My Monologue
Topic: Indigenous issues/racism/infectious disease
Character: Bruce - Middle aged indigenous man. kind face, long hair, muscular, confrontational, righteously angry, educated, empathetic, fed up
Setting: Public forum/Town hall meeting
Audience: Average middle aged Caucasian voters, both conservative and liberal, public servants, news media
INTERIOR CITY HALL, MONTHLY TOWNHALL MEETING, LIGHT CHATTER THROUGHOUT THE ROOM
BRUCE
(shuffling pre-made speech cards)
I grew up on the reserve. My mother and father both endured the residential schools my people were forced to attend. They had their culture, lifestyle, and family ripped from their hands their whole life and you’ve constantly told us we’re just supposed to deal with it. We’re just supposed to get over it. It was so long ago, too long ago, it didn’t affect me, I wasn’t there. But trauma is generational.
It’s 2021 and we’re still having to ‘deal with it’, and I’m not sure we can anymore. You brought over violence, and disease and after committing mass genocide, you tell the world that we were savages – cannibals – violent and barbaric. You insist to this day that that was the case. In the 15th century, you used that to excuse how violent and barbaric you were, but 3 centuries before you stole our land, killed out children, and infected our bodies, you were murdering people in the Crusades. And I’ve seen some of the devices you used! The irony in calling my people savage was never lost on us, and we’ve never forgotten.
BRUCE
(clears throat, glances around the room)
Covering blankets in smallpox, you tried to make us sick. When you teach your children what you did, you make it out like a family on the Mayflower co-existed with us and we had the first thanksgiving as a celebration of community and the taming of the savages! And then your story ends there. You don’t teach children the truth today of what you did.
The Thanksgiving myth sugarcoats the viciousness of your colonization. American history before being colonized was as rich and as ancient as it was in Europe, yet your children never learn about this. The indigenous are the true Americans. Not the representatives at the White House. Not the democrats, or the republicans, not the left, nor the right in this room right now, likely bored with what I’m saying. You were all brought here by immigrants.
40 years ago, when disease and sickness killed off our gay brothers and sisters, you sat there and blamed them. I watched Ronald Reagan let HIV run rampant on the streets and because it was “only affecting” gay people, you sat by and let it ravish their community. It took years, and thousands of deaths for white America to finally start caring. Frankly, you didn’t start caring until it started affecting you. You didn’t start caring until you were at risk, and that’s what you usually do – and we’re still in the same boat.
BRUCE
(glares at people sitting in the townhall audience, noticing several people appear bored)
Twice impeached president Donald J. Trump wouldn’t send aid to “blue” states when the COVID-19 pandemic started. Republicans, mostly white, still refuse to wear a mask and take a vaccine. Always citing their freedoms as a reason. Always citing their body autonomy. Always claiming to be brave. Always denying being a sheep.
Why don’t any of you care? Why won’t any of you care? Why do you have to let so many people get injured or sick before you’ll take action? When will it end? When will you stop wanting to kill people different than you? Why are you colonizers never held responsible for the sickness you allow to spread? Because you never are. We’re a small bit of time away from having a higher body count than the Spanish Flu, which was considered to be the worst pandemic in American history. And you still don’t care. You expect to get medical treatment from the very same people who are trying to stop you from getting sick in the first place. It seems that maybe it wasn’t the Natives of this land that were savages if you ask me. We’re wearing masks. We’re vaccinating our people. We’re far less savage than you’ve made us out to be, but you’ll still believe otherwise.
SCENE FADES WHILE FOCUSING ON BORED AND OFFENDED WHITE PEOPLE IN THE AUDIENCE