Mark Charles on Trump’s Militaristic-style 4th of July Celebration

Military police walk near Abrams tanks on a flatcar in a Washington, D.C., rail yard on Monday, ahead of the July 4 celebration that President Trump says will include military hardware.

Guest Commentary

Published July 3, 2019

On July 4th 2019, President Trump is planning a grand, militaristic-style celebration on the National Mall and in front of the Lincoln Memorial complete with fighter jet flyovers and large military tanks.

I have a few thoughts.

For a colonial nation that was founded on the dehumanizing concept of Discovery, built on the backs of African slaves and expanded through the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Native nations…
For a nation whose military history includes Indian massacres and a “war of extermination”…

For a nation whose ‘greatest’ President (Abraham Lincoln) ethnically cleansed the Dakota and Winnebago from the state of Minnesota, the Cheyenne and Arapahoe from Colorado, and the Navajo and Mescalero Apache from the territory of New Mexico…

For a nation that awarded 18 Medals of Honor to soldiers who participated in the Massacre at Wounded Knee…

For a nation that awarded 425 Medals of Honor to soldiers who participated in the Indian War campaigns…

For the ONLY nation in the world that not only used nuclear weapons, but dropped them on civilian targets…

Mark Charles is running for president in 2020.

For a nation whose Constitution never mentions women, specifically excludes Natives, and counts Africans as 3/5th human…

And for a nation that annually celebrates a Declaration of Independence, which (to this day) refers to native peoples as “merciless Indian savages”…

I do not think a triumphal, militaristic and politicized celebration of that Declaration, especially one held in front of the Lincoln Memorial and led by a white, land-owning, male President who has made billions of dollars (purportedly) as a real estate developer (I.e. buying and selling the lands that were stolen from and ethnically cleansed of, native peoples) … I do not think … correction … I know that a celebration of this sort is NOT inclusive of #AllThePeople.

A day like this calls for reflection.
A day like this might even call for lament.
A day like this definitely calls for the creation of a common memory.

And to that end, I will live stream a presentation on the Doctrine of Discovery this July 4, 2019 beginning at noon Eastern time. I invite everyone, from all walks of life, to join this effort to heed the wisdom of one of our native elders, George Erasmus from the Dene nation in Canada, who said:

“Where common memory is lacking, where people do not share in the same past, there can be no real community. Where community is to be formed, common memory must be created.”

Below is a link for the FB Event that I have created for this presentation on my Mark Charles 2020 Campaign page.

https://www.facebook.com/events/441001586739118/

Mark Charles (Dine’) is running for president of the United States.