Growing up, I loved Monopoly. Something about the competition, the thrill of imagining what my life would feel like if I really did own all those expensive places and have all that money and power made me feel good. And yes, I usually won- fairly, of course.<\/p>\n
When I was young, we had a tree in our yard. According to local lore, it was an Indian path marker, pointing to the water of Puget Sound about a half-mile across the woods and over the bluff. I loved the mystique and would often sit on its curved trunk imagining life back then. One thing that disturbed me was that the tree was not so big. Did this mean that it wasn\u2019t really an authentic Indian path marker? Perhaps someone had bent and trained the tree in an attempt to make it look authentic. Or perhaps it was an Indian path marker, and the history was a lot more recent than I wished to know. Why would anyone leave this beautiful place and go away to somewhere else? There hadn\u2019t been drought, or devastating natural disaster in recent local history as far as I knew.<\/p>\n
In 1855 at the Treaty of Point Elliot (present-day Mukilteo, WA), 81 Native American leaders met with government officials and agreed to give up their land in exchange for cash, continued hunting and fishing rights (on the lands they sold) and reservations. Even sketchy documentation written by the winners in this exchange show that the concepts of individual property rights and written contracts in an oral culture were not understood in the same way on both sides.<\/p>\n
I loved Monopoly; so does my son, but not my daughter. Too many times she was cajoled out of railroads, tricked into handing over a red, a yellow, a green or a royal blue property with a pleasing presentation of a partial truth. By the time she realized the rest of the truth- that although one lonely color in her hand did not add much to her income, it wasn\u2019t worthless- it was always too late.<\/p>\n
To this day, Charles Brackett is lauded as the founder of Edmonds, the man who built a beautiful town out of the wilderness with his ingenuity, foresight, and hard work. The Edmonds Historical Museum preserves his name and carefully records the history of Edmonds from his arrival on. \u00a0Strictly speaking, Edmonds as an entity didn\u2019t exist before him, but the land, other people, and another history did.\u00a0 All over the United States (and many other countries as well) honor and prestige are given to the winners, and obliteration of memory and history are expected of the losers.<\/p>\n