{"id":43431,"date":"2023-10-17T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-17T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newmexicopbs.org\/productions\/newmexicoinfocus\/?p=43431"},"modified":"2023-10-16T15:13:49","modified_gmt":"2023-10-16T22:13:49","slug":"first-stop-doing-the-harm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newmexicopbs.org\/productions\/newmexicoinfocus\/first-stop-doing-the-harm\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018First: Stop doing the harm.\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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So much has happened since I interviewed Rebecca Clarren about her new book. We spoke almost a month ago, although the conversation aired last Friday. But I\u2019m finding solace in revisiting much of what we talked about, including reconciliation, which I write about below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To start: At the turn of the 20th century, Clarren\u2019s ancestors fled antisemitism in Russia to start new lives in America, where they became homesteaders on lands the U.S. government stole from the Lakota people. In The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance<\/em>, Clarren offers an intimate look at how her family benefitted from that stolen land, and she explores acts of reconciliation and repatriation that are embedded in family and culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second chapter in her book is titled \u201cThe Holocaust at Home.\u201d During our interview, I asked her to talk about her deliberate use of that word, as a Jewish writer. She told me: \u201cI thought I knew a lot about the Holocaust, and yet it wasn’t until a Lakota elder, Doug White Bull, told me, \u2018You know, your family, the Jews, they survived a Holocaust. It was horrible, but we had a Holocaust here and it lasted for 400 years, and no one ever talks about it.\u2019\u201d    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Clarren explained: \u201cHitler and his legal team based many of their policies on how to restrict rights from Jewish people based on the way America was taking rights from Native people and Black people in this country… So yes, I use that word very intentionally because that is the way that many Lakota elders who I spoke with talk about it. …Children were murdered, people were starved intentionally, to be controlled by the federal government. And they were restricted onto reservations which Hitler himself used as a premise for concentration camps.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our conversation, Clarren also described what she has learned about the importance of embedding reconciliation and reparation in your own culture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As she writes in The Cost of Free Land<\/em>: \u201c…from their earliest written texts, Jewish scholars have insisted we have a moral obligation to pursue justice, to repair the world, to take responsibility for our part. I\u2019ve returned, repeatedly, to the famous philosopher Maimonides\u2019 laws of repentance, and his time-tested strategy for making things right. Here is a modern break-down of his six steps:   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First: Stop doing the harm. Second: Confess as specifically as possible what harm you have caused and ideally, say this truth out loud in public. Third: Begin the work of transforming yourself from a person capable of causing such harm to one who isn\u2019t. (In ancient days, people changed their names. Today, it might mean therapy.) Fourth: Make financial restitution that reflects the size of the harm. Fifth: Apologize in a way that doesn\u2019t necessarily anticipate being forgiven but that makes clear to the victim that you have heard them, and that you understand how you have caused them pain. Finally: When you face the opportunity to cause the same sort of harm, make different choices.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you missed our conversation last week, you can watch it online<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n