Oct 12, 2026. My third and probably final visit to Tennessee. I hope to complete all my goals here before Thanksgiving.
First stop was along the Trail of Tears at what is now Port Royal State Historic Park. The park is northwest of Nashville, close to the Kentucky border, and it maintains a small portion of the trail Cherokees were forced to march when leaving their ancestral lands. It is a sacred site, and it wasn’t until after I visited that I remembered it happened to be Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
While I am glad for this day of remembrance, standing on that hallowed ground felt terrible. Terrible is not the word for it, really. I can’t think of an appropriate word, one doesn’t exist. My ability to travel the country today is a direct result of the genocide of millions of people, people who occupied and lived across this nation for 15,000 – 30,000 years. Now I, a direct descendant of English colonialists who landed and thrived in Jamestown a measly 400 years ago before occupying native peoples’ previous homelands on the Eastern Shore, freely wander about this country, and today’s US citizens give a casual nod of “respect” to all those Indigenous Peoples on one specific day of the year.
White guilt? Of course. Can we do anything about the past? No. Might it behoove us all to try to fully emotionally realize certain horrors of our nation’s history anyway? YES. We must learn, we must not allow ourselves to become what we used to be, we must become better versions of ourselves as individuals and as a nation.
