the ‘peace gets personal’ blog

As a recovering global nomad, this periodic blog helps me to process the messy, ongoing journey of coming ‘home’ to the USA. This is where peace gets personal.

Author: Michelle G. Garred

  • I’ll Stand by You. Won’t I?

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    I used to live in Washington DC, but that was a decade ago, so I didn’t see the new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial until last Saturday. I was in DC briefly for a conference, and I didn’t want to leave without visiting that site. I am not a big fan of statues in general, but of course this is MLK we’re talking about. I awoke that day with a snapshot of myself standing next to MLK already composed in my mind. That photo did not become a reality, because the memorial is tall, and I am short! However, envisioning…

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  • An Unlikely Celebration

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    I discovered this week, while visiting the Hibulb Cultural Center, that the Tulalip Tribes celebrate annual ‘Treaty Days.’ This event commemorates the Point Elliott Treaty of 1855, in which local tribes were pushed to cede 10,000 square miles of ancestral land between Seattle and the Canadian border. Most of us would consider this an epic injustice, not something to celebrate. What is going on here? To borrow the Center’s quote from Vi Hilbert: “Treaty Day is not the celebration of losing our land, but the regaining of our right to practice our spiritual traditions.” Apparently in 1912, a tribal leader…

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