The Angry Girl

Yesterday, I performed for the first time with the Chadron Community Chorus.  I joined this chorus late, but it's been a huge blessing to have a community event outside of Pine Ridge.  Since I live in the Center, it's been a guaranteed time every week where I'm out of the building.  Anyway, yesterday was our fall concert.  We sang a variety of pieces, including Someone to Watch Over Me, which was a piece I sang during my voice jury in college.  It was fun to sing it with an ensemble this time though!

One of the pieces we sang is called "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor" by Irving Berlin.  Here's a random choir singing it--THIS IS NOT OUR CHOIR!  I'm posting it just so you can hear it.

The lyrics are:
Give me your tired, your poor
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore
Send these the homeless tempest-tost to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
During the last few rehearsals, one of the members of the choir has been particularly passionate about this song.  She said that it makes her so proud to be an American and that we should wave little American flags while we sing it.

Now, I am the first one to admit that I still haven't quite figured out how to adequately articulate my views about being an American and the patriotism/national pride that goes with it.  I feel incredibly fortunate to have been born in the United States, into a country where I have a vote and many freedoms; I feel unfortunate to be a part of a nation of people who often think they are the most important people and the only people in the entire world.  But, without going into too much of a rant, I'll stick to the song.

During our last rehearsal on Thursday, as we sang the words to this song, I started to tear up and actually had to stop singing to take a calming breath.  I wasn't moved by the beauty of this "great nation" or Lady Liberty.  I was moved by how much the words sung about the people who I encounter every day.  When I sang, "give me your tired, your poor," I pictured the number of people who come to the door asking for a blanket for each member of their family, since it's now 15 degrees in South Dakota and they're out of propane.  When I sang "huddled masses," I pictured the men who sleep under the walkway in front of my building and in the outside stairwell to our basement.  The "homeless tempest-tost" are those fifty families who lost their homes this summer to the windstorms.  And by the time I got to lifting my lamp to the golden door, I was asking myself, "What lamp?" and "Where's this magical door?"

I've had many a conversation with my family members as we reflect on the laws/rules/beliefs about immigration to the United States today.  We often reflect back on how our Irish and Czech ancestors were treated when they came through Ellis Island in the early 1900s.  I'm sure my great grandmothers, Honora O'Sharkey and Styska DeJong approached Ellis Island with the anticipation of a new life, a life where the lamp casts bright light onto a dark, depressing path.  This is the story for many of us who come from European immigrants.  I'm ready to get my American flag out to wave when I think of the sense of freedom that my ancestors had when they approached the United States.

I am quick to put that flag away though when I realize what the opportunity for freedom for my ancestors has meant for the people who lived on this continent well before Honora got off the boat or before Lady Liberty was built.  I think about the people who were here before anybody was "exploring trade routes" and before anyone decided that it was their job to "Kill the Indian and keep the man."

Story within a story time: I met a young Episcopalian priest lately who told me that she did a summer internship on a reservation nearby right before she started seminary.  One of her classmates called her "The Angry Girl" for the first year and a half of seminary due to the way she processed her time on the reservation.  I too am often known as "The Angry Girl," whether to my face or behind my back.  It's about passion though, passion for people, for the story that goes with those people and for the time and place in which I meet those people and meet their stories.  I'm quickly approaching "The Angry Girl" status when it comes to Native American advocacy.

Back to the original story.

Singing the words on this music meant something so powerful for many members of the chorus and I absolutely do NOT dismiss this.  I was struck by how it was so powerful and moving for them in one way and powerful and moving for me in a completely different way.  My "people" came to this land for freedom, yet even if Honora and Styska weren't at the Massacre at Wounded Knee, they share a history of Euro-American immigrants who aided in the forced resettling of Native peoples and their continued oppression.

This Angry Girl will happily wave her little American flag when she feels as if people, ALL PEOPLE, who live in this land mass, known as the United States of America, are granted the freedoms that we promise when we declare that we are a land of the free.