REMEMBERING JULY FOURTH

Parades with cars covered in red, white and blue bunting, salutes to the flag, barbeques, fireworks and picnics. We celebrate our freedoms and community on 4th of July. I look forward to them every year. But our country has unfinished business.

Gavin Newsom, governor of California, recently apologized to the indigenous people for our state's violence against native peoples. His declaration on behalf of the state is a good start to making amends and opening up discussions of our government's treatment of unwanted people on our behalf. We need to take the first step to do the same on a national level. We have precedent when President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which provided an apology and reparations to American citizens of Japanese descent who were incarcerated during WWII, The act is displayed next to Executive Order 9066 in Washington, D.C.

We need to continue recognizing our country's mistakes. Just as we did with the Civil Liberty Act. We need more than spoken words. We could follow the lead of the 1988 Congress and  President Reagan and write our apology to both indigenous peoples and to descendents of slaves. As a former camp internee, John Tateishi stated, "You can make this mistake, but you also have to correct it -- and by correcting it, hopefully not repeat it again."

Gemma Black, a well-known calligrapher from Australia, created an official document for the Australian government as the country's apology to its indigenous people. The apology was read by  then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, in front of their House of Representatives. Australia now displays this beautiful, official apology in the Australian Parlament House.

Gemma Black, calligrapher

If you watch the video of Kevin Rudd speech at the time of the presentation of this document, you cannot helped be moved. We as a people and government have similar burdens towards indigenous groups and the descendents of slaves. We in the United States could commission a well-known calligrapher (the White House employs one and there are many in this country) to produce a formal document that could be read in Congress, then displayed at the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C., right next to our Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence.

One step to building a better America.

Watch the video of Kevin Rudd reading the apology here:
https://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/our-country/our-people/apology-to-australias-indigenous-peoples
NPR article about the Civil Liberties Act:  https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/08/09/210138278/japanese-internment-redress
What next after an apology:
https://qz.com/1569005/has-america-paid-reparations/
If you believe we need immigration reform, check out:
https://www.episcopalchurch.org/OGR/migration-refugees-immigration