By Mordecai Specktor
On the “No Kings” protests
Some readers of The Circle likely participated in the Oct. 18 protests against the Trump 2.0 regime. The sponsoring organizations and press reported that some seven million individuals participated in these demonstration in large cities, suburbs and small towns.
The rubric of “No Kings” harkens back to the birth of the United States in its revolt against the Crown, the British colonial rulers.
Writing in The Atlantic magazine (Nov. 2025), Ned Blackhawk noted: “The Declaration of Independence is venerated for its poetic language and universalist prologue, with the soaring, ‘self-evident’ truth that all men have the right to ‘Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.’ But, less famously, the Declaration is also a set of specific grievances. There are 27 in total, building to a defining final charge against the Crown: The King of England has attempted to afflict frontiersmen with ‘merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.’”
Blackhawk, a history professor at Yale and the author of “The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History,” continues: “The most famous text of the Revolution culminates not with an idealistic wish but with a derogatory indictment, legal as well as moral. The drafters drew upon nascent doctrines of international law and made England’s incitement of ‘Savages’ the ultimate unjust act against a ‘Free and Independent’ people. In this so-called Age of Reason, Native Americans were charged with having none at all. They were not only lawless but also irrational, incapable of self-governance, and lacking moral capacity.”
And Backhawk adds, “This one-dimensional vision of Native Americans was new.” Moreover, the colonists knew better. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Europeans on these shores lived among Native communities, and folks like Benjamin Franklin admired the Iroquois (or Haudenosaunee) Confederacy’s “centralized political, military, and diplomatic practices” … “Native self-governance was so evident and persistent that it became a source of colonial frustration,” as per Blackhawk.
In school we were taught that the American Revolution was a matter of “taxation without representation,” which inspired the dumping of tea in Boston harbor, etc. In reality, the revolt against King George III was about stealing Indian land to the west of the Appalachian Mountains. Blackhawk’s article in The Atlantic is accompanied by a map, issued by British General Thomas Gage in 1766, which depicts land west of the Appalachians as “reserved for the Indians.”
This point will be expanded upon in the upcoming Ken Burns documentary for PBS, “The American Revolution.” The six-part series, which is co-directed by Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt, premieres on Nov. 16.
In an October interview with Terry Gross on “Fresh Air,” Burns pointed out that Franklin and George Washington were “speculators in tens of thousands of acres of land in the Ohio Valley, where people wanted to go.”
“So it’s about Indian land,” Burns said, regarding the Revolutionary war.
If you’re a history buff like me, “The American Revolution” might fill in some gaps in your understanding of U.S. history and how the “new birth of freedom” on Turtle Island was bound up in the “sovereignties it sought to erase,” in Ned Blackhawk’s words.
Dyani White Hawk’s art
In October, I was invited to a media preview of “Dyani White Hawk: Love Language” at the Walker Art Center. The mid-career survey of the artist’s compositions features nearly 100 works, including new sculptures.
I’m not well versed in the language of art criticism, so my assessment is: Wow! This is one of most beautiful art shows I’ve ever seen.
White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota) incorporates porcupine quillwork, lane stitch beadwork and mosaics in her artworks. Trying to get a look at the intricate beadwork in one painting, I moved too close and a museum guard asked me to step back behind the blue tape line on the floor.
As for the exhibition’s title, White Hawk explained that “‘Love Language’ speaks to Lakota artistic practices that represent love for family, community, the land, and life. The exhibition is an embodied love letter to our ancestors, our communities, family, and the people — all of humanity.”
The show will be on display at the Walker through Feb. 15, 2026, and then move to the Remai Modern, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, April 25-Sept. 27, 2026. The show was co-organized with the Remai Modern, and at the media preview here I had a brief chat with Tarah Hogue (Métis), the museum’s adjunct curator of Indigenous Art. Hogue and the Walker’s Siri Engberg, are co-curators of White Hawk’s show.
