uncle$am in the native american museum

a few days ago i had been working the corridor between the Congressional office buildings ad the Capitol, because the Congress reps have to pass there often. traffic had stopped: the reps had all voted their last vote for the day and had all gone home early. so i wandered down to the Mall, which is where all the Smithsonian museums are. the first one on the path from Capitol hill is the Native American museum. i went in and ascended to the top floor, where there are several exhibits of various tribes and their way of life, especially revealing their spiritual values and cosmology. the recurring theme was "we are still here; our people and our culture have survived". at first i was filled with admiration and wonder at this accomplishment: that so many cultures managed to dodge the bullet of western genocide and suppression; but in the Lakota exhibit, i saw my reflection in a glass, and saw uncle sam here surrounded by artifacts and statements related to this noble people. i suddenly felt a wave of grief and shame. i started crying as a representative of the US which did so much to kill these people and snuff out their culture. i thought about wounded knee and all the battles and massacres which preceded the killing field there. i mumbled "i'm sorry. i'm sorry" although there was nobody there to absolve me of our sins. i wept, and continued to cry as i drifted out of the museum past the display of swords which had been used to hack up native americans in south america, and past the exhibit of all the types of guns which settlers used to hunt and kill the original inhabitants of the New World. my heart is still aching. i don't know what to do about it.