For Sooner Scotty

I used to have a regular reader/commenter who blogged under the name Sooner Scotty. He was Native American and, understandably, took some offense at Thanksgiving celebrations and Oklahoma Land Run commemorations. I have Native American ancestry myself, but my great or even great-great grandmother opted not to put her name on tribal roles, to marry a white man, and to blend in as much as possible with white America-in effect denying that heritage to her future generations. Something that still bothers my grandmother and great-aunts. As a result of not knowing my heritage, I suspect that I am not always as sensitive as maybe I should be to the hurt that celebrating those events can cause. To me, Thanksgiving is a nice time for good food and a family gathering that happily lacks the annoying commercialism of Christmas. Because I work at a Land Run property museum, we participate in an annual Land Run re-enactment. I won't lie, it's a lot of fun each year. However, we do have a daily Native American speaker who gives that perspective to the kids in a 20 minute talk/demostration (depends on who gives it) at the end of each day's activities. Today, as one of them was speaking, I wished I could tape his talk and put it on YouTube so that Scott could see it and know that we did present both sides of the story. (Though he no longer blogs, and it's been ages since he has commented here.) BUT, I don't have a cool video camera that can do that and, unless you enjoy shaky videos, it's just as well that none of you have to watch it. However, I did a little digging on YouTube and I did find one of my favorite commentaries on the subject after all. (Sorry about the subtitles):



I had no idea Christine Baranski was in this movie!