“Sweetgrass” (July 2012)
How much am I the civic-minded, taxpaying citizen, here for the common good? And how much am I just another layer of gray paint covering over indigenous life, another smear of human grafitti defacing stolen land?
“The Giving Trees” (December 2014)*
I love big, old trees. They humble and inspire me, having survived and thrived for so much longer than my life, so very much longer than any of my problems.
Full length version with pictures here
“Seven Percent Interest” (June 2015)
This was not the early chance confrontations between miners and native peoples still in the gold country after the Mission and Rancho eras. This was overt, proactive, state-sponsored extermination. This was ethic cleansing–genocide–by my state, my government.
*The whole last 1/3rd of this essay was printed as something of a mistake! My submitted version ended with the line, “I am learning to forgive.” When I saw the published version it baffled me–that last 1/3rd sounded like my thoughts but were not intended to be part of this essay. After I inquired with the editor, it turned out that I had left scraps of paragraphs as “hidden” text (in a Microsoft Word document). Somehow she saw them unhidden and thought they were part of the essay, so tidied them up and included them.
Russell Yee 