The Ais People ~ Some “Thanksgiving” Thoughts

 

A few weeks ago I attended an event at a park along the coast of a lake in Brevard County, Florida, called Lake Washington. I cringed when I heard the name, named after a man who extracted the teeth from his slaves to replace his own. Fortunately it turned out not to be named after George Washington according to Wikipedia, rather, some other European invader with the same last name. For some reason, at that time I was overcome with the urge to find out what the Native Americans called the lake. This led me down a rabbit hole that left me feeling ashamed and depressed for many days. It’s strange, it’s not as if I didn’t know before that this land was stolen from Native Americans, but somehow, I started to really understand it. 

The land that I currently occupy was originally inhabited by the Ais people. From Wikipedia you can glean surface-level information on them. If you want to read a more old-fashioned (i.e. racist) article you can check this one out, which concludes that they were a “backwards” tribe because they didn’t live exactly like Europeans, didn’t partake in agriculture and their religious beliefs were never written down. But their way of life worked for them. They did just fine for centuries before Europeans invaded. There’s no such thing as a backwards culture. They entered the area of modern Brevard County around 1000 BC, and lived here for the better part of 3,000 years before they completely disappeared from the historical record around 1760, having been massacred and sold into slavery by the Spaniards, the “lucky” ones ending up in Christian missions near Miami. And no one knows anything about them. No one remembers them. We know how they dressed, what they ate (mainly fish), how they constructed their homes, because some merchant named Jonathan Dickerson was shipwrecked in 1696 and spent some time with them, writing a very biased account of their traditions, which I read a summarized version of in this article. He complains that they didn’t put floors into their homes and left it as dirt, and when attending one of their ceremonies called their singing “hideous howling”. I’m sure he wouldn’t like the music I listen to either. Anyway, the only record we have of how the Ais people lived comes from the pen of a bigoted ignoramus who looked down on any culture not like his own. 

Maybe because of my Armenian side I understand better how horrifying it is for a culture that lasted almost 3,000 to be completely wiped out and forgotten. A completed genocide. Most Europeans can’t fathom it. Armenia has been on the brink of the same thing for a long time now. I worry that as soon as Russia stops protecting Armenia, the country could be wiped off the map by Turkey and Azerbaijan, finally completing a genocide that took about 1,000 years from the first invasions of the Seljuk Turks, and ending an almost 4,000 year history. If they had their way the very memory of Armenia would be obliterated by the Azeris, who love to appropriate Armenian history as their own because their country is an artificial creation by invaders who long for a culture they don’t have, much like the United States is. A fake heritage. 

And yet the soil I now walk on belonged to a people that have already been completely annihilated. It is bloodstained soil. Much like eastern Turkey. Much like the majority of Artsakh now. I don’t like living on it. It’s hypocritical for me to live here. I can’t stop looking upon these endless suburbs and shopping malls, and thinking about how beautiful the land must have looked before the Europeans defiled it. It disgusts me to see “for sale” signs in front of the final small pockets of wilderness that still exist in this town, because the invaders won’t stop until every square inch of the land is paved over with concrete and covered in shopping centers, gas stations, and houses with useless pesticide-coated lawns. And I’m a part of it. I have blood on my hands too.  Most white people refuse to confront their guilt. I cannot help but do so. I want to leave this country, and right a terrible wrong my ancestors committed by coming to this continent. I don’t belong here. I belong in Europe. I can’t even stand the sunlight and humidity here. I am maladapted for this environment. But alas, there’s no one to give the land back to. They’re dead and gone. 

How can anyone believe in an inherent, divine justice in the world while sitting on the bloodstained land of a forgotten people? What a delusion. There is no justice in the world. I can’t believe in karma. The more one thinks about it, the more it seems that nihilism is the only truth. I can no longer seriously follow religions that do not correlate with the reality I observe. Panpsychism/pantheism allows for gross injustice in an indifferent universe, so for now that’s what I believe. The stars are alive, the universe has a consciousness, we are all stardust, we occupy a pale blue dot in the cosmos, that sort of thing. There may be higher forces in the universe, but they’re no more concerned with humans than humans are with bacteria. To be forgotten is the ultimate fate of every human being, and every culture too, given a long enough time scale. 100,000 years from now no one will remember America ever existed. What happened to the Ais will have happened to every culture. Most likely by then no one will remember the human race itself. I can’t imagine this species even lasting another 1,000 years. It’s a cold comfort. It’s the only solace I have in all this.

So yeah, fuck this holiday. I never did find out the original name of the lake.