November is National Native American Heritage month. By mid-November we are way past the Autumnal equinox and only a month or so away from the onset of Winter. November is also the month when Americans gather their families around a bountiful meal and re-count a false narrative about the peaceful and cooperative nature of the relationship between early English settlers and the aboriginal people of North America. It makes for a lovely and hopeful story. In fact, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays.
I have been thinking about the Native people who lived on this land before the Europeans arrived. I wonder if there is a way to turn our traditional Thanksgiving into a day to reflect upon the genocide that resulted from the European practice of colonialism. We should honor the Tribes and Nations and the descendants of the first Americans by committing to learn more about them as a people that still live among us now. We often act as if these people just moved on and we hardly acknowledge their existence.
So, here we are in mid-November. I find myself wishing that my mind was as clear as the Carolina blue skies. I can find small moments of clarity, if I stop and breathe in the cool air and take the time to notice how especially brilliant the fall colors are this year. When I try to write these days, I find that the moments of clarity show up amidst a bundle of thoughts that refuse to connect with each other like I want them to. So, I decided that I will just write anyway and put it out in the world to be read or ignored. Here is what that looks like:
It feels like Fall arrives suddenly. And it is welcome when it arrives. Sure, summer is great. For a while. Summer is that party guest at your home that never seems to know when the party is over. Summer wears out its welcome.
Just when it feels like you can not bear another day of the smothering heat and humidity, you hear a rustling of the leaves high up in the white oaks and a crisp cool breeze brushes across your sweaty skin. You feel like your whole body just ate a Peppermint Patty! Ah, what a relief. As the sun goes down, the humid air in your house turns into a chilly dampness. You might even think that you should start a fire or turn on the heat for just a bit to knock the chill down. But you don't. Instead, you pull a nice quilt out of the cedar chest and let the new crispness in the air allow you to sleep comfortably for the first time in what has felt like an eternity. And just like that, you wake up the next morning and immediately know that Fall has arrived.
I rarely use the word autumn at all. Autumn does not feel like a word that captures the suddenness in which Fall seems to arrive. But, if we really pay attention, we realize that Fall doesn't really arrive suddenly. It is just that the initial onset kind of takes you by surprise. Fall is a bit of a tease. Fall gives you a taste of the cool days for a week or so and then lets Summer make a brief return visit. For some reason we all seem to love that Summer has come back to visit. This second appearance of Summer is milder. It's like Summer grew up and mellowed out a bit and comes by just to say, "see you next year."
In the United States we call this second mini -Summer an Indian Summer. Just last week, we had some pleasantly warm fall days. I was in a Zoom class when the instructor said that he was enjoying the Indian Summer. I have heard and used this term my whole life. But, for some reason it clanged on my ears when he said it. I am not sure why. I wondered if this term might seem offensive to Native Americans.
I remember when I was a kid that if you gave something of yours to someone and then changed your mind, the person you un-gifted might call you an Indian-Giver. I had no idea what the giving and taking back scenario had to do with American Indians. It was a common thing to say or hear. Sometime during my education, I became aware of all he treaties, agreements, and promises that had been made by the United States to the Indian Nations. In almost every case the United States government would back out of the deal. It occurred to me that we were the real Indian-Givers. As a people, we regularly gave a promise of land, or peace, or compensation to the American Indians, and then we took it back. That perspective kind of turns the term on its head, doesn't it? Fortunately, the use of the term Indian-Giver has all but disappeared from the vernacular.
But the term Indian Summer persists. I decided to investigate it a bit. There is much speculation about its origin and why it is used to describe this short, second summer-like weather appearing in Autumn. The only thing that everyone agrees on is that it originated in America. The earliest written reference is in a French poem from the 1700s. It does not appear in writing again until an English document in the 1850s. It became and is still used as an official meteorological term for unseasonably warm weather. However, the term is now being discouraged among meteorologists due to trainings being offered by an organization called The Corporate Indigenous Training Company. They believe the term had a racist origin in that referring to a late summer that way is a way of saying Indians are always late. Since this term is primarily a white, southern saying, I am pretty sure that the folks at ICT, inc. are correct.
But let’s turn this term on its head too. The first Europeans to land on these shores were completely ignorant that the Americas even existed. Christopher Columbus thought he had sailed around the world and landed on the Western side of India. Therefore, he thought the indigenous people he found there were, in fact, Indians. We, Europeans, are stubborn people. Hundreds of years after realizing that Columbus was mistaken about finding the other side of India, we still insist that the people who were living in the Americas for thousands of years before Europeans arrived were Indians nonetheless! I think it is time to admit that we got it wrong.
Let's let go of Indian Summer just like we did with Indian Giver. Let's find another term for it. I like halcyon days, but that will never catch on. Let's just call these mild days in autumn what they really are. A pleasant gift. A mild day with the clearest blue sky. A chance to stop and notice the world as it is and not as we pretend it to be. Take a moment to reflect on the words we choose to use and think about whether they are hurtful or disrespectful of others. Take a moment to just enjoy the weather. While it lasts.
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