November 2026 Newsletter

Message from the Director

The library will be closed on Tuesday, November 3rd for Election Day. In a secular pluralistic democracy, this is the one day that unites all Americans for a common purpose. What better way to respect the 250th anniversary of the revolution that established the right to self-governance than to vote?

November is Native American Heritage Month. As we commemorate the 250th anniversary of the start of the revolution, it is important to remember what that meant for the people who have been here for at least 12,000 years. Amongst grievances against King George the Declaration of Independence states “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” This passage is the most difficult and ignoble part of what is otherwise a noble aspirational document. Consider the mindset that would lead Euro-Americans to say “our frontiers” about other people’s property, let alone the dehumanizing language used to describe native Americans. Even people like the Cherokee who adapted and adopted the ways of the Euro-Americans were driven off their lands. The final battle between forces of the United States of America and Native Americans was a battle between U.S. forces and the Yaqui at the Battle of Bear Valley in 1918.

Since the end of official warfare against Native Americans, hostility towards Native Americans has continued in many forms, including forced hysterectomies of Native American women, to the ICE raids against immigrants today. If, as has been reported, ICE is using racial profiling as part of how they go about choosing who to question, arrest, and deport, it seems to be against people who have the appearance of people who have been here for thousands of years. The audacity to think that having ancestors who arrived 300 years ago grants special privilege over people whose ancestors arrived more than 12,000 years ago is willfully ignorant to say the least. War and conquest is as old as humanity and we can do nothing to change the past, but it does not have to be our future. Hopefully the noble sentiment “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men (humans) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” will win the Manichean battle of our national soul.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

David Cubie,
Library Director