There are so many things I wonder if I will ever understand.

All day I’ve felt like I’ve been enshrouded in a cloud of anger and confusion. How was it possible to think Columbus discovered America? Even more confusing, how did that myth continue to be perpetuated for all the intervening years? Even now?

How could White people feel they could take Native land and kill the Native people?

This is personal now that I have Native friends. I see the trauma of forced assimilation has been passed from generation to generation. Quakers were involved in the Indian Boarding Schools.

I have friends who have lost loved ones in the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.

It is hard to understand how, despite these traumas, my friends have extended their friendship to me. I really admire that strength and am grateful for that gift.