History is a teacher, some say. The memories and stories of a people are a treasure of priceless value, and they in fact constitute the people themselves, their essential identity.

History is a liar, some say. The “memories” and “stories” of a people are instruments of oppression, fictions invented by the powerful and privileged to justify their control and status in society.

The truth, of course, is that history is sometimes a teacher and sometimes a liar. This is as it must be. The joy of reading and studying and debating history lies in the fact that the subject itself requires us to discern when our old truths might need to be re-examined, and when the argument that we have been lied to about our past is itself a lie, or at least a gross and unfair exaggeration. Certainty about our history is the death of reflection about ourselves.

This is not to say that there are no historical truths. The past really happened. The United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and those attacks ended World War II. That happened; that’s the truth. Would Japan have surrendered without President Truman’s decision to unleash atomic weapons against the Japanese people? At what cost in lives—Americans, Japanese, and others? Answers to those questions, and deeper ones about the meaning of the events surrounding the end of that war remain open to inquiry, debate, and polemic. And those answers often depend very much on whom you ask.

My wife’s grandfather, an Indonesian man who spent years in a Japanese prison camp not far from Nagasaki, was liberated by the attack on that city. Many of his fellow prisoners had already died in the notoriously cruel conditions of a Japanese camp; he was nearly starving when he was freed. So it is possible that the love of my life, my beloved Johanna, and my dear mother-in-law Hillie, would never have been born if Nagasaki had not been bombed. My own father, a paratrooper in the 11th Airborne Division of the US Army who had already fought in the Philippines and on Okinawa, was training in August 1945 to drop behind enemy lines in Japan as part of Operation Downfall, the plan for an invasion of the Japanese mainland; casualties in his unit were expected to be shocking. There is a very real chance that I would not be typing these words had President Truman not dropped the bomb, so I can’t be truly objective on the question.

But none of us can. Ask Koreans, or Filipinos, or Indonesians, or the Chinese about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Upwards of 30 million people—the vast majority of them civilians—were killed in Asia and in the Pacific Islands as a consequence of the wars launched by Japan and the direct actions of the Armed Forces of Imperial Japan from 1937-45. Many of the people of those nations have a very different view of the question than the one that has become the standard take among progressives in the US and Europe. One fact remains: The United States of America ended the Great Asian-Pacific Wars launched by Imperial Japan. And that was a good thing.

I can feel your anger here. It’s justified. These things matter; history matters profoundly. But while there is such a thing as historical truth, it is always partial, provisional and contextual. We are going to disagree about it. That’s OK, even necessary. When we disagree productively about our history, our understanding of the past is enriched, and our understanding of each other deepened. When we disagree destructively—well, that’s when the anger and the yelling begin. And maybe worse.

Our country is in the grip of a truly destructive argument about American history. That’s one way of looking at the political and cultural polarization in the United States. The very name of the movement Donald Trump leads contains a historical claim: Make America Great Again. Each side accuses the other of viciously distorting the truth about our past. Each side senses in the other’s version of the American story a direct threat to precious values and basic rights. We are fighting each other ferociously about our history, from before the Founding Era up until January 6, 2021, and even up until yesterday, because as soon as anything of significance happens in our country, it is instantly transmogrified into yet another historical claim, fit into one or the other competing views of all our yesterdays and put to use in the battle over who we have been, and thus who we shall be. History, we all fear in these fraught times, is power.

This feels like a fight to the death: There can be no compromise with the other side.

I cannot accept that. I hold fast to a belief that we are still and always one people, and deep down we know that. I believe that this particular argument Americans are having—necessary though it may be—is ultimately grounded in a false dichotomy, and deep down we know that, too. In truth, the superficial facts of our history do not make up the full definition of who we are as Americans. There are other, deeper currents that run through our national character, older and deeper even than the nation itself. These deeper forces make us one people, whether we like it or not.

If you picked up an American, any American, and you lifted them up and transported them and set them down in any place in the world—within a few minutes pretty much everyone within sight would say to themselves, “There’s an American over there.” I believe this because I’ve traveled all over the world, and it is clear to me Americans stick out in every crowd and community we visit. “There’s an American over there,” people say to themselves on every continent. MAGA, progressive, old, young—it doesn’t matter. The rest of the world recognizes us as one people, even if we don’t. Why? What is it?

Something in this land we all share has made us who we are, and it’s not the facts of our history that we memorize and fight about. It’s about the land, and what all the people who have lived on it, worked it, loved it, fought for it, died on it, and are buried under it have bequeathed to us here now. We need to find that gift again. We need to remember something other than our history.

Which brings us to this week’s poem. It’s a famous one. “Remember,” it’s called, and it’s by the great Native American poet Joy Harjo. Her poem here is spoken to everyone, but it’s also deeply grounded in Indigenous worldview and experience. She addresses all of us, and calls us back to an awareness of our place in the web of creation, to gratitude for this land. Her call comes from beyond history, and invites us to another kind of understanding of our past. Let it be a prayer for healing in these hard times.

by Joy Harjo

Remember the sky that you were born under,know each of the star’s stories.Remember the moon, know who she is.Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is thestrongest point of time. Remember sundownand the giving away to night.Remember your birth, how your mother struggledto give you form and breath. You are evidence ofher life, and her mother’s, and hers.Remember your father. He is your life, also.Remember the earth whose skin you are:red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earthbrown earth, we are earth.Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have theirtribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,listen to them. They are alive poems.Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows theorigin of this universe.Remember you are all people and all peopleare you.Remember you are this universe and thisuniverse is you.Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.Remember language comes from this.Remember the dance language is, that life is.Remember.