how did we get here? there's a place you can look to see who was here before the place was colonized, https://native-land.ca/. i looked up the zip code and in the park named jackson the kickapoo lived. are there any kickapoo still living around here? the kickapoo were displaced by colonial settlers. what would it feel like to be native to a place, and what would it feel like to be displaced? i've been displaced but i wasn't native to the place and moved on to a place i could afford to live, but i could move wherever i had money to. still, money may give you a place but it won't make you native. i've often wished i could become native to a place, but i always felt an unsettled settler, who would when the market changed, be displaced. this place of the kickapoo where the kickapoo were displaced has been my tentative adoptive place. i don't feel native but i feel lucky to have not been moved now for some years. i have no contact with the people who lived here before of course but i feel some connection, some priority, when i see new colonizers taking land that was the land where the native people were displaced that was preserved as a park for people and animals. and if i have to move i would rather be displaced by returning kickapoo people than the neoliberal tribe of obama building a towering complex, the latest conquest of mercenary destiny and the unsettling arrogance of power in the displaced kickapoo place, now the city peoples' park. 

i want to walk around this colonialist holiday and think about what it might feel like to be native to this place and what it might feel like to be a displaced native. i don't feel native, but i feel more like a displaced native in this place than a good neighbor would.