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| Photo copyright Wings, 2014; all rights reserved. |
The title is a riff on the Agatha Christie memoir. Hers was an account of her time on a dig in Syria in the 1930s, with her husband, archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, a twinned query: her own account of how she and her husband lived on the dig itself, what their daily lives were like; and her account of what they were able to ascertain about how the ancient people in question lived, those whose daily lives were being "dug."
I think it's time for a little excavation of my own, but one controlled by its object, not imposed invasively from without by a dominant culture that neither understands it nor cares about that fact. I think it's time for me to uncover a bit of what daily life is like here: here, on our own little bit of earth in Indian Country, in our own specific circumstances. Perhaps telling you how we live, from one day to the next, will shed a little light on a lot of things that the dominant culture (and those a part of it) really needs to learn. And perhaps it will help people understand a bit better why I so deeply resent the constant demands from the standard-bearers of that culture for money, particularly when they handle politics and governance with such venal incompetence; why I so deeply resent the "special rules for special people" attitudes and dynamics that reward the lies of colonial behaviors at the expense of its victims; why I so deeply resent the grasping faux-victims with their hands constantly out, the same people who blame and shame others in actual dire straits and who do their level best to doom efforts on their behalf; why I so deeply resent the false prophets of the so-called "law of attraction," a twinkie colonialist lie itself, used to justify more taking by those who least deserve it at the expense of those who can least afford it.
This is going to be a rant of a very personal nature. You've been warned.
