Blog 3759 – 02.25.2026

The Stories We Tell Ourselves 

History is for the most part the stories that we tell ourselves trying to justice past mistakes and missteps. The winners, they say, get to write history. But, the others too have stories to tell. Some say it is unpatriotic and unamerican to listen to these differing accounts of history.

To think the that the only people whose stories need to be told and listened to are people that look and act like you is the height of ignorance and arrogance. The First People who occupied the New World for thousands of years before the European migration began in the late fifteen hundreds were not a sparse population of savages as some stories go but many and varied cultures rivaling those of Europe, Asia and the Middle East at the time. They had their own stories, religions, and traditions through which they tried to make sense of the world around them. They did not claim to own the land but worshipped it as mother earth and father sky. They lived on the land far longer than the later waves of immigrants have and left it mostly as they had found it.

In the name of profit and progress we late arrivals have almost destroyed mother earth and father sky, the ecosystem that makes human life possible. The First People respected balance. We are all immigrants here and are responsible for what we have done with what we found here when we arrived. For all the PR we spout in our stories the truth will out. The land, the earth and the sky, tell their own stories, and they do not speak well of the last several hundred years of immigration, stories mostly of greed, conquest, and little regard for leaving anything behind but ever bigger bank accounts for the fortunate few and ever mounting debt and deprivation for the rest. Is this really the story we want to keep to tell ourselves? Is this all we want to leave behind?

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David James White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vMeLMcbpUSD9S5BlFwxWe4vDgx3wDiDp/view?usp=drivesdk

To Leave Something Behind