‘First: Stop doing the harm.’

October 17, 2023

So much has happened since I interviewed Rebecca Clarren about her new book. We spoke almost a month ago, although the conversation aired last Friday. But I’m finding solace in revisiting much of what we talked about, including reconciliation, which I write about below.

To start: At the turn of the 20th century, Clarren’s ancestors fled antisemitism in Russia to start new lives in America, where they became homesteaders on lands the U.S. government stole from the Lakota people. In The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance, Clarren offers an intimate look at how her family benefitted from that stolen land, and she explores acts of reconciliation and repatriation that are embedded in family and culture.

The second chapter in her book is titled “The Holocaust at Home.” During our interview, I asked her to talk about her deliberate use of that word, as a Jewish writer. She told me: “I thought I knew a lot about the Holocaust, and yet it wasn’t until a Lakota elder, Doug White Bull, told me, ‘You know, your family, the Jews, they survived a Holocaust. It was horrible, but we had a Holocaust here and it lasted for 400 years, and no one ever talks about it.’”

As Clarren explained: “Hitler and his legal team based many of their policies on how to restrict rights from Jewish people based on the way America was taking rights from Native people and Black people in this country… So yes, I use that word very intentionally because that is the way that many Lakota elders who I spoke with talk about it. …Children were murdered, people were starved intentionally, to be controlled by the federal government. And they were restricted onto reservations which Hitler himself used as a premise for concentration camps.”

In our conversation, Clarren also described what she has learned about the importance of embedding reconciliation and reparation in your own culture.

As she writes in The Cost of Free Land: “…from their earliest written texts, Jewish scholars have insisted we have a moral obligation to pursue justice, to repair the world, to take responsibility for our part. I’ve returned, repeatedly, to the famous philosopher Maimonides’ laws of repentance, and his time-tested strategy for making things right. Here is a modern break-down of his six steps:

First: Stop doing the harm. Second: Confess as specifically as possible what harm you have caused and ideally, say this truth out loud in public. Third: Begin the work of transforming yourself from a person capable of causing such harm to one who isn’t. (In ancient days, people changed their names. Today, it might mean therapy.) Fourth: Make financial restitution that reflects the size of the harm. Fifth: Apologize in a way that doesn’t necessarily anticipate being forgiven but that makes clear to the victim that you have heard them, and that you understand how you have caused them pain. Finally: When you face the opportunity to cause the same sort of harm, make different choices.”

If you missed our conversation last week, you can watch it online.

After wrapping up that conversation, Clarren stuck around to talk with me about the challenges, and rewards, of writing about family history. She also gives a shout out to former High Country News editor Betsy Marston, who taught generations of reporters that “rewriting is writing,” and recalled advice from the late Charles Bowden.

She also talked about the layers of support she received from sources and editors and from across her community and family and shares how people can do research about their own families, and work on reconciliation and reparation efforts already underway. Those resources are in her book and on her website. You can also read an essay of hers on Literary Hub, “Insomnia, Imposter Syndrome, and All the Ways I Learned to Write My Book.”

Although I appreciate having a job in public television, the thing I love most is writing (*cough* which is why I have this weekly newsletter in addition to the broadcast series), and I loved asking Clarren some nerdy questions. It’s something I do whenever writers are on the show. In case you like those sorts of conversations, too, here are a few from the past:

Michelle Otero, Writing as healing

Michelle Otero, Lightening the load for future generations

Author William deBuys on the writing process

NM author William deBuys on Earth Care – and hope

Author Sam Quinones On the drug epidemic in the Southwest

Author Sam Quinones on how ill-equipped our brains are for today’s society

Author Sam Quinones on his writing process

And, a few things to add to your list this week:

• “Climate change is narrowing and shifting prescribed fire windows in western United States” (Nature Communications)

• “‘So many ways hydrogen can go wrong’: Hub announcements viewed with caution” (Robert Zullo via Source NM)

• “Colonias organize to fund major water projects” (Megan Myscofski, KUNM)

• “They Carry Us With Them: The Great Tree Migration” (Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder and Jeremy Seifert, Emergence Magazine)