit, for good and for evil, the peoples of this nation will continue to lack the necessary motivation to work past their differences and build toward a common good for all.
To achieve its aims, the Right is employing tactics of fear and intimidation, built upon a foundation of white supremacist, autocratic, and theocratic nationalism. The Left, for all its self-righteous glory, is telling Indigenous people, people of color, and all members of the working class to abstain from thinking for themselves at all, and instead adopt, without reservation, a school of thought whose origins are firmly established in the intellectualism of 1920s Germany. The Right wants to govern our bodies; the Left wants to rule our minds.
Here, in our effort to revive a shared narrative, we make no attempt to falsely represent Indigenous peoples as a homologous monolith. We also know it’s not our place to forgive the countless gross injustices perpetrated against America’s Indigenous peoples and peoples of color.
We do, however, feel a responsibility to share helpful perspectives with anyone who stands against the further erosion of justice and democracy in America. Moreover, we stand in solidarity with all other human populations around the globe, Indigenous and otherwise, who believe that any form of governance outside the consent and will of its people is manifestly unjust and entirely unacceptable.
On the Obliteration of the Shared Narrative
What does it actually mean to be a radical leftist according to a critical mass of right-leaning, and far-right, voting Americans? Is it the same as being woke? To be certain, liberalism and left-leaning thought were part of the American narrative long before the Civil Rights Movement of the1960s. Classical liberalism is not what we are addressing here. Nor are we talking about Marxism specifically, though it is related. We are talking about the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory (associated with Marxist thought) which originated in 1923 at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany. Its modern-day iterations and associated schools of thought include Critical Race Theory, Intersectional Feminism, and Post Structuralism. Each are presented as ways of interrogating, confronting, and overcoming the evils of capitalism, heteronormative patriarchy, and systemic racial oppression. We agree with many facets of Critical Theory and its associated perspectives. And we appreciate the contributions of important Black thinkers like Bell Hooks and Derrick Bell in their work developing Critical Race Theory.
We do not, however, believe we must surrender our own Indigenous perspectives and intellectual free agency to any school of thought, academic or otherwise, from any person or institution anywhere. We do not believe any people, anywhere, should be compelled by overt social or legal pressure to think a certain way. Furthermore, we think it strange that a school of thought founded by white folks and which spends much time speaking of the injustice of white privilege … should demand Indigenous people cede their intellectual, moral, and spiritual agency to it. We believe the kind of thinking that is fair, just, and equitable is self-evident and discoverable by anyone.
Why Dems Lost In 2016 and then Again in 2024
Leading up to the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, the suite of ideas associated with the Frankfurt School became extraordinarily prevalent in many left-leaning and liberal social circles. These perspectives were put forth as useful tools in the fight against oppression, abuse, and other systemic forms of injustice perpetrated against Indigenous people, people of color, and populations under the LGBTQIA2S+ umbrella. From about 2012 forward, this suite of ideas and attendant philosophies was introduced to a generation of American youth and reintroduced to the American Democratic Party.
On the Left, it became fashionable to cleverly point out how heteronormative, sexist, and racial oppression exists everywhere, even sometimes when and where it does not. The response from the Right included scouring the internet for videos of Drag Queen Story Hours for toddlers as evidence of the Left’s moral depravity. For the Left and the Right, it became apparent that likes, follows, and shares could be gained by making bold assertions of judgment and condemnation against individuals or entire groups of people. Status and wealth were gained by pointing out the evils of our ideological enemies. To see it from Right against Left, turn on Fox News. To see it from Left against Right, consider the 1619 Project.
In 2019, journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones launched the 1619 Project with the backing and support of the New York Times. In her central thesis introductory essay, published in the New York Times Magazine, Hannah-Jones asserted that the Revolutionary War was fought primarily to preserve slavery. It is a statement that can charitably be described as an overstatement of the motives of some, and the outright slander of many people who stood firmly against slavery and sacrificed their lives for a shared vision of liberty and equality.
In 2020, in a piece published on Politico.com, noted black historian Leslie M. Harris said she was asked to fact check the introductory essay of the 1619 Project for the New York Times. Harris brought to their attention the factual inaccuracies and resultant defamatory analysis posited in the essay. The objections were ignored. The essay was published with the misleading assertions intact. As Harris writes on Politico.com: “I vigorously disputed the claim. Although slavery was certainly an issue in the American Revolution, the protection of slavery was not one of the main reasons the 13 Colonies went to war … I was concerned that critics would use the overstated claim to discredit the entire undertaking.”
Altogether this begs the inquiry: do we really want to be the kind of people who are disappointed when we find out our enemies are not as vile and disgusting as we hoped they would be? Or make stuff up when we find out they are not?
In effect, the1619 Project’s introductory essay carries a misleading characterization of the American narrative, which is a shame because there is great value in the positions taken in the body of work as a whole. As if the reality of the atrocities committed against Black and Indigenous populations by white colonial settlers required any further embellishment. We need not fake hate crimes, nor do we need to fudge narratives in order to fight for justice. We are all members of the same species. A species that is, at once, wonderful and terrible, sublimely peaceful, and horrifically warlike.
We believe the lack of any shared and acceptable narrative is a perniciously divisive and destructive void. When each distinguishable population in a given area holds radically different notions of the meaning of right and wrong, as well as radically different lenses through which to view its shared history, there is little incentive or opportunity for consensus and cooperation.
In this light, let us take another look at America now and America then. This time let’s not diminish the vast and profound intellectual, cultural, and industrial contributions of its Indigenous peoples and its peoples of color. Let us never downplay the horrors and atrocities of settler colonialism, nor dismiss the contributions and sacrifices made by the colonists themselves. In our view, the story of America is one in which ALL of its peoples together, even in the face of incredible loss and suffering, did in fact bring countless incredible, beautiful, and amazing things into existence. It is a narrative worth re-examining and it is a nation worth fighting for.
