I woke this morning to news of another school shooting the US. Undoubtedly there will be a lot of debate about guns and teenagers. I'm not sure that debate will change anything. But I think there is another debate: this shooting has taken place on an "indian reservation", a set aside "home" for Native Americans. Reservations, as far as I can work out, are some of the most soul destroying places on the planet. Already this morning, I'm hearing patronising reports calling the community response "pathetic" (in its most paternalistic sense). Already, it seems that the injured are being flown 150 miles from their community for treatment. This is a tragedy- its also a tragedy of how we as Europeans have treated indegenous peoples all over the world.
A week today, when all the furore has ebbed and the markets have bottomed out, our nation will awake to the sounds of bugles and church bells as we commemorate 100 years from the start of the Battle of The Somme. I am an historian by background, and the Somme for me is emblematic of a human tragedy that need never have happened. My reading of it is this: we began a war from a variety of odd alliances and murky motivations, capped off finally by a sense that no-one had the will to stop it. In order to give the war effort impetus, posters, propaganda began to be bandied around about the enemy, about what they would do to children and how they needed to be stopped. It worked as a recruiting effort- young men, boys, and women all joined the war effort. They joined as an act of patriotism, tinged yes with fear, but also a sense that it might be the right thing to do. They joined from across the country- but at the heart of the front line forces were thousands and ten of thousands...
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