DECOLONIALIZATION AS METAPHOR

 Curtis, 

    I’m in the woods all day most days deer hunting. No cell or answering machine. Home now until about 2pm EST. If you could give me some idea when you could bring this up with LC and what exactly you have in mind it would be helpful. There’s no great hurry. I just wanted to know if the interest was still there. There was a land transfer in Sullivan County in 2014 of 330 acres to the Munsee-Stockbridge band for a proposed casino that never happened. We now have a Chinese owned casino that is a giant eyesore and one step from bankruptcy. Don’t know if the Munsee band still have the property or how exactly that transfer took place. Email is the best way for me to stay in touch as I’m a confirmed non-cell phone person and obsessed deer hunter.

Best,

MO

Mike, 

I just tried to call your number but it did not allow for leaving a voicemail. Please reply by email or text and let me know when we can talk. For me it is best after 5pm Central time today. Wednesday during the daytime and all day Thursday is good too.

Honestly we at LC have not discussed this yet as we’re overwhelmed with other matters and your inquiry has not made it to the agenda yet.

Curtis Zunigha

    This email exchange is with Chief Curtis Zunigha, director of Cultural Resources and a member of the Absentee Delaware Tribe in Bartlesville, OK. Curtis is my contact with the Lenape Nation band in Oklahoma who are interested in somehow receiving my "Land Back" social sculpture in Bridgeville. "LC" refers to his online project in New York www.thelenapecenter.com. Our respective ancestors were not so cordial to each other. Both river dwelling cultures (mine Dutch and his Lenape) we have a deep and contentious shared history in my family reaching back to 1653 in the Catskills. Colonial powers and the Lenape and Esopus Tribes were some of the first bands of Indigenous Peoples to come in contact with Henrick Hudson's Half Moon in 1609 and the Van Oosterhoudts in 1653. It's gone down hill (for the Lenape) ever since.

     The Osterhouts and the various bands of so-called "river Indians" as well as the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee and even the Northwest Coastal tribes of Nisga'a and Haida had been killing, scalping, trading, drinking, negotiating and even converting each other for almost four hundred years. I thought it was about time the family engaged with the tribes on the higher level of art.....if it's not too late. As I told Curtis, I'm very busy hunting.

   Here's how most days unfold for me: Up at 4:15 am, I make coffee, feed Cheeky, check the news and email. Then, as I decide which stand to hunt, I reach out to Curtis, check in on my upcoming show at The 500 Capp Street Foundation in San Francisco and work on a little writing before taking a bath. Then I let out Cheeky and take a nice morning poop. TMI? I try to stay in the stand at least until 11 am, when it's back to the shack to watch the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, finish whatever thoughts I had at 4:30 am and post the blog. It's back to the woods for the afternoon hunt and a chance at one of these shooters. Home at dark (empty handed), I cook up some dinner, turn up the music and hit the exercise bike while the meal cooks. Recently I've become the recipient of Majestic Farm's unsealed (and unsalable) pork about to go bad and whatever remained in Jass and Careamee's pantry when they went back to France. Tonight it's pork chops with a half box of rigatoni. Is that a fly? Oh well, he wasn't in the water long. I imagine the community cleaning out their fridges, sniffing food and saying with a grimace, "Mike will take it." Put it in the box girls. Being a charity case is nice. Thanks to everyone. Cheeky feels a bit left out. Hint, hint. Then it's a couple of old episodes of GLEE and off to bed.

 It's 5:12 am. I have to take a bath. I'll be back.......

11:01 am: I saw a buck about 9:30. He was about 200 yards downwind of me and had me pegged. I couldn't tell which buck it was but I found a large rub on a tree near my stand. I think Fang is coming and going between the swamp and mountain. I'm hoping it wasn't him. I'm now watching Kyle Rittenhouse break down on the stand and wondering how that buck caught me. Before I press "post" I'll see how the trial and the afternoon hunt goes. Stay tuned....

     Home at 5:12 pm again empty handed. The rut is in full swing and the woods have gone dead. Tomorrow is 11/11 my lucky day for killing bucks. It's sure not looking promising for me. Kyle Rittenhouse, on the other hand, seems to be faring much better. To be young, white, armed and ignorant in America is a colonial pastime that shows no sign of waning. After killing two men and almost tearing the arm off a third with his .223 AR-15 full metal jacket round, by his own admission, "I don't know much about ammo." No need for expertise or a reason to kill a fellow human during a BLM "riot." Like many  police officers, a young, puffy, white boy need only fear to justify killing. The judge will take it from there. I'm fucking exhausted.