A Tale of Two Narratives

By DON ROLLINS

“Being Native American and living in the United States feels like our indigenous peoples are an old grandmother who lives in a very large house … But, years ago, some people came into our house and locked us upstairs in the bedroom. Today, our house is full of people. They are sitting on our furniture. They are eating our food …” — Mark Charles, independent presidential candidate

The grim news of Trump’s electoral college victory had barely come down the wire before mainstream progressive outlets began autopsying the unthinkable. Theories and blame poured forth, as a previously cocksure left realized Democrats had just wrestled defeat from the jaws of victory.

While some of the dissection ranged into the realm of the highbrow socio-political, there arose a more realpolitik narrative: Hillary blew off the Rustbelt, short for taking for granted the working class and minority votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. Had her ground game included a more aggressive presence in those states, so the explanation went, Trump would still be somewhere running fake universities and shorting his construction workers.

But as is often the case in high-office primaries and elections, there were narratives within that narrative. One of which goes back centuries.

Although mostly treated as offbeat novelties, each presidential cycle includes dozens of independent candidates with no real shot at winning. They range from conspiracy believers to community organizers, space aliens to combat veterans, pranksters to truth tellers.

Given ours is a two-party system utterly dismissive of even the most qualified from their ranks, there’s no chance any of the 2020 lesser knowns will emerge from the shadows. But at least one may make a difference, maybe even change a narrative or two.

Mark Charles’ is not what you would call a household name. Of Dutch and Native American heritage, he’s the coauthor of a book on European claims to “discovering” native peoples in North America. Charles is an activist, Christian, pastor and, oh yes, presidential candidate.

Charles is clear-eyed about his chances, but resists being labeled as a protest-only candidate. His progressive-friendly mission can be described as twofold: 1. Be rid of the Doctrine of Discovery narrative, and advocate for Native American restitution in all its forms; 2. Help establish a more vital Native American voting bloc for 2020, with the goal of changing the 2016 Rustbelt narrative as a new bastion of conservatism.

Liberals would likely embrace Charles, but he’s not showing all that much love for the Democratic machine or current field of candidates. He cites the dehumanization of Native Americans implicit in Trump’s “Make America Great”, but likewise Clinton’s retort: “America’s already great.” For whom, Charles wants to ask them both:

“We don’t have a common memory. We have the white majority that remembers the mythological history of discovery, expansion, opportunities and exceptionalism. Then you have communities of color, women and LGBTQ people that have the lived history of stolen lands, broken treaties, slavery, Jim Crow laws, segregation, sexism, exclusion, boarding schools, internment camps and families separated (at) our borders. There’s no common memory, and because of that, community is almost nonexistent at a national level right now. We can’t even talk to each other.”

If Charles would change the greater American self-myth, he also calls for changing that of Native American political participation and voting. Citing significant Native American populations in the very states that cost Clinton the election, Charles posits a stronger turnout would have turned those states blue. And will in 2020.

As progressives become increasingly woke to the explicit and implicit marginalization of America’s first nations, Mark Charles’ twofold mission would make for a powerful rethinking of the Native American experience, past, present and future. And a welcome ally for change come next November.

Don Rollins is a Unitarian Universalist minister living in Hendersonville, N.C. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2020

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