A Slur for Sacred Ground

Yosemite National ParkPhoto credit:  National Park Service

It's summer, which means it's hiking and campaign season. It's also national parks season.

Did you know that one of the nation's most beloved is named with a slur? It is, of course, manifestly stolen ground. That goes almost without saying. But few know how it came to be: to be stolen; to be claimed as community property in the name of the U.S. Government to be given a "new" name, with a complete absence of irony, that was nothing more than old epithet given new voice. 

My friend rb137 has been to this place, up close and personal. She knows it well. And she knows its history equally well. She's written about it here, and I'd like you to go and take a look.

There'll be a lot in her piece that you didn't know. There's a lot I didn't know. But I know now, and as I read her piece, I felt yet another little crack erupt across my heart, a new abrasion form in my soul. Because while she confines her words to what is well-established, she summons the spirit of what lies beneath. 

I know what lies beneath; our peoples have lived it — and died for it — for half a millennium now.

So go. Read. And then carry the story with you, when you visit, when you talk with others about this bit of national "hallowed ground." Because it's "hallowed" in ways that almost no one remembers, and that no one should ever be allowed to forget.