The Haines Community Marching Band was all set to parade down Main Street on Independence Day when someone noticed rebellion in the drum section.
We were scheduled to play an arrangement of “Yankee Doodle,” but the drummers hadn’t stuck their feathers in their caps and called it macaroni. In fact, their feathers weren’t anywhere near their caps. They were instead taped to their drums, in clear defiance of our stated intent to march with feathered caps.
Our marching band is a modest affair. As there are no uniforms, we do our best to dress uniformly, using whatever costumes are cheap, handy and vaguely match our music. One year it was Hawaiian shirts and sunglasses; another year, homemade capes. This year it was caps with feathers. The idea is to look like a single group, as we don’t always play that way.
But there it was, open rebellion. Someone said something out loud about the insurrection and the drummers looked down at their shoes and finally someone else said, “Hell, it’s the Fourth of July. This is all supposed to be about freedom, anyway.”
Which seemed to make sense, and the drummers marched with caps unfeathered.
Technically, the Fourth of July isn’t about freedom as much as it is about the right of a people to divorce themselves from others, using violence, if necessary. But Thomas Jefferson, in justifying the divorce, seized on freedom and a lot of other themes popular at the time to make his case, while adding the truly revolutionary idea that everyone has a God-given right to pursue their own happiness.
Revolution, divorce, freedom, they’re all mixed up in the same idea, the basic human right of dissent, the most radical of all liberties, the freedom to say “no” to what was done previously or to what is proposed. We all assume we have that right, and we want it, but we’re not always comfortable exercising it, or allowing others to.
We don’t want protesters burning American flags. We don’t want neo-Nazis marching down our Main Street. We don’t want peaceniks pouring lamb’s blood on nuclear warheads. We don’t want pro-lifers flashing photos of aborted fetuses at the state fair. We want people to be nice and respectful and to get along.
Allowing dissent runs counter to our nature. In our guts, we’re still tribal. We want the tribe to march in lockstep because for most of our history, the survival of our tribes was dependent on its members acting unanimously. Like platoons in a war, for the group to survive every single body was needed and everyone needed to be on board with the common goal.
In society, this hasn’t been the case for thousands of years, but instincts die hard. We wince at the photos of the fetuses and we look away from our neighbors out protesting something or other. They make us uncomfortable by revealing divisions among. Divisions are uncomfortable.
But who is hurt?
Flag-burners pose no threat to us. Neither do neo-Nazis. Their ideas may repel us, but they’re not sticks or stones. Because they represent a pressure-release valve for those feeling aggrieved, burning the U.S. flag or waving a swastika are cathartic activities, particularly compared to the alternatives, like violence or suppression.
I was in Klukwan recently for the ceremony in observance of the return of the Frog House artifacts, precious totems that a family of Natives sold to a Canadian art dealer 40 years ago. Others in the clan had worked to return those pieces to the village, but not all villagers agree that the totems belong in Klukwan’s cultural center.
Amid the speakers in the culture center celebrating the return of the pieces, villager Sally Burratin was called on. Burratin spoke personally and emotionally, saying that she disagreed with keeping the carvings in the center, and that her family was not consulted and would never go along with it. Those in attendance listened quietly and the event continued.
It was a beautiful moment of dissent, a respectful acknowledgment that others sometimes think differently than the group, and although the group continues to march in a certain direction, not all are convinced it’s a good one, and that’s okay.