Lewis and Clark
There’s this advertisement, a public service announcement thingy that radio stations pop in to fill both a quota and unbought advertisement time, for the Lewis and Clark BiCentennial Celebration that has, for the past year, irked me a bit. More to the point, I am stuck pondering two simple words and what they encompass.
It’s a Native American, in the background we hear some generic pow-wowing, who speaks of how “Lewis and Clark travelled a journey of discovery only to discover dozens of Native American tribes who…
… DESPITE EVERYTHING…
… are still with us today. Travel the Lewis and Clark Trail. (and the clencher) Their journey winds through us all.”
Despite, quote-in-quote, “Everything”? That would be the Genocide (best personified by the man on the twenty-dollar bill, who’s credited with raising small d democracy for the masses), the early form of chemical warfare that I can with dark humour laugh at as “blowing blankets”, the movement and removement of the tribes into less and less desirable parches of land, the Trail of Tears, the wanton destruction of the Buffalo and the encroachment of the Trains, naming a sports team after a racial slur, introduction of alcoholism, and — a sometimes unspoken bit of ugliness from the latest Congressional scandal– fleecing money out of various Indian tribes by playing one tribe’s Indian Gaming Casino against another tribe’s to pocket money to Jack Abramoff.
That’s a lot of “everything”. I guess there’s no other way of phrasing it, as they have to acknowledge that stuff happened in as positive a manner as possible. It’s a bit of a token ad in the series, and I imagine the thing being written and re-written and reviewed by a long series of consultants for “political correctness”.
Later in the series of “Lewis and Clark Bi-Centenial ads” we have a set of ads of how Lewis and Clark would “view their trail today”, somewhat carefully couched as a “shame that we have highways and that the Buffalo and beavers have been knocked out”, with a requisite “As you think about what we’ve gained and what we’ve lost, think about how to save what is left”. As if to make up for an “oh. wait” moment, an ad or two chimes in by inserting the “American Indians” back into the picture… a bit awkwardly… cojoined with Lewis and Clark in their concerns of the toll the development of the West has had on the Environment. But I do mention this: Lewis and Clark both speak, saying “Something must be done to save this great forest”. The Native American… does not speak in the ad. Partly because Lewis and Clark’s 21st century visage are lifted from other ads that do not feature the Native Americans, and partly because… well… I imagine it’s a bit of an insult to insert a living Native American next to two dead European Americans.