Family Visitation

I am really unnervingly excited for my family to visit, and I'm not sure why. Maybe its because none of them have been to the Northwest before, and I am the pioneer tour guide to lead the way.

Maybe its because this place is so different than the East Coast, and I am excited to show my family all of the differences and natural beauties of the West.

Maybe it's because my family is undergoing the same westward process that brought me out here, and are participating in their own westward expansion and some strange amazing feeling of manifest destiny.

I really think many Easterners (as in the United States) have a feeling of manifest destiny for themselves. I encountered it on my entire journey here, and sealed it with my visiting of the Pacific Ocean. When I took my shoes off, and waded into the frigid waters of the North Pacific.

It was some sort of weird connection with the "pioneers" of Lewis & Clark. To stand at the point where they saw the ocean for the first time, and sealed the American conquering of the continent. The point of no return, when Americans then knew that their territory was destined to stretch from "Sea to Shining Sea".

I had made that journey. The long drive and move across the continent. I traveled much of the same path of Lewis & Clark, and during the other stretches I paralleled the trails of others who moved out here for their fortune or new opportunities.

And at the end, I had done it. I had reached the Pacific in all of its rough and cold glory.



But before we get sucked up into this Pioneer Square filled historic fantasy, we have to step back, and realize that all of this is a farce.

I am white. I am from European decent. Me partaking in this journey is a disgraceful expression of the inherent privilege I was born with. As much as I romanticize it, I am unconsciously embracing a history of conquest, expansion, and cultural, biological, and societal genocide. As much of beauty of this country that I have seen and experienced, I must always remind myself that it is not mine.

One could say that it is "mine" because of my ancestry going back to the first humans, but I do not think that justifies anything. That does not justify the erasure of culture, the spread of microbes, and forced relocation carried out by and genocidal acts committed through my European ancestors.

I cannot speak for the Native American cultures across this continent. I can only help fulfill justice through acknowledgement of the European wrongs which my ancestors fulfilled, and realize that I am in no way entitled to this land in which I live. I am here on loan, as with any part of the world I live in.

I cannot truly claim a home on this earth without the explicit consent of those before me who live and have an ancestry that came before me. I cannot claim a home unless I continually work to make right what is so very wrong through the actions of those who came before me, as well as those who live with me in the very same location and time. I can never belong somewhere until I work my hardest to help make that place... Better.