Rage From Ahwahnee

​I am tired of people asking if I’m happy. I’m tired of that being the metric of the life we should all be living. I am tired of being asked how I’m doing and being expected to smile and say “fine”. “Great, I’m great. I’m fine. Everything is fine.” There are over 2,000 immigrant children being separated from their parents who were fleeing violence and poverty, right here in my country in my backyard. Dozens of trans people have been shot and killed this year. People of color continue to face state-sanctioned violence and murder from police. But I’m doing fine and that’s what matters isn’t it? 

In fact, not only am I tired of being asked if I’m happy, I am distinctly not happy. And I am distinctly worried about people who feel happiness is the measure of accomplishment. I am in Yosemite, which was named Ahwahnee by the Native Americans who lived on this land before we burned their villages and moved them into encampments (which happened as recently as 1969. I’ll repeat that. In 1969, white people burned a Native American community to the ground. I was told the reason for this is unknown and nothing has been done with the land, other than the people lost everything and moved outside of the park).

There are flocks of happy tourists here. They all seem very happy. I find myself wondering what it must be like as a Native American, an Ahwahnechee, living in the nearby reservation, watching as happy people tour your home, taking selfies and eating at fancy restaurants built on land that you once nurtured, that once nurtured you, that was your ancestor’s home and your rightful one. I wonder how it felt to watch as white men cut down Sequoia trees that stand so majestically that only a deep narcissism could have one think to themselves “this tree is for me.” I wonder how it feels to have your only option for making a living to be serving those who removed you from your home. I wonder, and yet I also know this is an experience of people all over the world. Indigenous people who understood their land, who knew exactly how to live on the Earth, who did it with care and respect and honor. 

Yosemite is dying. There are massive human-caused fires every single year and the damage is everywhere you look. There is beetle kill that has destroyed miles of forest due to droughts that have left the trees so unhealthy they can’t fight them off. Sequoia stumps line the forest trails, marking, one at a time, the insane hunger of my people and our complete lack of respect for the land. Colonizers have destroyed Ahwahnee. And I am among them, I am one of them. I feel the Earth screaming, crying. I see the shaking heads of Native American ancestors, watching, powerless, tearful, knowing the destruction taking place in their bones. And then, I look around me and people are happy. They are happy, smiling, laughing, running around. I am coming to believe that happiness is a story for the privileged to tell themselves so they don’t have to tell the truth. 
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As a spiritual person, I am sick and tired of spirituality being equated with happiness; of spirituality being equated with inanely simple answers revolving around stories of escapism where some heaven or other realm is peaceful and we just have to wait until we’re there, either in our minds or our bodies. I’m tired of a spirituality that counts detachment as some high-minded goal, that envisions some relationship with the Earth that makes us into fairies dancing in long skirts singing la-di-da. This is a spirituality where happiness is given a stamp of saint-hood over the pain and rage that telling the truth inevitably causes. I demand a spirituality that wails. I demand a spirituality that yells. I demand a spirituality that stands for something, that acts. I demand a spirituality that refuses this pretense of happiness and instead, tells the truth. This is the spirituality of Native American people. It is a spirituality that is real, in the body, connected to the Earth, humble, knowing. If we can stop long enough to interrupt our superficial smiling, we might one day learn to listen to their wisdom, something we should have done long ago.