An American with celebration malaise | Ammi Midstokke

A celebration this week is feeling a little tone deaf.

Having lived in many places on this globe, I have been in a position to be grateful for the nation in which I was born, and the freedoms bestowed upon me by that good fortune. Those freedoms, such as reproductive rights, speech and expression, and accessibility, have shaped my longstanding belief that our adolescent nation – like many youth – is still learning, but headed in the right direction.

Yet so many others who also live in our country are devastated in myriad ways and will have little cause to light fireworks. Perhaps the depression of the oppressed, the disenfranchised, the disempowered, and the marginalized will at least reduce the wildfire risk. Or maybe they can’t afford fireworks because they need to go to the doctor. Or maybe they are busy preparing to move to a state where their children can still participate in the school sports their tax dollars fund.

I would like to celebrate the dream of the birth of this country: a place that hoped to protect freedom, first and foremost. Sure, it only took us another 89 years to include everyone in that intention, at least formally. Then it took us 55 more years to allow women to have a say in the process. Four years after that, we decided the Natives from which we pilfered these lands could also be citizens of it, but it took another 42 years for all of them to be able to vote. In the meantime, we worked hard to assimilate them, eradicate their language, and criminalize their religion.

I would like to celebrate the 53rd birthday of the landmark decision to give women personal autonomy over their reproductive freedom, but instead I mourn the fourth anniversary of its revocation. I would like to celebrate the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of 1972 forbidding sex discrimination in federally funded programs, and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978. Then of course, we can sing Happy Birthday to the Women’s Business Ownership Act of 1988, when we were allowed to have businesses without male co-signers, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, its impacts wide-reaching for anyone who ever stumbled up or down a curb, and beyond.

Perhaps I am struggling to find patriotic joy in the Supreme Court’s consistent rulings rolling back environmental protections, further indicating that we European settlers have failed to prove ourselves as good stewards of the land we’ve stolen. Maybe I’m confused about the impotence of land acknowledgments. Maybe I have a hard time celebrating a country that has been responsible for slave atrocities, systemic racism, and now an administration-led erasure of the powerful and tragic histories that shaped generations, and still do.

It could be that I struggle to reconcile the decorations, primarily made in China with plastics and stuff in our landfills, that we’re using to show our appreciation for that hard won independence.

In the very least, this holiday feels particularly fraught and complicated.

As always, it is nature and the people who restore my hope. We have done, and are capable of, incredible good. I see the purpose in celebrating the communities and groups that make up our Fourth of July parades, even as I note how some cannot or do not participate. Our celebration of independence signifies something else to many.

Still, I remain hopeful we can someday be a country in which everyone is free and equal. I also remain hopeful that we can mature to assess the limitations of our forefathers: their language and prophetic capabilities, their inability to conceive of a world in which natural resources were limited or assault rifles used on school children, the impossibility of imagining just how vibrant and diverse we would become, and how precious that would make us as a nation.

In the very least, we can celebrate that we are able, if we choose, to manifest those self-evident rights because of our independence. Then life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness could truly be accessible to all.

Ammi Midstokke can be reached at ammim@spokesman.com.