I attended the Reconciliation Ceremony at Unity Park in Turners Falls on May 19, 2004, the 328th anniversary of the Great Falls Massacre. I don’t remember the term “burying the hatchet” being used, but I recall the ceremony as a healing, meaningful, sacred, well-attended and memorable event. A Dec. 31 letter to the editor implied that the Native American speakers who have come forward to explain their opposition to the Turners Falls High School “Indians” team name and logo are breaking the Reconciliation Treaty? I think the writers have it backwards.
A translation of Thwaites’ Jesuit Relations, 1644, suggests the practice “Proclaim that they wish to unite all the nations of the earth and to hurl the hatchet so far into the depths of the earth that it shall never again be seen in the future.”
The Reconciliation Treaty, as this almost 400-year-old document suggests, is a living agreement. A recounting of the event, including pictures, can be found at www.nolumbekaproject.org under Reconciliation Ceremony. Please read and ponder the beautiful words of the agreement.
I don’t believe anyone deliberately set out to insult or hurt anyone. The bottom line is we were all taught a version of indigenous history that is distorted. It will take us time to re-educate ourselves and to understand, respect, and absorb it all. Hundreds of years of brainwashing have had negative effects we must recognize and overcome.
Indigenous people articulated why and how the “Indians” mascot/logo is offensive to them. Why can’t or won’t some people hear them? Is this a continuation of the pervasive racism and cultural bias introduced with colonialism? Who has “broken that ‘treaty?” We will have resolution when we learn to listen to each other and be respectful.
Diane Dix
Greenfield