Penumbra

It is important to consider the way in which history is written retroactively. It is a problem that signals the need for plays like The Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers, for collaborations like the one between Penumbra Theatre and William S. Yellow Robe, Jr., to continue. The tale about the wild frontier of America is a common story of this land. Even today, romantic notions of the West are still seductive. Our history books still do not fully explain the logistics of American expansion, how it was done, who was empowered and who was destroyed, the intricate relationships between social and ethnic classes, or the struggle for control over a bounty that seemed vast and inexhaustible.

What is left out is the systematic kidnapping of Native children by whites who placed the children in �mission schools,� where their creation stories, the ontological foundation upon which Native life and history was built, was bludgeoned daily by the �fact� of Christianity. Native children were forbidden to speak their natal tongue, and made to choke on bars of soap smashed into their mouths if they uttered even a word in a language that for them signified the love and guardianship of their parents, the legacy of their grandparents, the laughter and playfulness of their friends.
What is left out is the legislation against the literacy of black slaves whose very lives were threatened if they were able to read and write, or taught others to do so.

How, with these enforced systems of �education,� were Native and African Americans to voice their experiences in the historical archive? How were they able to contest legislation that denied them the rights they were promised? How were they able to respond to racist rhetoric spread from the floor of the U.S. Congress to churches and living rooms across America? How but from within our families might our history have been passed down through the generations? These are our stories. We have a grandmother who can recall the taste of soap while bile coats her tongue. We have a great uncle who knows natural medicinal remedies. We have a great grandfather who remembers sitting on his father�s lap, laughing unknowingly with the grown-ups as they recounted tales of outsmarting masters and mistresses. We take pride in our family�s first college graduate. We remember our languages and the songs of our past and let them fill us with awe and wonderment at our very survival. We hear the skin drum within us, the beating red fist of muscle that links us to those who came before. Like Craig coming home, it is to our families we must go for these stories; they are not in American history books. It is our thrill and our pain that our parents were who they were, that our grandparents were who they were. It is our strength, our song. We refuse to be silenced. We live because they went before us.

Sarah Bellamy

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