One of the things I hated about graduate level college courses is the certainty of the professor in their knowledge. Their faith in their facts was their dogma that could not be broken, even with indisputable evidence to the contrary. When we research and become experts in a certain field, we do not like neophytes (beginners) espousing ideas contrary to our preconceived notions or orthodoxy. Academics do not like home-taught, parental-taught novices trying to tell them they are wrong and pointing out where they are wrong. I have sadly become that person when it comes to the history of the Chickamauga.
I see all of the non-sense and pablum on the internet trying to describe the Chickamauga. In reality almost all that is on the internet is white-washed and red-washed with none of it being accurate. I get frustrated when supposedly intellectual people are so full of their knowledge that they forget others are trying to learn as well. I have to step back and remember I too was a beginner and novice at one time with Chickamauga history.
Over the past few months I have had a few people ask me, “why do you focus so much on the past and the “so-called” genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Chickamauga people?”
I am having to rethink my responses to how I answered each of the people who asked this question. I should have first asked them a qualifying question back. Something like, “How much do you know about the history of the Chickamauga people?” Or maybe, “What facts do you know about how the Chickamauga people were treated?”
Instead of just plowing through a diatribe of facts, maybe I need to ask people what they actually mean when they ask the question. Maybe they want me to forgive and forget and just get along. Maybe they do not like having their nation compared to Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Milosevic’s Serbia, or Hitler’s Germany. Before I answer their question, I need to know what they are actually asking so that I can address what they really want to know.
The first person to ask was your typical 50-year-old with no history background and ultimately was more curious than anything else about why I use the phrase, "Descendants of the Survivors of Genocide and Victims of Continued Ethnic Cleansing."
I unloaded on him with both barrels of over 500,000 pages of academically verified research on Chickamauga history, quoting from the War Department Records, Presidential Papers, Congressional Records, and then I began to notice him losing interest in my response. I failed to answer his actual question, I answered the question I heard him ask, not the question he was actually asking. I stopped and asked if I had overloaded him with my response and he hit me right between the eyes with his response, “You never answered my question, you went off on a tangent” I failed this gentleman and I fail my Nation.
This type of event happened a couple more times before realized something about myself when answering questions, I was not listening, instead I was planning an answer. If I had listened, I would have won over new friends, but instead, I created animosity when none was necessary.
I became that college professor with hundred of books on my shelf who was incapable of answering a basic question about my area of expertise. I began answering in doctoral level information when I should have been answering in kindergarten level.
If I had the chance to go back and answer each of those persons differently, I would have. I would have asked them, “What do you really want to know?”
I have to remember to teach everyone like I taught my 7th grade history students. One small bite at a time and then link them together to make two or three bits of knowledge of history fit together and make all of them understandable together.
I became what I hated the most, arrogant, intellectually superior, pompous, pius, and mean. I have stopped and reminded myself of what I am doing and why I am doing it.
I love our history, I love our people and I cannot demonstrate that to others unless I love them enough to listen to their questions.
(C) This document was produced at the request of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on July 18, 2019, to document the History, Anthropology, Culture, Religion, and Archaeology of The Chickamauga Nation.