Some things just can’t be politicized!

by Richard L. Thornton, Architect & City Planner

About three weeks ago, a group of new subscribers appeared on the People Of One Fire Youtube Channel. Several had obviously political screen names for themselves like “HatesBiden,” but I was not worried because my videos, unlike so much that is being put on Youtube in the past few years, have absolutely nothing to do with contemporary partisan politics. Even most of the “Native American” themed videos usually get into whining about the terrible things done to the indigenous peoples of the Americas and as a result don’t have time to fully explain our rich cultural heritage and continued contributions to mankind.

The basic premise of my People of One Fire videos is that Native American history is American History. In the case of the Mesoamerican, Southeastern and Southwestern Indigenous Peoples, the architectural vestiges of that history proliferate the landscape. They are nationally or internationally significant and worthy of both further study and preservation.

As you probably have noticed, I have no problem in explaining indigenous Southeastern Americans as being hybrids descended from the mixing of peoples, who originated from several locations around the planet. This is exactly what the Creeks and Uchees told the first settlers of Savannah. The Uchee specifically told Colonial Secretary Thomas Christie that they had migrated in several waves of flotillas from across the Atlantic Ocean and first settled around the mouth of the Savannah River. My position has gotten me a lot of flack from some Oklahoma tribal members, who don’t know their own heritage . . . their own migration legends.

The fact that as being partially a Uchee descendant, I carry Sammi, Finnish, Pre-Gaelic Irish and Basque DNA does not in any sense make that heritage non-indigenous. As for the Muskogee-Creeks . . . their dictionary contains 6 1/2 pages of words having to do with water, whose root is akwa (aqua in Latin), which is the Indo-European word for “water.” There is no other way for the Muskogee-Creeks to be speaking Indo-European words than to have Indo-European ancestors, prior to the voyages by Columbus. Astonishingly, even the Muskogee suffix for “people or tribe” . . . written ge or ke . . . is also the modern Irish Gaelic suffix for “people or tribe.”

Well, this morning one of the new Youtube channel subscribers with politicized screen names, typed in a nasty comment to one of my videos on Teotihuacan. On the first screen of the video, it mentions “the Mayas in Georgia.” Apparently, that triggered a political response. The person obviously did not watch the video, because he wrote, “This is just another example of Liberal Democratic Marxist bull-$%* (expletive deleted). All archaeologists agree that there is no evidence of the Mayas ever being in Georgia.”

Well, the joke is on him. My first trip to Mexico coincided with the period of my first opportunities to vote. At the time, I thought that one party rule by the good-ole-boy Dixiecrats was suffocating the South. In those elections, I voted for Richard Nixon (Republican) for president. His platform included a plan to implement a National Healthcare System after we got out of Vietnam. I also voted for the Republican candidates for Congress and the US Senate, plus Hal Suit, the Republican candidate for Georgia’s Governor. Ironically, a few months later my boss was none other than Governor Jimmy Carter.

As for what archeologists think about the Mayas in Georgia . . . It was two internationally famous archaeologists, Dr. Arthur Kelly and Dr. Román Piña Chán, who first suggested the concept to me. At the time, 90% of my brain power was focused on females. I didn’t have a clue on that particular subject for many years.

Here is the video which the politicized subscriber labeled “Marxist”. I have deleted his comments. You can decide for yourself.