group of kids.
here's the explanation from one of them. It incorporates a big lie: that that is an Abenaki burial ground. That's never even be suggested before. I doubt this woman knows this fact either: the first black college graduate in the country attended Middlebury.
Alexander Lucius Twilight (September 26, 1795 – June 19, 1857), born free in Vermont, was the first African-American person known to have earned a bachelor's degree from an American college or university upon graduating Middlebury College in 1823
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Twilight
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yesterday i went to occupied abenaki territory. i was invited to middlebury college to facilitate a workshop on settler responsibility and decolonization. i walked across this campus whose stone wall structures weigh heavy on the landscape. the history of eugenics, genocide and colonial violence permeate that space so fully like a ghost everywhere descending. it was my understanding that this site is occupying an abenaki burial ground; a sacred site.
walking through the campus i saw thousands of small american flags. tho my natural disdain for the occupying colonial state came to surface, in the quickest moment of decision making, in my heart, i understood that lands where our dead lay must not be desecrated. in my community, we do not pierce the earth. it disturbs the spirits there, it is important for me to respect their presence, their want for rest.
my heart swelled and i knew in my core that thousands of american flags should not penetrate the earth where my abenaki brothers and sisters sleep. we have all survived so much – and as a visitor on their territories i took action to respect them and began pulling up all of the flags.
i was with 4 non-natives who supported me in this action. there were so many flags staking the earth and their hands helped make this work faster. this act of support by my friends, as settlers, tho small was healing and inspiring. we put them away in black garbage bags and i was confronted by a nationalistic-settler, a young white boy who attends the college demanding i relinquish the flags to him. i held my ground and
confiscated them. i did not want to cave to his support of the occupying, settler-colonial, imperalist state, and the endorsing of the genocide of indigenous peoples across the world.
it is the duty of the college of middlebury to consult with abenaki peoples and repatriate their grounds.
http://climate-connections.org/2013/09/12/vermont-protestors-remove-american-flags-at-911-memorial-in-act-of-solidarity/
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