It was about this time of year fifty-one years ago. With some other tourists and some native Americans, we gathered around a campfire on the rim of the Grand Canyon to see the drama of the place at sunset.
Spontaneously (or maybe paid by the tourist board!) the native Americans began to sing:
‘This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island,
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream Waters
This land was made for you and me’.
We still remember our reactions in that dramatic place – wow! We were beginning to understand what American national pride must feel like. But there was something wrong. These native Americans had had ‘their’ country taken away from them. Surely they should be singing ‘This land is your land, this land was my land’. Hearing only this week about the 1619 project’s attempts to reframe the origin story of the US reminded us again of varying senses of ownership of one’s country!
The conflict in the Middle East, is all about The Land which in Hebrew history is one of the main characters. Extremists there believe, ‘This Land is my land’. And as the Ukrainian military moved across the Russian border here was more evidence of reminding an enemy what it is to be occupied, to have strangers on what you consider to be your territory – territory that belongs to you and your people.
In our own country we have seen in our media the members of a white underclass feeling ignored and dispossessed, and becoming aggressive. The targets of their aggression, especially Muslims but anyone who does not look Anglo-Saxon, now feel threatened in a place which they had come to call home. The raw accusation is really that they are not British as we are British. And this in spite of the fact that the fact that they have been born here, that without them much of the healthcare system, transport infrastructure and many other services would collapse. But...‘Give us our country back’, the white men and their racist and anarchist allies say.
It's all about territory. About ownership. About belonging. And, of course, about feeling safe.
‘This land was made for you and me’ is a noble but dangerous sentiment. If we are honest, it’s not just the extremist white rioters who have feelings of entitlement. Many of us have a trace of territorialism about ‘our’ property, ‘our’ street, ‘our’ friendship group, ‘our’ family. Of course, I believe in sharing – but not if I cannot get a doctor’s appointment. Not if I or my family cannot get a roof over our heads – and certainly not if I have to forego what is ‘rightfully’ mine!
We all have our ‘territories’ – places where we feel safe and comfortable. Not a wrong instinct in itself. But in a world of such inequalities, perhaps we could all do with a fresh examination of our ‘territories’ both geographical and racial, emotional and social (and, we might add, theological!!). It doesn’t hurt any of us to ask what we might do to share!
American folk singer, Woody Guthrie, wrote ‘This Land’ as a protest against Irving Berlin’s song, ‘God bless America’ which suggested somehow that America had a special place in the affections of God.
Here is a usually unpublished variant of the original song:
Well, one bright Sunday morning in the shadow of the steeple By the relief line I saw my people As they stood there whistlin', they stood there hungry Don't they know that this land was made for you and me?
In 2024 Guthrie is still a prophetic voice.
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