Another Fourth of July has come and gone. It seems that for the last few years, it’s become more and more less of a holiday to celebrate and one to wonder about. What exactly are we celebrating? I’m sure if you were to ask a lot of people, they wouldn’t know. People confuse the Declaration of Independence with the U.S. Constitution so much that a joke in the 1995 movie Tommy Boy indicates that John Hancock and Thomas Jefferson wrote the Constitution.
Wrong and wrong. Jefferson wrote the Declaration and Hancock was president of the Congress when it was signed. But for the most part the Declaration and Constitution are two separate bodies of work written mostly 13 years apart. But there were mostly for the 13 colonies of the eastern coast of North America. Manifest Destiny didn’t come around until the 19th Century when many of the framers and signees were either very old and very dead.
That being said. The town of Muscatine, Iowa, located in the southeastern part of the state has come under fire for allowing a very offensive and racist entry into their July 4th parade. A woman dressed up in the stereotypical Indigenous Native American attire is walking with her hands bound and led by a rope by someone on a horse. Indigenous people who live in Iowa weren’t too happy. It took long enough for the Muscatine Chamber of Commerce to denounce this but you wonder why they allowed it in the first place.
Ironically, the town and county is rumored to have been named after the Mascouten Tribe. But historians differ on that. The people participating in the parade said they were making a statement about the plight of the Cherokee Nation and how they were treated. Recently in June, the Nation did its annual Remember the Removal bike ride to commemorate those who died and survived the Trail of Tears. I grew up near New Echota which used to be the capital of the Cherokee Nation. However, growing up there, very little was sad about that in school as opposed to the Civil War.
Following the Civil War, the Daughters of the Confederacy pushed to change history for the notorious “Lost Cause.” You still hear it preached by many today. Public education is being overtaken by politicians and Moms for Liberty who don’t want certain subjects taught in school. This might have worked 30 or 40 years ago when I was in school. Now, it’s hard to hide the truth.
People don’t romanticize John Wayne and his movies anymore. Westerns since the late 1960s have a different look on how things were. It’s become more and more known that it was the U.S. Government itself that killed more Indigenous people than any gunslinger of the Old West. Many Old West towns were progressive following the Civil War with a push for Women’s Suffrage and at least a quarter of the cowboys were black men.
Yes, it is ironice to celebrate Independence Day in Iowa which only became a state in 1846 following the Louisiana Purchase. And considering the state approved lax child labor laws, it makes you wonder why isn’t there more outrage at other things. There’s a time and a place for a demonstration and I don’t think this was the time. The Chamber of Commerce there can play “Monday Morning Quarterbacks,” but they still allowed it. And no one stepped in to say anything till after it was over.
And while many of the tribes here in Oklahoma seem to be doing well off, theres still problems facing others in other states. Human trafficking and sexual assault is still prevelant in many areas. And even after the Civil Rights era, many Indigenous people were living with their own form of Jim Crow in some areas. There’s better ways to bring awareness than resulting to stereotypes.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 