Ep. 440 Daniel Hawk - Reckoning with America's Past and Imagining a Better Future

America turns 250 this year, and we'll tell the old story again. But where does it actually start? Daniel Hawk traces our founding back past 1776 to the Doctrine of Discovery that gave Christian powers the right to seize "unclaimed" land, and to a reading of Genesis that turned wilderness into property and the people already here into obstacles. We talk about the myth of innocence: the belief that we are fundamentally good, that the brutal parts didn't happen or didn't count. It let us justify almost anything, and it left violence in our bones. We talk about how Scripture was used to take land and how it reads differently from underneath empire, about Canada and South Africa beginning to face their histories, and about what real repair asks of us - slow, relational, measured in generations. As we mark 250 years, this is an invitation to be honest about the first half of the story before we write the next.

L. Daniel Hawk (PhD, Emory University) is professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Ashland Theological Seminary in Ashland, Ohio. Aspects of his work on biblical narrative take a postcolonial turn in books such as Joshua in 3-D: A Commentary on Biblical Conquest and Manifest Destiny and as coeditor of Evangelical Postcolonial Conversations.

Daniel's Book:

Undoing Manifest Destiny

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Transcript

Daniel Hawk: 0:00

That the indigenous people are impeding or resisting the implementation of God's mandate to order the land, and you see this then in many ways threaded all the way through, particularly the 19th century, that the indigenous people have to go because they are impeding a progress, they are impeding the expanse, the expansion of God's ordained nation, and they're insisting on not being civilized and assimilated into the higher civilization of white settler America, they

Joshua Johnson: 0:51

Hello, and welcome to the Shifting Culture Podcast, in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host Joshua Johnson. Now, this year America turns 250 There will be parades, fireworks, the old story told again. It starts before 1776 though. It starts with a doctrine that gave Christian powers the right to claim any land not already held by other Christians. It starts with colonists who read Genesis and decided wilderness was theirs to order, that fences made land into property, and that the people already here were in the way. Manifest Destiny gave it a name. God had a plan, and the plan looked like us. Daniel Hawke wrote, "Undoing Manifest Destiny. He calls the engine of all of this, a myth of innocence, the belief that we are good, that the brutal parts didn't really happen or didn't really count. It let us justify almost anything. The violence got into our bones. In this conversation, we talk about how the Bible was used to take land and how it reads differently from underneath empire. We talk about Canada and South Africa, who have at least begun to face their histories, and we talk about repair, slow relational generations long. America is 250 years old. What would it take to be honest about the first half before we write the next 250 years? There is a path forward. We can heal this nation, but it starts with reckoning with our past, knowing where we came from, and having a better imagination for where we could go next. So, join us. Here is my conversation with Daniel Hawk. Daniel, welcome to Shifting Culture. Excited to have you on. Thanks for joining me.

Daniel Hawk: 2:45

Thank you. I appreciate your interest in the book.

Joshua Johnson: 2:48

Well, we're going to undo Manifest Destiny today. We're going to do it. It's going to be done after this conversation. So, since we're talking about your book on doing Manifest Destiny, can you just intro what is manifest destiny? What happens? What are we starting to talk about?

Daniel Hawk: 3:06

So, manifest destiny actually technically was a term coined in the 1840s as the United States was in full-blown expansionist mode, and manifest destiny communicates this idea that the United States has a unique identity, unique destiny. You could conceive this in religious terms. God has planted this nation in this place, and God has a, has a purpose for it. You could go in a secular way and say, just in terms of being the apex of human development and history, the United States is unique, and that uniqueness, that distinctiveness is manifest in the way that American colonists continue to push across the continent in the way that they've created an extraordinary high civilization. The United States, in short, has a destiny, so it's an appeal to transcendence spoken generally. You can see the pieces of that that just go into even today determining national identity, so it's a myth, and it's a myth that is used as a template for justifying and supporting America's sense of self and mission.

Joshua Johnson: 4:35

What do you think that then transcendent exceptionalism does to the human soul, when we think that we are unique, as opposed to other nations, other people groups, and others around the world.

Daniel Hawk: 4:51

Yeah, well, the idea that a nation or an ethnic group is distinctive is not really that unusual, in a certain sense, every every group or nation. Feels like they have some unique and distinct developments. What it does to the American soul, though, is that this, this extraordinary appeal to transcendence, and basically what that does is it provides the narrative. There's a narrative, a myth of innocence that clothes the colonial project with this legitimacy and legitimization, so whether you're saying you know we are growing and developing because God is with us and God has a plan, or whether you're saying we are the apex of human civilization and we're planting a unique nation here, it it warps the perspective, because we can justify anything. Then, if God is with us, what we need to do, though, is talk about what we're doing in ways that justify and ennoble us, rather than cast negative aspersions upon our national character.

Joshua Johnson: 6:01

So, America started as a settler colonial project. It seems like this is who Americans are in their bones, right? This part of their, their founding, and going.. you begin with, with a statue in your book, a statue of the Indian made of Fort Ball. It looks like there's honor in that statue, but it actually marks disappearance. It marks that there isn't a space for these, these people. When did you realize that what felt like respect to give a statue there was actually a form of erasure, and maybe some myth making. The statue of the Indian maid is of an anonymous Seneca woman, and she strikes a pose, and she has raiment that makes her look more like

Daniel Hawk: 7:01

a Roman or a Greek statue than that of an indigenous woman, so in a sense she represents not the people that were removed but the land as it has been remade in the image of the settlers who basically now call her people's homeland their people's homeland. When did I realize? Well, it was actually when I was working through Joshua, and you'll remember in Joshua that there's a big pep talk in chapter one, God says go get them, be with you know, just be very careful to observe all the commandments, and there are some language there that that indicate that God is talking about the book of Deuteronomy, and of course the book of Deuteronomy has a very pronounced statement about what you're supposed to do with the indigenous people of the land, you wipe them out, so then the first thing that those Israelite spies do is they, when they, they get to Jericho to spy out the land. They go right to the red light district, and they meet an indigenous woman who, as the story moves forward, takes on the attributes of Israel. She is the only one in the story that confesses Israel's God, confesses Israel, the power and the works of Israel's God, so all that to say there's something going on in the biblical narrative right at the beginning that wants to shape indigenous people into the image of those who have come to dispossess them, and when I realized that, that this Bible was doing that, and looked at the Indian made, I saw Rahab, and it was just.. it's astonishing. I mean, so I talk about that in the book, that a part of what sustains this narrative are certain constructions of indigenous people that in themselves again justify why white European Christian settlers are here and they're not.

Joshua Johnson: 9:10

As you were looking at the story of Joshua, you were looking at Rahab, you've seen the parallels between indigenous peoples and that story there. There's also stories that that people have been using the Bible to justify things to move into different lands to possess different lands, because they're using the Bible. So you have people that are looking at the creation mandate and saying that all right, it's it's ours. We see people that actually don't believe in this creator god, so that the land can be ours, and that goes into the doctrine of discovery. Can you just start to share how people started to read the Bible to get to the place where possessing of foreign land.

Daniel Hawk: 10:00

Lands and other lands is not only good but also necessary. I can begin with the observation that in the case of the United States, which is deep, whose identity is deeply imbued with biblical metaphors. One of the things that surprised me in the process of writing this book was that virtually there is virtually no public literature that looks to Joshua to justify the kinds of massacres and and dispossessions and removals that we see, people, people avoided the book of Joshua, I mean, there are lots of Exodus metaphors in the founding generation and generations that follow, but nobody's looking at Joshua, and so it's, it's almost a way of, I think, having a sense that this is really a brutal narrative, and people have always, Joshua, people have always had problems with it, and maybe too brutal, and it's a little too close to comfort, so we're just not going to say anything about that. That's the first piece. So, how did we get here biblically? Well, there's theology, and then there's Bible, so the theology, the first justification was for white settler seizure and dispossession of peoples from this, this particular land that we call the United States, was promulgated in a body of international law called the Doctrine of Discovery, which began with popes who, acting as Christ's representative on earth, told Catholic powers in the, in the 15th century that they had the right, and in fact, because they were extending Christendom, they had the right, and this is the Pope, who's speaking as God's representative, they had to write to take any non-Christian land that was not possessed by another colonial power that became a significant foundation, and it even found its way into federal Indian law here in the United States. This is in the, in the, begins in the early, early 15th century, 100 years later, we've got people coming to these shores in the 1600s pilgrims in New England, the Puritans, the people in Jamestown, and they just assume, I mean, because it's gotten to the point where any Christian power who is Christian, that's the belief, can seize, has a right to seize land in the name of or for the sake of extending Christendom, so the people who came here absolutely nobody questioned that they had the right to be here, but they still needed, in a sense, to justify the expansionist modes and some of the really, I'll just say atrocious things they did, and where they went then was to the mandate that God, the Creator God, gives humanity in Genesis chapter one, which is to be fruitful and multiply and take dominion, so for European colonists taking dominion meant creating an ordered space out of a wilderness, so wilderness was chaotic, it was disordered, there were people there who did not worship the Christian god, so they were under the control of Satan. So this verse became very important. First of all, it basically said we're here to order the land, and ordering the land is what God wants, and those people who are already here need to go, because they're not taking care of the land. And the second piece is that gets developed in some really interesting ways, is that the creation mandate, as interpreted by these English colonists, really talked about how the land was to be seen as private property, so so you transform wilderness into real estate, you put fences around it, you sell it, becomes property, and then you develop it, because that's what God wants you to do, and that becomes then the basis for the whole economic system. Land becomes property that generates wealth, so that all gets gets in place in the 1600s and it's it's run in full tail by by the 18th century

Joshua Johnson: 14:43

as people come into this land that's now the United States, they look and the indigenous people that were on the on the land, you point out that they weren't thinking that they actually settled it because they moved to different. Areas depending on the seasons. How does that then shape what happens in America?

Daniel Hawk: 15:08

Yeah, it's another instance of, in a sense, justifying removal and erasure. The early Puritans that talk about the indigenous people as being under the domination of Satan. The difference, particularly that the Puritans saw in what they had come to do and what indigenous people were coming to do, is that the indigenous people didn't own land. I mean, so it was property, so they, they shifted with the seasons, they were agricultural, matter of fact, employed a mode of agriculture that was more beneficial to the environment than European plow agriculture, but they didn't own, and so you need ownership in order to have an ordered society, so the Puritans basically transform New England into a better version of England itself without the mess, and you actually see people writing this that the indigenous people are not fulfilling the mandate that God gives to all humanity, and we white settlers are therefore they need to go, we need to stay.

Joshua Johnson: 16:35

So, how then, if that mindset and the theology and what is happening as they're they're viewing the world in a certain way. How does that lead to violence that is necessary for them? And they say it's just a tool to use as they enter into the land. Why does violence become necessary and all almost a mandate, it

Daniel Hawk: 17:02

does, in a way, become a mandate, and it's, it's only a couple of years since the founding of Plymouth that the Pilgrims themselves are making preemptive strikes against the Massachusetts tribe in the area, the idea is that the indigenous people are impeding or resisting the implementation of God's mandate to order the land, and you see this then in many ways threaded all the way through, particularly the 19th century, that the indigenous people have to go because they are impeding a progress, they are impeding the expanse, the expansion of God's ordained nation, and they're insisting on not being civilized and assimilated into the higher civilization of white settler America, so if the people are resisting what God is doing, and they continue to resist. Sooner or later, you gotta, you gotta force them off. That mentality, I would suggest, really is still with us, just in terms of, you know, the thinking of our own nation about who gets to live on the land and under what terms, and this idea of dominion is really important. So people who resist dominion, any means is necessary. We'll try peaceful means first, but when they resist, they're impeding the advance of civilization, or the impeding what God is doing, and so they're gone. You have to wonder how much of that violence kind of gets baked in to the way we Americans think, and and here in the 21st century we've got a this rabid gun culture, and really a very violent nation in many ways,

Joshua Johnson: 19:00

much more violent than many other so-called civilized or developed nations. Yeah, we have violence in our bones, like this is who we are, as we're violent people. It's something I would love to undo in this country. We don't need the amount of violence that is perpetrated on people on a daily basis in this country, so one of the things that you talk about is that we need to acknowledge first, so we have to truth tell, we have to name what has happened, we have to name where we are, what we've inherited, and what's in us still before we could do any sort of repair or any sort of moving forward. Why do you think that this isn't really about just guilt and shame of people, but it is about acknowledgement, and how does acknowledgement become a spiritual act for us? Well, blame and shame. It

Daniel Hawk: 20:01

only turns us inward, it's, it's not useful. We need to be outwardly focused, from my perspective, in order to mend and repair relationships, to undertake the ministry of reconciliation in our time, to do that, that important work, so I'm not reluctant to talk about this in the language of sin. So, we've, we've got some rather difficult and intense sins at the founding of our nation, which implemented a system, and it created a script that we just keep replaying over and over and over again until we are a we white settler folks are a damage to ourselves and to others. So I would suggest sin works in corporate entities in the same way it works with individuals. I mean, if you don't acknowledge sin, if you repress sin, it just doesn't go away on its own, it doesn't fade away, it continues to warp the subject more intensively. So, the first act of healing I would suggest is acknowledging we have a problem, and here is the problem, and again, we have crafted such a powerful myth of innocence that it really is baked, also baked into our bones, that we aren't violent, we don't do brutal things, we really didn't do a lot of the stuff that leaks through the narrative every now and then, so we silence, we silence every voice that doesn't valorize the white settler narrative, and that's what we're doing right now, in a way. We've got to, as you know, we've got a, we've got a contest about whose voices count in America's history, and history and identity are inextricably combined. History is the way that a group talks about who it is, what it values, what its identity is, and who matters, and so when you have a narrative, a national narrative that is just about white settler Christians and silences other voices, you're saying something about who matters and who should have a part in taking dominion and who should, who really has a part in this, and who is an impediment to what God is doing?

Joshua Johnson: 24:10

What do you think that people fear if they let go of the myth of innocence?

Daniel Hawk: 24:15

In a certain sense, a loss of identity and power, because that myth of innocence justifies and masks a colonial system of inequality, it begins to prod again, because history and identity are so.. once we prod at the narrative, we're prodding the system. When we're challenging the narrative, we're challenging the system that it supports, and saying this isn't right. There is a significant gap between our national aspirations and ideals, and how we did that out and still continue to act that out in with reference to non-white people and citizens. So, I think at the core of it, it's a resistance to the loss of power. It doesn't surprise me that this myth of innocence comes to the surface. Now we really were really want to say no, no, no. Now you need to put those, you know, Confederate general statues back up. You need to be, you know, you need to just silence all other voices from your classroom discussions and hold on to this patriotic narrative, because if that gets unmasked, then we have to deal with the fact that we're living in a system that was established by white Christian settlers for the benefit of white Christian settlers, and that's just gonna, that's just too much change. And what's wrong with the way we're living right now? Yeah, so people

Joshua Johnson: 25:53

resisting, that's right. We walk then into the place of right now, what's wrong with the way that we're living right now, if we're actually then looking at the system, cracking the system, and creating something new. My question here is that have countries lived through that, other nation states have they lived through something where we say, oh, the founding and like the national story, the patriotic story that we're sharing is not actually helping, and it's actually dehumanizing a lot of the people that are here in this land together as our country. Is there a way that countries. I've actually shifted and changed and broken some of their systems and repaired it and moved forward. The

Daniel Hawk: 26:46

unique part here, I go, here, the unique part about the United States is that we, we just really do, I mean, in our, you know, in our many of our practices, we do give lip service to the idea that we have that a multicultural nation that is home to all peoples and languages and tongue, that's who we are, and so that sense is different than when you have, I think, probably in many cases nations where that isn't the case, but I do think when I think of repair, and I think about repair for the kind of colonial project that advances all of these ideals, I think of Canada, and I think of South Africa, who have basically acknowledged we have a problem, and it's virulent, it's toxic, it's damaging. We've got to find a way to begin to

Joshua Johnson: 27:39

write a script together that includes all people, so Canada, in particular, has done some really, really important things. They're a long way off, and I'm sure a lot of them would, but they're a lot farther along the continuum than we are in terms of giving voice, which is really important, giving voice and giving visibility to their First Nations, because in the United States we have a lot of energy invested in keeping our indigenous populations invisible and silent. We have places like Canada, South Africa, Australia spent doing some of this, this right of moving, moving us into a new place that actually showing us another way is possible in a way where it actually then humanizes people that are here and gives dignity and respect and back into the imago day of like we're all created in God's image this is all who we are I think this is really important for for us to not only acknowledge I think that's one of the things that's really difficult for a lot of people is like hey this this generation that's living right now we didn't perpetrate that so generally what are some some good steps for us to be able to to read something together in a way that produces maybe some of the underlying values of God and who He really is, and not just reading ourselves into the narrative to give us permission to do whatever we want. One

Daniel Hawk: 29:19

of the scholars that I actually reference, with I think, says something really important, is is the late Palestinian American critic Edward Said, who basically I'm simplifying, made the point among many that when you know colonizing peoples get together when Americans get together to read, it's an argument about who, who's right, who has the right interpretation, and we just kind of duke it out, and that's what we do in the church. I mean, and so I'm right, you're wrong, and my exegesis is valid, and yours is flawed. I mean, it's just what we do. So he talks about creating spaces where all voices can be heard, so he would say that, for example, gathering together for Bible study, and I'm probably stretching this a little bit, but my idea from him is that we could create these, just create spaces where you know we have a text or we have a topic, and we, we recognize that not deciding who's right is not the focus. What the focus is is building relationship by listening and honoring and hearing and recognizing that, like kind of like a jazz ensemble, I mean, we're riffing on on a particular kind of melodic line, but everybody, everybody has a voice, everybody kind of gets in there and has their say, and and the whole of it is a really wonderful, rich experience. So another thing that's really important is just to learn, just to say, just because again, one of the things that I, I've discovered when I go out speaking, I mean, almost, almost always on this, somebody will say, I had no idea, or why didn't they teach this in school, and I think I think we've got a lot of people, and you know, in the church and in the nation who are ready to say we need to find a different way of talking to each other, and we white settler folks have to recognize that we're really good at talking and not so good at listening. You know, so let's create a space.

Joshua Johnson: 31:42

I think creative spaces are important because we're, we're actually then listening, because we're in a place where it's a very much a polarized society that we live in. My camp is right, your camp is wrong because you're in a different camp, you're in a different tribe, so you're wrong, no matter what, right? And so there's no, no, actually discussion, listening. There are places, even the church is getting more polarized, where people are leaving one church to go to another one because their political views are similar, and so we need people want to be with people that believe the exact same thing as them all the time, and I think that's that's a difficult place to be in as a country when there is a plurality of people. You talk about how settlers and white colonial settlers is, they go today still need healing, and we say indigenous peoples still need healing. What do you think it means to start to heal together as we are starting to imagine a new way forward?

Daniel Hawk: 32:52

Yeah, well, first of all, I think we need to get disabuse us of our very American idea that we can fix this and we can fix it quickly and completely, we just got a

Joshua Johnson: 33:02

strong arm at pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. We can get it

Daniel Hawk: 33:07

done, you know. Somehow, yeah, we'll get this done. I think we have to begin to reorient our thinking really toward relationships, relationships over principles in a sense, in a certain sense, and as again undertaking the ministry of reconciliation in a way that not only do I listen to others but allow what they're saying to shape who I am. I think those kinds of measures are really, you know, important, so learn, learn the story, both locally and nationally. Think about how that imprint remains in our, you know, in our present day reality, in our present day locality, and make a point of listening to silenced voices, bring them into your sphere and begin to listen to them and realize the incredible contribution that this wonderful diversity that we call the human race really has gifts that can bless and encourage many people. I think it's just the basic thing is a change in orientation, and just focusing on relationships, and to realize we're in it for the long haul. A lot of indigenous Americans will talk about doing things with seven generations ahead in focus. They understand, I mean, this is not a quick fix. This is going to take a long time. So, are we in it for the long haul, or are we just in there to kind of assuage some, some sense of discomfort?

Joshua Johnson: 34:55

An indigenous worldview is very much relational. It is about our relationship with one another, it's our relationship with Creator. It's our relationship with creation and the lands. When there is a mentality of we have a manifest destiny, we have this mandate to be able to order creation instead of be in relation with creation and be in relation with others, how do we then create those spaces and open ourselves up to a way of thinking that some people believe isn't the right way of thinking? So, why should I listen?

Daniel Hawk: 35:41

And again, there we go, baked into our bones. I mean, development is like the key perspective still in what we do with the land. I mean, think of how much this is baked into our bones. We, we, we've elected a real estate developer, you know, into the into the president, so there's just.. there's that.. that way of thinking is just absolutely kind of dominating our perspective. So I think collegiate spaces are spaces where that happens, but I think the church really should be taking the lead and saying let's see what we can do to bring different people together, and, and not as a well, this is something we need to do because it's our Christian mandate, but something more, more deeply held. We see the benefit when. Recognize the dignity, and we've got a lot of things to work through. I mean, we Christians have, you know, in our, you know, in our promulgation of the gospel, in the one who we follow, who was himself an indigenous peasant in a land being colonized by a European empire. We have what we need. It's just a matter of whether, whether we've got the will, the boldness, the courage, the caring to really move forward.

Joshua Johnson: 37:12

We do a lot of reading of the Bible, putting ourselves in the position of indigenous peoples that were occupied by others, and we forget that for a lot of the people, United States, we're really the modern day Rome. Like, what does that do to somebody when they realize, oh, I've been reading the Bible from a perspective that I'm not actually in right now, I might need to see it from the other side.

Daniel Hawk: 37:43

One thing would be to recognize that empire is the most prevalent biblical theme that you don't know about. I mean, most of the Bible, all of the New Testament, and virtually all of the Old was written within contexts of imperial struggle and imperial imaginations, so beginning to think about, and this is the, this is the kind of uncomfortable piece, I mean, for the white settler folks, like, like myself, What does it mean to be a Christian citizen of an imperial power, and what does it mean to be one of, one of really one of the dominant population. So I think once you begin, once you begin to, to consider this prospect that empire is a prominent biblical theme, you begin to see the Bible as a counter or anti-imperial document, and that in itself, just, just asking different kinds of questions or taking different kinds of tax can open up significantly. I mean, why, for example, in the, in the back, the theological backstory, Genesis one through 11 for the Bible, for Abraham's calling. Why do we begin with creation? What God makes, and the last episode, the last narrative episode, right before we talk, we read about Abram is a reference to Babylon, which aspires to be up up there high and exalted and universal, and all of that, which becomes a symbol of the world that human beings make in defiance of the creator's true mandate. So, yeah, I think this idea of empire is, and just beginning to read the Bible. I mean, one of the things I see in my classes is you don't need to really give a lot of instruction, you just need to say take, let's take a look, the Bible with these questions in context in mind, and see where the conversation takes us.

Joshua Johnson: 41:04

I think we have now an imperial force, we have empire, we're still trying to have a country that there is a specific group of people that wants to have power and control, and to say this is ours and this is our destiny. We're talking about some, some spaces of healing, some creating spaces that colleges and churches can have these conversations. How does a new way of thinking and shaping enter into not just everyday conversations in our communities on the small level. How does it get more national? How do we start to see a new national worldview take shape?

Daniel Hawk: 41:56

To almost state the obvious, it really begins with people who are moved and energized in a sense, have a provoked by a sort of Christian outrage and acknowledgement. It takes some courage, it takes some intentionality. Once people in localized spaces begin to talk and think differently, I, you know, it may be that that can become infectious, and it may be able to carry, maybe able to generate its own momentum, but I think you start locally, but then you also, on the other hand, for example, just decide that you're going to stand with our indigenous people in their struggle to be seen and heard, and just begin to. Think nationally about the educate ourselves, not only in terms of the story, but in terms of how it's playing out now, and what we can do, even to raise our voices. That's the big thing, you know. We're just white, white settler folk are just wired to just be quiet about all of this stuff, so we're going to really need some considerable intentionality and energy to say this is important. This is the work of Christ. This is the work of peacemailing, making, and healing, and it needs to be front and center of the church's agenda and of our own commitments as as disciples of the crucified one.

Joshua Johnson: 43:22

What are a couple of steps that people can do, practical steps to be intentional about that.

Daniel Hawk: 43:28

Take the time to learn about the history of your own place. Who was there? What happened to them? I mean, that humanizes things in a way. I mean, so like, as in the Indian made of Fort Ball, I mean, why did we put an Indian statue there? I mean, why was it at the first governor of some other kind of European? Why Indians? Why? What is it that reaches down deep in White Settler America, and says this is who we are. So, I think it's what you can do is learn, and that's the first piece. There are a lot of primary materials online that you can get into if you don't have access. I mean, I was surprised to find county histories in Archive dot, I think it's dark, i.org or whatever. And then really begin to partner with others. I think there's a.. I really have been helped by Elaine Ends and Chad Myers, Healing Haunted History, who histories who take a really.. here's, here's, here's one way to do this, here's one way to do the work that we settler folk need to do, and find resources for moving forward in conversation with our indigenous neighbors.

Joshua Johnson: 44:52

So, what hope do you have for your readers of Undoing Manifest Destiny? What do you hope that this book does?

Daniel Hawk: 44:59

I hope again it energizes people, it educates, it causes it provokes readers to say I never knew this. Now what do I do with it? Do I just let it slide, or is this something that that is is pulling me forward into this this ministry of reconciliation? That's kind of a key, I think.

Joshua Johnson: 45:23

So, as they, they're energized. One of the things that really helps people, I think, with even in the very beginning, what is the story of the statue? Stories help people and energize people. And you do a lot of great work and tell a lot of great stories in your book on doing Manifest Destiny.

Daniel Hawk: 45:41

What was one story that stood out to you that that impacted you in the way that you were thinking? Each of the chapters of my book begins in Ohio, and which is where I live right now, as a way of saying what you're seeing here in Ohio is, is I'm talking about not because it's distinctive, but because it's typical. You've got the same kinds of things that are going on, and, and one of the the aspects of Ohio history that has really deeply impacted me was the massacre of Christian Indians at Gnod and Hutton in Ohio, where Pennsylvania militia wiped out peaceful, neutral monopoly Christians during the Revolutionary War, because they were angry, they were angry, and they wanted somebody, and it's, it's, it's just an incredible, heartbreaking, remarkable story of Christians who basically said when the militia gathered them all together, kind of caught them out while they were trying to get grain, empty grain bins, and take it back to where they had been removed by the British, and the militia got them, took whatever weapons they had for hunting and put them into two two houses, two communal houses, and told them they were, they were going to be executed in the morning, or they were going to be executed, and they asked if, if that could happen in the morning, so that they could present, they could prepare their souls, and they spent the entire night praying and singing, and then in the morning the militia took them out in pairs into another house and used wooden mallets to bash their skulls in. Yeah, 96 people, at the largest group of which were children. It, we're children, for God's sake. I mean, I will say this, so this.. I mean, yeah, it impacts me because it is so.. it is so heartbreaking. And this book, that's why this book was really hard to write, and it's going to be for a lot of people really hard to read, because the stories are just so heartbreaking, and then you say, and, and these were, you know, these are the people who settled the United States, I mean, frontier violence was responsible for more violence and death of indigenous people than military campaigns. I mean, it's just so that that that is one that has.. I've been to Ghana and Hutton a number of times. They've got part of it, they've got a few buildings reconstructed, but it's anyway that I'm just riffing on the details of it, but it's wow, that, that, that is one, not only by virtue of the story, but also the fact that I've, I've been there a number of times just to walk the site and get a sense of it, that I mean, that one, that one hurts.

Joshua Johnson: 49:01

Yeah, heartbreaking, heartbreaking that humans have the capacity to do that to other humans. It's just heartbreaking. And then

Daniel Hawk: 49:14

to spin

Joshua Johnson: 49:15

it, horrific

Daniel Hawk: 49:16

as a battle rather than,

Joshua Johnson: 49:18

yeah,

Daniel Hawk: 49:19

a, you know, massacre, which is a common settler

Joshua Johnson: 49:23

cat. Yeah. Yes, Daniel, I have a couple of quick questions here at the end for you. One, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give?

Daniel Hawk: 49:34

I would say understand that you, you carry with you a certain set of values and perspectives that you, that have enabled you by 21 fellows, by 21 self, who was a white settler Christian. It takes some time, and to go into, into different non-white spaces, just experience, you know, the beauty of other cultures, other than your own, and you know this has been a long journey for me. I was in that white settler mode for a long time, and I just didn't question anything, but it was, it was going into being invited into it, into different spaces that just really began to change me fundamentally. Anything you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend? Right now, I've actually teaching a doctoral level class on advanced hermeneutics, so I'm getting myself a lot of what I'm reading is, is, is things that I can use, you know, for that class, and it's amazing. There are a lot of really, really excellent books out there, in terms of opening, opening oneself up. You need a text or something to say, okay, here's, you know, here are some other, here are some other different perspectives on on how to read, so yeah, I'm kind of in a geek mode right now. I'm reading all this theoretical stuff, so I could, you know, I just, I enjoy just kind of rolling with whatever the class wants to go, and that just gets me into reading different stuff. So, anyway,

Joshua Johnson: 51:21

well, I'm doing Manifest Destiny. Will be available anywhere books are sold. Daniel, how can people connect with you? What you're doing, or is there anywhere you'd like to point people to? The best way of reaching me, permanent personally, is just by my university email, D Hawk as@ashland.edu@ashland.edu perfect. Well, Daniel, thank you for this conversation to walk us through how we got here in America. How Manifest Destiny actually really shapes the way that we function in America, the violence that we have perpetrated on peoples that were here and the indigenous peoples, and how there can be some steps to after we acknowledge, we say this is the truth, this is what happened, this is what's in our bones, this is our part of our DNA that we need to shift and change, that there is possibility for repair and healing and moving forward together and so that we could actually see things from other perspectives and we can move forward in a way that brings dignity and love and respect into all people and not just a select few, so thank you. It was a fantastic conversation. Really enjoyed it.

Daniel Hawk: 52:41

Well, thank you. I just want to say I'm so encouraged that by podcasts like this, I mean, this is another way of just kind of figuring out what, where to go and what to do. So, thank you for the invitation, and for your commitment to, you know, generating conversation. It's been a pleasure,

Unknown: 53:18

I.