By Diane Wittner
November 2007
During the Backbone Campaign's Conversations with the Cabinet interviews, Progressive Cabinet nominees - from Winona LaDuke and Santiago Juarez to Noam Chomsky and Baldemar Velasquez - have repeatedly stated that Americans must move beyond our familiar national mythologies to gain the courage to finally build a righteous nation. And as our (un)real government headquarters is in my home town of Washington, I have begun to consider the connection between this city and the possibility of a new mythology, or 'master narrative,' as Secretary of Labor nominee Bill Fletcher phrased it in his March 2005 Conversation.
Recently I walked along the Potomac River in Georgetown. I was pleased to see a great blue heron on the river bank and a fat shad close to the water's surface. At that moment, it occurred to me that the process of narrative transformation could begin there.
For more than 10,000 years the Potomac River at Washington was the regional focus for sustainable human populations and other life forms. Indigenous peoples such as the Piscataways, Tauxenents and the Nacotchtanks resided along the fertile banks of the both the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers. These groups belonged to a larger federation of Algonquin peoples whose powerful leader was Pohattan. Others also came to the Potomac every spring; the area was known as a center of trade and as a fishing camp. In fact, the word 'Potomac' means 'trading place' in the Algonquin language. Elk, bears, wolves, and cougars resided in the nearby forests. The river teemed with American and hickory shad, white and yellow perch, red-breasted sunfish, catfish and more.
Geography provides an explanation for this lively set up. The Potomac River watershed is almost fifteen hundred square miles, and the river itself is three hundred eighty miles long. Its eleven mile wide mouth opens at the Chesapeake Bay, after which the river travels west and north. A section called Great Falls is located a few miles upstream from Washington. It is so-named because of its treacherous rocks and white choppy waters. Every spring, fish try to swim upstream to spawn. But many don't make it beyond the rocks, and they become easy prey for hungry predators.
This heavenly abundance is what the Europeans encountered on their first visit here in the 1570's. And in his famous 1608 diary, English Captain John Smith noted that fishing poles and nets weren't needed on the Potomac below Great Falls. According to Smith, frying pans could just be dipped briefly into the water to catch a fresh meal. In other words, up until five hundred years ago, the Potomac River at Washington provided food for all its locals during the long spring season.
I like meditating on this fact, although this old news about Washington as a commons is not widely known. Here's how this might become useful as part of a new narrative:
Visualize a horizontal timeline divided into twenty sections, each section representing five hundred years -- for a total of ten thousand years. If you like, make it into a nice shape in your mind's eye - maybe the curving form of a cello? Or of a loved one's silhouette? And why not give each of the twenty sections a different color? Then do simple mental math with the twenty sections. Choose just one twentieth of the timeline, i.e. one color, and note its insignificance in relation to the total length of the line. Only this small portion of the timeline contains the American empire. In other words, the awful American empire only takes up one twentieth of the known story here. If I project this timeline into the future, I envision containing Washington's violent global influence to our time period. And this commons can be part of a long term community effort.
I am not being all rosy about this. It is not helpful to take a bland, New Age ecology-only approach to this task. There are also painful and more complex tales waiting impatiently in the wings - tales waiting first for emergence, and then for transformation into useful mythologies. Less savory stories about oppression and race, privilege and poverty, gender, genocide and greed - these, too, desperately need to see the light of day. Some state governments' 2007 legislation apologizing for slavery is a step in the right direction.
But private citizen actions are needed too. As Bill Fletcher said, writers and artists can help with this job. Education nominee Howard Zinn's amazing little book Artists in Times of War is full of ideas about citizens whose brave actions need amplifying, and how that might be done. And Edward P. Jones' fiction The Known World is an example of how the awkward past can be revealed; it is elegant and heartbreaking, but also informative about nineteenth century Virginia.
Media outlets also have a responsibility to tell our continent's most important news, as Immigration Department nominee Baldemar Velasquez noted in his Conversation. The ongoing development of progressive media in our time is a grand thing.
Finally, location matters. The one-size-fits-all traditional American patriotism stretching from coast to coast doesn't work for 21st century hopes, crises, and sensibilities. The buried past in relation to place continues to have a profoundly destructive influence on us each day. There may not be only one or two or even three useful master narratives out there for all Americans anymore. But there are many narratives-in-waiting across this continent.
We are up to the task of transforming significant old stories into the words, sights, sounds and actions we each crave. And with the most powerful ancestral tales gently revealed, honored, and retold in useful ways, Americans may yet muster the moral strength to create the government we need.
This essay is dedicated to the memory of my American Studies professor and labor historian Roy Rosenzweig, who taught me many years ago that the most important voices from the past are often the quiet ones.
©2007, Diane Wittner, All Rights Reserved