Owning American Imperialism

Megan Kate Nelson spoke at University of Montana recently about her new book The Westerners. A moderator asked her how we should frame American and Western identity in contrast to Fredrick Jackson Turner's problematic pioneer narrative. Her response, in paraphrase, was that we need to tell the histories of the people who have been left out of the white/male origin stories.

Nelson highlighted how the people she profiles in the book exhibited the same qualities of determination, gumption, and resilience that defines the pioneer spirit. She seemed proud of these historical outliers for also managing to carve out a piece of the American dream for themselves, via land acquisition and business ventures, though with less acclaim than Jim Bridger, Lewis & Clarke, etc.

I'm all for highlighting the untold multicultural stories of the West. This is in large part the focus of my work at the moment. But the lecture strengthened my belief that we, in the present moment, need to look at property ownership and resource extraction (capitalist structures in which we participate, from which we benefit) as the driving factors of this whole Western expansion. Americans need to own up to our imperial project and grapple with the dark side of American identity which implicates us all.

Flipping the pioneer script means seeing all of the violence inherent in Western expansion then, and now--the project of colonizing North America--and to balance the blind American pride with a healthy dose of horror and humility.

It is interesting that the American identity story includes our own revolution against colonizers. This script has allowed us to believe we have shed the ethos of Empire to be "free." Looking at how we have conducted our growth and expansion as a nation, it is but another page from the colonizer's playbook. Free to build empire, not be oppressed by it. This is at the root of who we are.

I am grateful for the emotional overwhelm I experienced last fall when I visited the Big Hole battlefield and unexpectedly and viscerally confronted the fact that the United States is an Empire, at great cost. And that I am inescapably American; I cannot divorce myself easily from my nationality; I inherit the sins along with the benefits of being conquerors.

I cannot undo what has been done in the name of personal and collective greed. That is a huge weight to bear within the identity of "being American".

Our entire sense of ourselves as rugged individuals pursuing "freedom" and the "American Dream" is not without great moral cost. This domain of grief, shock, inescapable inheritance, and shame is the flip side of the pioneer myth. We know this at some level when we point out the wrongness of Turner's framing, or look at current or past injustices.

A great reckoning is needed. An uncomfortable, ground-shaking, personal reckoning with what it means TO BE American. The complicity of it. This American project is rotten to the core. Can it be redeemed? As Chris La Tray recently wrote in response to the latest No Kings rally:

My hope is, moving forward, more people will understand there is nothing in American democracy we need to be trying to "return" to. We need to work together to create something new, become a new people, to have any kind of future for any of us.

And how do we do this? Can we transform from the inside? Do we separate from and overthrow the system?

Another thought after the lecture is that the pioneer narrative has effectively allowed us to create an identity that is separate from our governance structure. Empowering the individual allows us to feel independent from our government. We are fulfilled by individual pursuits rather than those being intrinsically linked to governance and the community. We also conversely feel not responsible for the actions our government takes. "They" do it. It has "nothing to do with my values."

This has separated us so significantly from the levers of power that we now find we have no power at all to influence what those with governmental power choose to do. This is the toxic residue of the pioneer script; we've lost our individual agency within and responsibility to the collective.

To change in the way LaTray imagines, we absolutely need to restore a collective and rebuild structures of engagement. Give each adult member of the community their responsibility to everyone else and for the group. Hold each person accountable.

This is not what we're doing at present. Our communities, our neighborhoods and houses, are built for isolation and self-sufficiency. To what degree are we even living together, in spirit? American identity doesn't even really bond us to one another.

My own sense of loneliness and isolation are products of these structures, though the culture might say they are a deficiency of ambition or creativity.

This separation of individual and government is what allows and sustains the ability to separate what I am personally responsible for, and what I can blame on past (or even present) "others". I have no control, therefore I am blameless. Are we blameless for the past actions of others? No, if we are benefitting now from structures they created.

We may be doomed to live out our own ruin if we can't begin to see these histories and structures for what they are, and take responsibility in ourselves, our lives, our actions for them. How do we ever restore the type of BEING that can untangle all this harm and denial, and still live lives of joy?