This land is WHOSE land?

Subject: RE: This land is WHOSE land?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 19 Jul 20 - 03:14 PM

That's what I always suspected y'all y'all !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Subject: RE: This land is WHOSE land?
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 19 Jul 20 - 03:33 PM

Bonz - I can't expect Americans to know what a wurzel accent is,
from my home region in the British Isles..
That's a bit too presumptuous of me...

American mates - think about how you sound when you try to do a pirate accent..

Arrrrr.. Jim Laaad...

Subject: RE: This land is WHOSE land?
From: oldhippie
Date: 19 Jul 20 - 03:48 PM

Native American verse:

This land is your land
It was not my land
Until you sold us
Manhattan Island
We pushed your Nations
To the Reservations
This land was swiped from you to me.

Author unknown to me.

Subject: RE: This land is WHOSE land?
From: Raedwulf
Date: 19 Jul 20 - 05:28 PM

Minor point, Joe - primarily British ancestry. How do you know they were British? Surnames? Surnames are patrilineal remember and, frankly, we're all of us bloody mongrels (as the Aussies might say). We all know how snobbish folk can be, and the further 'up' the social scale that you go the longer the noses get to look down, if you see what I mean. ;-)

Nevertheless, if (I stress *if*) you're relying on surnames, what women married into your British line of royalty (oh yes, you do, yes you do have royalty, and upper class, the old moneyed families; just like everywhere else! ;-) )? Permit me to point out Old Kinderhook, your 8th President, Martin van Buren. Your first President born after secession ;-), your only president to speak English as a second language, until you elect Arnie (yes, I know you can't, but you could do worse & have, let's face it). Wasn't very British, was he?

Etcetera. Don't over-generalise... ;-)

Subject: RE: This land is WHOSE land?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 19 Jul 20 - 05:53 PM

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee is worth reading. Sad, sad story of bigotry and greed.

Subject: RE: This land is WHOSE land?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 19 Jul 20 - 07:26 PM

Agreed.

Subject: RE: This land is WHOSE land?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 19 Jul 20 - 07:34 PM

Phil d'Conch says: The Western tribes the Anglos displaced didn't exist when the Pilgrims landed.

Correct. They were removed from the Eastern States by the British and later by the Americans. I didn't learn about the Trail of Tears removal of tribes when I was in school in the 1950s and 1960s. We were just beginning to learn the Native American side of the story of the settling of the United States. We think of the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole, and Cherokee people as tribes of the West, but they were all "transported" on foot from the Southeast.

Raedwulf, Martin Van Buren, the 8th U.S. President, was elected in 1836. He was the first U.S. President not of British ancestry. And note that he served only one term. Surnames are one obvious but not totally accurate way of guessing the ancestry of people, and a look at the names of the Members of Congress in the 19th Century will bring up very few names that aren't English. Of course, there are exceptions. But in general, the rule in the US until 1950 was that people did not marry or even associate with people outside their own ethnic group.

I certainly wouldn't call Woody Guthrie a saint, but he wrote good songs and he had a heart for the common people. Did he have the prejudices of his age against Black and Native American people? Probably so. Heck, he was born in Oklahoma in 1912. His father was a real estate wheeler-dealer, sometimes wealthy and sometimes impoverished. Woody was married three times and fathered eight children, and it didn't seem like he spent much of his time living with his family. During the Dust Bowl days, he left his wife and three children in Oklahoma and moved to Los Angeles, where he made some famous friends and had a fairly successful radio program. He didn't stay in jobs or homes very long. I'm not all that sure that I would like the man - and it's kind of unclear whether there was anybody who actually liked him very much. It does seem like his second wife, Marjorie, was far more loyal to him than he deserved. They met in 1942 and she cared for him until he died in 1967 at the age of 55 - even though he had left Marjorie and married a younger woman.

No doubt, he was a scoundrel; but he was a good performer and he wrote good songs. And to my mind, "This Land Is Your Land" is a nearly perfect song. While Woody certainly had prejudices and faults, I believe that the song itself rises above all that and that it is truly inclusive, with no asterisks or exceptions.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: This land is WHOSE land?
From: Jeri
Date: 19 Jul 20 - 10:19 PM

Joe, you maybe didn't, and should've read the link to "the Conversation" I posted up there.

Subject: RE: This land is WHOSE land?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 20 Jul 20 - 12:10 AM

Hi, Jeri -
I read the article by Will Kaufman in The Conversation twice before, and I read it again just now. As usual, I agree with Will Kaufman. I call myself a "radical moderate" and usually take the middle path even if nobody else is taking it - and I'm glad to see that Will Kaufman also takes the middle path on this matter.

Kaufman is responding to a Breitbart article about an article in Folklife, published by the Smithsonian Institution. The article is titled This Land Is Whose Land? Indian Country and the Shortcomings of Settler Protest, published June 14, 2019 and written by Mali Obomsawin. Mali Obomsawin raises very good questions and gives excellent information, but he is not as critical of Woody and his song as Breitbart insists him to be.

And I'd like to leave you with a link to https://www.willkaufman.com/, because Will Kaufman knows Woody Guthrie better than anyone else on earth.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: This land is WHOSE land?
From: London OldMan
Date: 20 Jul 20 - 10:02 AM

Thanks old hippie for your 'Native American verse'. That (and other similar responses) certainly boosts my faith in my fellow Mucatters.

A

Subject: RE: This land is WHOSE land?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 20 Jul 20 - 10:35 AM

He wrote great songs, indeed, did Woody, and many of them.

Subject: RE: This land is WHOSE land?
From: Joe G
Date: 20 Jul 20 - 12:44 PM

Will's shows about Woody are unmissable if he is ever in your area!

Subject: RE: This land is WHOSE land?
From: GUEST,Jack Warshaw
Date: 19 Jan 21 - 06:13 AM

Pete sang all Woody's original verses + these two at a concert in 1976
(https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/pete-seeger-unreleased-live-this-land-is-your-land-800868/)

This land is your land, it once was my land
Before we sold you Manhattan Island
You drove our nations to reservations
This land was stole by you from me               

Woodland and grassland and river shoreline
To all things living, bugs snakes and microbes
Fin, fur and feather, we’re here together
This land was made for you and me.         

Did he write or collect them? A task for someone else.

Everyone should quit bickering about hidden meanings in the song, and well-known imperfections in Woody's character. We do people and folk music no service by it and risk disappearing up our own assholes.

Subject: RE: This land is WHOSE land?
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Jan 21 - 11:48 AM

This land is your land was sung by Jennifer Lopez as part of the 2021 Biden Inauguration. It was abbreviated.

Subject: RE: This land is WHOSE land?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 21 Jan 21 - 11:23 AM

Rightly speaking when you're talking about "your" country or "your" town it's not about it as belonging to you, but about you as belonging to it. As in "I belong to Glasgow". If there's any problem with Woody's song it would be the last line. Though for all that, the feeling of the song is far more about belonging than owning.

Subject: RE: This land is WHOSE land?
From: Lighter
Date: 21 Jan 21 - 01:27 PM

I don't get it. If it's your land and it's my land, then it's everybody's land.

What's the problem?

(Don't make me sorry I asked.)

Subject: RE: This land is WHOSE land?
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 21 Jan 21 - 03:23 PM

Too late ;)

Oklahoma Native Americans, probably: Your land is my land, this land is my land, this land was made for me not thee...

Most people do not like most songs and Native Americans are people too.

There are something over two dozen native languages spoken in Oklahoma, USA. The Cherokee stole it from the Chickasaw; who stole in from the Choctaw; who fought the Apache over it &c &c &c.

Methinks most of 'em would not be Woody Guthrie fans if they had survived.