It’s Indigenous People’s Day so I’ll share that the paternal side of my family from whom I draw my name moved to occupied land in the mountains of North Georgia following the Trail of Tears and then benefited from an economy that extracted the world’s purest gold from the land.
Some of that gold lines the dome of the Georgia State Capitol today. The American President who murdered and forcibly relocated the Cherokee Nation—to whose people I’m told I relate by least one blood relative—had his portrait prominently displayed in the Oval Office in 2017.
If Indigenous People’s Day is to mean anything for white people, including those, like me, who also hail from Italian immigrants (many of whom would qualify as refugees by today’s standards), it must include a personal reflection of what was taken and where we’d be if it wasn’t.
When thinking of a positive outcome in the upcoming election, one hope is having the time and space to finish researching and writing my book about a Black gold miner in the area who had to get the sponsorship of a white man to run his business. Black Gold . . . coming 2021?
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