INVASION OF THE EUROPEAN ABORIGINES or FORGIVE MY TRESPASSES

 Weak, insecure, racist white people in America like to point to how long their family have been "here." It's called "nativism." Mean spirited assholes like Stephen Miller and his hand puppet Trump are perfect examples; spewing anti-immigrant rhetoric and instituting real world policies-- like ripping babies from parents' arms while never recording pertinent ancestral data-- severing the consaguinal lineage. Ancestry.com won't help these children. Media reports at least 545 children lost in the system due to the Trump administration's Nazi like policies. You MAGA hat wearing hunters still want to vote red?

   If I believed in nativist privilege (which I don't) I would be king of the castle. Trump's grandmother was an Irish immigrant. Miller's family were part of the Jewish diaspora from Russia in the 20th Century. These guys are only a generation or two removed from immigration; yet they act like they founded the place. On the other hand my ancestor Jan Jansen Van Oosterhoudt sailed from Amsterdam, landing in Kingston, NY (then Wildwyck) in 1653. In 13 generations the Osterhouts have only moved about an hour away from where they got off the boat. You can't get much more 'merican than that.My family were some of the original trespassers.

   One of the first pieces of hard data I found on Dutch immigrant #1, Jan Jansen, was a record of a fine levied by the Wildwyck court on Van Oosterhoudt for trespassing outside of  stockade, ignoring the danger of Esopus Indian attack, while tending his still. We are generational bootleggers and trespassers. You want an Osterhout in your shit? Tell him he can't go there. More than a dozen fines were levied on Jan Jansen for trespass. None were ever recorded as paid. We are also terrible scofflaws. Jan Jansen survived his first wife, remarried and had nine children. If my nieces and nephews are any indication of breeding policy, we are far from done populating these American woods with spawn and hidden stills.

   Even though Carlo will never give me credit for it, I also do my fair share of reading.  These days much of it is historical. I want to know how this shit show started here in the good old USA. Ever hear of the enclosure movement? It began in Europe by the aristocracy, with hedges, stone walls and finally fence lines. Europeans loved straight lines. The merchants and slave traders exported the practice to North America. This is where capitalism and the whole concept of private property came from. Those burning Target stores you saw on TV in June are a direct reaction to the European enclosure movement of 500 years ago. Like my ancestors, I also hate being told where not to go and admittedly have crossed my fair share of forbidden fence lines. If we step back a little the entire white race is complicit, comprised of nothing but trespassers onto Indigenous territory. It seems to be the one thing we are really good at.

  I once knew a guy who couldn't hunt without trespassing. He'd grown up in a hillbilly poaching family in Pennsylvania (where else) and needed the adrenalin jolt of breaking the law to hunt. He bragged about setting up a bow stand on Whitney Houston's estate in Tuxedo-- shooting a nice buck early one morning--then dragging it off the tennis court before the household awoke. I'm not that bad.  

 But, just yesterday I did pull a deer stand out of one of my favorite pieces of woods, loaded with acorns. Last year I shot a nice buck in those woods with the bow. Why did I pull the stand before the rut even started? I'm sorry to say that I was trespassing. I never said I was perfect. This Osterhout character flaw is so deeply embedded in my ancestral skin that I have to work very hard to try to overcome it. These days as we all "check our privilege" and try to attain "ego death," my little attempt at being a better white person is to try to reel in my propensity to ignore posted signs. As of this writing all my deer stands are legal. One day at a time. It is my nature. Sadly, I'm all too American.