The Kake War:

An altercation in Sitka led to the death of two Kake Tlingit when a gunship opened fire on their canoe. The Kake tribe sought compensation for the deaths and ended up killing two white trappers. In response, Governor Jefferson Davis (for whom a street is named in Sitka) ordered the USS Saginaw to sail to Kake traditional lands, take a few hostages, and burn villages. In retaliation for two deaths, Davis razed three villages and winter food stores in February of 1869. Adding insult to injury, the bay opposite Kake was named Saginaw Bay in honor of the ship that destroyed the town. We finally changed the name last year. ​(“Kake War”)​

The Bombing of Angoon:

The death of a Tlingit Shaman led to the Tlingit taking two white whalers hostage while seeking compensation. The Revenue Cutter Thomas Corwin sailed into the bay with a detachment of Marines. The hostages were released, but Commander Merriman demanded 100 blankets in compensation. The Tlingit presented 81 blankets. So, over a difference of 19 blankets, Merriman ordered the destruction of the village. Most of the houses, 40 canoes, and the winter stores burned.

The Indian Claims Commission awarded Angoon clans $90,000 in compensation in 1973. This was the ‘face value’ of the damage done, not taking into account interest or inflation. This was the same sort of math that valued the Tongass National Forest at 43 cents per acre when the courts decided that Congress owed compensation for the taking of the land. ​(“Angoon Bombardment”)​ ​(Hohenstatt)​

The Burning of the Douglass Indian Village:

In 1946 the Douglass Indian Association was looking for boat loans. At the time, boats were stored under the houses, which did not meet the loan requirements. A plan was hatched and then dismissed that would have the village relocated and a harbor built in its place would allow for larger boats, and the loans to build them.

The plans resurfaced when the City of Douglas (now incorporated into Juneau) was looking for a new boat harbor. So, in 1962 they waited until the residents were in fish-camp, declared all of the buildings abandoned, and burned the entire village to make way for a municipal harbor. The village was not rebuilt. The BIA did nothing. ​(Jenkins)​

Citations:

This was the end of the cold war. In hindsight, the cracks in the Iron Curtain were forming, but they were not evident yet. The Soviet Union was such a perceived threat that the United States was supplying aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, who were preventing the spread of communism by targeting vaccination convoys. My father was working alongside one of those convoys. He was working under the thankfully correct assumption that the Contra world not risk the mess in Washington if they killed a US citizen. My father was showing my brother and me that pacifism was not passive.

That was then. Within ten years, I had recreated the Amnesty International logo of a candle behind barbed wire with wire and concrete I had pulled from the Berlin Wall. I had spent an amazing two weeks with host families in the formerly closed city of Vladivostok, and they in Sitka. The Iron Curtain had fallen.

Nelson Mandela had not only been released from prison and been allowed to vote, and he was the president of the country.

While I was in college, Matthew Shepard was buried in an unmarked grave for fear that a kid who had already been brutally murdered would have his grave dedicated. He has since been moved to National Cathedral. Same-sex marriage is the law of the land and protected in the workplace.

In the last decade, one of my best friends had to break up with his partner. It was the era of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Someone told. Now, they are married. He’s a military spouse with full benefits.

My Grandmother, an old campaigner who used to work with Elenore Roosevelt promoting human rights never thought she’d see a Black or female president. For her last election, both were on the primary ballot.

This is all in my lifetime, and I’m still young. I’m tired is hearing about the darkest timeline, because every single thing I’ve mentioned could have gone the other way.

Things are not worse now then they used to be. They are just not being hidden anymore. Things that i learned about in hushed tones around a campfire, such as the Tulsa massacre and Haymarket bombing, are now regular staples of social media.

We’ve got a long way to go, but we can’t lose sight of how far we’ve come, how much we’ve done. And they can’t hide our history from us anymore.

In the words of Wellstone: stand up, kick ass, keep fighting.