Saturday, October 05, 2019

I'm Ishi

Years ago, I watched a documentary about one of the last indigenous people in America who hadn't been put in a reservation or assimilated. His tribe was down to the last family, after being almost wiped out by prospecting surveyors two years earlier. Starving, this man was the last survivor of his group when he came out of hiding to find food.

He was promptly captured by law enforcement. When asked who he was, he told them, in his native tongue, "I'm human." To him, these creatures who had tried to kill him and to wipe out his people were aliens. They weren't human, like he was, but had to be some other type of being.

Hearing people speak, today, while observing popular culture and watching a lot of other alien behavior, I think I feel the same way he did.