The Stuff Legends Are Made Of

Indian women are wonderful at multi tasking, thinking ahead, strategizing, planning, and getting shit done.  That is just how it is.  They have to be like that or  what sit back and wait for someone else to do it, but who?  A man?

hahaha…

No because they braid their man’s hair before he goes and “conquers” his world, she just makes sure his beaded bolo tie matches his Western shirt.

If not they are making sure all their little duckies are in a row, set for the day.  Make sure they know where all their kids are.  Make sure they know their every move but they have to make sure of this all stealth like and ninja like if they are older kids.  They don’t want them to know, their mom knows where they are.

They make sure their house is ok, dog fed, cat fed and some Indian women even feed squirrels and birds and other animals that hang out,  not because they are trying to be Pocahontas in a Disney film, but because that is their nature to feed and make sure no creature around them are hungry.

When they start naming those creatures though….

Yes, our Indian women are the stuff legends re made of, they truly embody the phrase a women’s work is never done.  They take on the world outside their homes with a passion, standing up for the rights of children, our peoples lives, our water, our precious Grandmother Earth and all the creatures they feed.  The will march, protest, get arrested, make bail and be right out there protesting again, circulating petitions, and making change

And the next day they will be organizing graduation dinners cooking for hundreds,  making bread for a funeral, helping a friend with a giveaway, beading the background beadwork on a pair of leggings.  All the while, laughing and ordering people around while slapping frybread dough between her hands and thanking someone for complimenting her beaded earrings.

After a feed she can organize her gathering of the leftover food with the commandment and precision of an Army general.  It takes her less than five minutes to have it wrapped up and ready to go home for her family.  As she gives hugs all the way out the door and all you hear between all the aunties is AAAAYE! and laughter.

So when an Indian woman wants to have her recreation time and relax, for the love of God you let her.  Because what is relaxing to her is still what legends are made of.  If she wants you to drive her, you don’t bitch, you just drive.

Because all of us Indian women have one thing in common that is as inter-tribal as the Grand Entry at Gathering of Nations.  We are sisters connected this way.

We love yard sales.

We love yard sales, garages sales, rummage sales, and second hand thrift stores.  As the car slows to a stop in front of a yard sale you will already see a foot out the door.  If there are more than one Indian woman in the car and you happen to be lucky enough to take maybe a grandmother and mother and sisters, don’t worry about the time.  Because Indian women who have bad backs, canes, etc. who usually walk slow….all those ailments go away when spring rolls around and the appearance of neon garage sale signs began popping up.

They will scream at you about directions, pointing with lips which way to drive, argue with each other, race each other to the sale, race another carload of Indian women to the next sale, and bitch about them in the car.  ”Did you see how mad they were because we got to that one first.”  They will tell you to stick to the rich side of town but get mad at the prices.  ”Eeee when they’re that rich, why they gotta sell that high, cripes!”

Be careful though, many an Indian woman will misread signals and take you to a birthday party because of the balloons tied outside the house or have you rummaging in someone’s garage when they were only cleaning it out.  Make sure there is a sign.

Just remember, this is relaxing to them, you may get a new shirt, and that VCR and two boxes of VHS tapes she got for ten bucks will come in handy.

Yes, Indian women are the stuff legends are made of.

Now, haul all the stuff in the house!

Letter from The Government

Dear American Indian,

I am the government.  I want you to lay down and just listen.  Don’t fight back, just realize you are now owned.

I am going to take all your land by any means necessary, and call it Manifest Destiny.  If you show any resistance by any means necessary, we will call it a crime and lock you up and throw away the keys.

I am going to realize that I will never defeat you.  You will never die off.  I put small pox on blankets and gave them to you.  I sterilized your women without their knowledge. I handed your children over to Christianity to tear down your future generations.   They cut their hair, beat them for speaking your own language, raped them, and brainwashed them.

Yet, your spirits rose.  You over came all that.

You survived the massacres on sandy creek shores and snowy ravines.  Your DNA exists despite walking trails of tears.  We thought we had you in Montana, but we admit, you kicked our ass.  Custer’s dumb ass.

We tore your very spirit down.  We beat you emotionally.  We abused you physically and sexually.  We, the government waited for you to go quietly away.

We put you on land that wasn’t fit for farming and stole the best fit for our survival and capitalism.  We made mascots and caricatures of you so people would laugh at you as if you were something, an object from the past.  We took your religion away because it wasn’t ours.

And you survived.

We created the Office of Indian Affairs (BIA) from the Dept of War to assimilate you.  We created programs to make you more like us.  Make you want more.  Except there was never more to offer.  We hold your land in trust and we lease it out and take our cut nd give you a lease check, for pennies and dollars.  Chump change.  Only Cobell questioned us. We admitted our wrong, offered millions, the lawyers took most of that and now we make it near impossible for half of you to get that,  Does it matter?  The land is in trust, that is why we created this department.

You can live there, but it is in government trust.

We lied about the history of you.  We screwed you over big time.  We took all you had and then took from what little we granted you.

We throw you piddlings.  You fight over that.  We give you poison and you fight over that.  We give you cheese and you take from each other.  We give you grants, barely.  And you are ok for a minute.  We gave you substandard housing, you have lists to live there and 20 a home.

We are done fighting you.

We realize we have no reason to small pox your blankets or give you rations your DNA is not used to, diabetes took over, alcoholism took over, the poverty we forced you to live in took over.

We will attack instead your precious Grandmother Earth and your sacred water.  Because most of you are too busy to notice.  You already settled for what we gave you.

The best thing is, you took over.

As long as you fight each other, hold each other back, and hate each other.

We know we’re ok.  And we have a chance at winning.

Sincerely

The Government

Listening to while writing…..LOVE THIS SONG!

We Were Once-Still Warriors

I think of the history of our people, as Lakota how can we not be so proud of who we are and where we come from?

The government did what they could to ruin us, destroy us…and when they figured out it would never work to kill us off because we were never going away.  They did what they could to kill our souls.  To kill our spirits.

They tried to assimilate us in every way possible.  They cut our hair, raped our women and children, beat our babies for speaking their language, took away our right to hunt, took our sacred land….do I have to go on and on with every single atrocity?  Do I have to number or alphabetize what this government did to us?

They made our men who were once warriors of a proud nation, warriors who ambushed the government and beat it on our own soil, warriors who provided for their families for thousands of years,  they made our warriors feel defeated by handing them a depressant in the form of alcohol.

Not every warrior, mind you,  but enough to affect the next seven generations.

There were enough people, that didn’t succumb to alcoholism.  Throughout the next seven generations.   I was not one of them.  There are times in my youth I remember it being a real factor and times, many times as an adult when I wished it hadn’t been a factor.

But I am not one person to pretend that everything is rosy.  I fell and fell hard.  How many times do I have to say that to my own people?  I do not think I am better than anyone because I write about the negative impacts of it now, I just know that if I had that time over again, I would definitely not let it affect what kind of parent I was or really, what kind I wasn’t.  Because what matter is what kind of parent I am right now.

My kids love me and that is all that matters, we move forward.

I am doing what I can to let them know to support their people, all of them.  If an elder is around, you better not be sitting down, don’t eat before them or young children, and don’t look your elders in the eyes when you speak to them.

I want them to know it is was’te/good to stand up for your beliefs, what you think is right, for your people.

Because no matter what the government did to us, tried to do to us, we are still warriors.

If another person is fighting for the better of our people, don’t put them down because everyone else is.  Don’t hate on your own people.

How do you ever expect us to be the great warrior nation, the buffalo people of the North if all you can do is put each other down.  The government don’t have to assimilate the assimilated.

Stand up, sit down, or get out of the way.

Not one person defeated General Custer and the 7th Cavalry.

They worked together and it would be nice if that could happen again.  We don’t have to defeat the army but we can be bigger than the army.  We have more spirit as Lakota people than a whole army does.

We have our ancestors behind us.

Now let us start making them know that their fight was worth it.

listened to while writing

Graveyard on a Golf Course

The rain fell softly and gently this past Sunday, almost as if someone were quietly weeping.  It was a sporadic sprinkle, as if someone was saying, don’t forget about us.    I went with my brother and sister in law to an honoring ceremony held on a golf course in the small town of Canton, South Dakota.

The southeastern corner of South Dakota had two honoring ceremonies, two memorials this past weekend.  I attended the second one but saw the first one on the news.

The first one was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota at a beautiful park called Falls Park, where just a few months before a 28 year old Lakota man, Lyle Eagle Tail  and 16 year old  Madison Wallace, who never met each other, jumped in the foamy waters to save the life of the young 6 year old child who was the girl’s younger brother.  While they saved his life, they both sacrificed their young lives.  So far there has been an unsuccessful campaign to rename the park after them or erect memorials in their honor.

However, a 10 foot bronze statue made by  sculptor Darwin Wolf was dedicated in a grand ceremony on Friday.  A ceremony celebrating the accomplishments and joy of the life of South Dakota’s first Senator R.F. Pettigrew.  Senator Pettigrew was known for shaping the state’s economy.  Often donating land for development and recreation himself.

Just two days later, after that honoring I found myself traveling just south of Sioux Falls to the small town of Canton to witness another honoring ceremony.  Except this one was not one where you clap your hands and praise someone for all they did to shape your state.  While it still involved Senator Richard Pettigrew, it did not sing praises to Pettigrew.

In the late 1890’s Senator Pettigrew traveled to Washington, DC to push for the institution in South Dakota to be built for Indians who had gone mad from across the nation.  But history also tells us that most of these Indians were not insane, they had just not conformed and assimilated to living the way of the white man.  The government thought it would be a step forward in improving upon the “savagery ways” of Native Americans and Pettigrew had his supporters to push it through.

If they were not mentally ill upon arrival before they entered the Canton Insane Asylum for Indians, they would soon be with their living conditions including laying in a darkened room with windows nailed shut for days at a time.  One patient even reported to be laying in the same room for three years straight.  Some patients lay in straight jackets for hours, one as young as ten years of age.  The chamberpot of these “patients” often went unchanged and urine and feces flooded the only room they knew.  If any patients escaped, they were hunted down with guns and an escape party.  Babies were born and died at the asylum, there are no details as to how they were conceived to patients or how they died.

The conditions at the insane asylum were so horrible by the standards of 1929 when Dr. Samuel Silk, the Clinical Director at America’s premier psychiatric hospital, St. Elizabeth’s in Washington, DC visited he had this to say;

“Three patients were found padlocked in rooms. One was sick in bed, supposed to be suffering from a brain tumor, being bedridden and helpless…a boy about 10 years of age was in a strait jacket lying in his bed…one patient who had been in the hospital six years was padlocked in a room and, according to the attendant, had been secluded in this room for nearly three years.”

 

He also realized that most patients were not insane but had clashed with white men;

“Would not the United States, if it could be held liable at all, be liable in these cases for enormous damages? The records of the asylum itself show them to be perfectly sane. They are known to be perfectly sane, to the director of the asylum Dr. Hummer. But he assumed the position that these people were below normal – mentally deficient – and they should only be discharged after they were sterilized, and as he did not have any means of doing this, there was nothing left but to keep them there.”

The insane asylum was closed in 1933 under Roosevelt, much to the disappointment of local Canton residents who took the case to federal court to keep their main employer open.  Ten years later the government sold the 100 acre property to the city of Canton for one dollar.  No one in the city thought it was strange to build a golf course around the graveyard.  They never told anyone until the “Indians found out” according to the Craig Brown, who was the attorney for the land sale that the time.

Harold Iron Shield found out and held prayer memorials there for two decades, while he investigated the names of those who passed.    The ceremonies ceased after his death in 2008 and this year was the first time a ceremony was held since then.

So when we pulled up to a golf course, which is the first time I ever went to a golf course in my life, I saw young men dejectedly walking away with their clubs.  They had to wait according to one groundskeeper until 3pm to play.  It was closed by the club for the ceremony.  The ceremony that was held on a somewhat, rainy spring Sunday honored those who passed away and lived out their days with a broken heart.  Lived their days out not knowing whether they would ever go home,  and were buried in a ground with no honor, no remembrance, and nothing to mark their graves. The Indian Office at the time thought that marking their graves was an “added expense they could not afford.”  They did not get a ten foot statue like the man who put them there.   I was saddened to be there, to hear the names of even babies called out,  and I tied a ribbon on the shoddy fence that don’t keep golfers out but only warns them to not hit their balls out of the cemetery. (They get a free drop to play the ball outside the cemetery.  However they have to walk on top of those whose names were forgotten for years to get their ball.)

I will never forget Mary Pierre.  I did not know her.  I don’t know if she had children, had a favorite color, or if she looked at that Canton sky and dreamed of home.  But I know I tied a black ribbon to the west for her.  She died there on May 16, 1917.  And I will never forget that. Or the lives of the 121 Native Americans who represent 49 nations that lie in unmarked graves between the 4th and 5th fairway.

Three hours of one day and a stupid song

I walked around and around the holding cell.  My shackles only allowed so much give.  Stupid ass song was in my head and I have no idea why.  “You walked into the party like you were walking into a yacht…”

I couldn’t understand why Carly Simon was in my head when clearly, there were other songs I knew all the words to.  I was waiting for the marshals to come get me and lead me in the court room.  I read the scratched in writing in the painted metal door and bench.  Angry Indians leaving messages to the government, leaving words to their loved ones who might also by chance sit in this holding cell as they too faced federal charges.  My heart beat along with the song in my head.

I started counting my steps.  Became bored after a thousand…song still in my head….“I bet you think this song is about you, dontchu?”

I tried to not think about my fate lying in the hands of the judge they called an “Indian Hanger.”  I tried not to think about my kids.  I tried not to think about my life.  I just wanted to be strong, don’t cry whatever you do.  You’re going to be judged a bad person for the rest of your life so fuck everyone.

Finally I heard the ominous footsteps, and shackles dragging from another Indian who was just sentenced.

They open my door.  ”Ready Lone Hill?”

I say nothing and walk in the courtroom.  Look past the white men, my dad said, beyond the.  They are nothing to you but white men.  You have ancestors behind you.

MY dad, grandma, and adopted brother were in the courtroom.  It felt good to see them but I didn’t want to be sentenced in front of anyone.  No reporters, thank god.  My kids didn’t need to see bullshit about me.

The sentencing went fast, I remember my voice shaking as I read my statement but only because of my fear of public speaking.  I wasn’t scared.  I knew they were going to give me 12 months.  We had all agreed on that.  I could handle that even though I didn’t want to.  I just sat 4 in the county.  I remember the judge asking me why?  Why?  Why?  Why the fuck would he ask me about something he was going to judge me on? It was already done.

I looked past him, don’t remember my answer, just kept looking past him.  You’re nobody I thought.  He heard my thoughts.  ”Eighteen months.”  He said and his gavel came down.

I nodded.  What an asshole.  My lawyer whispered to me he would meet me at my holding cell and that I could say hi to my family bot no hugs or touching.

I smiled at them as I walked out.  Weak smile, my grandma still looked ever so regal, head held high and hurt.  My bro Tobe, nodded back.  The way hoods nod at each other.  My dad had tears in his eyes.

My heart broke.

I put my head down and walked out the courtroom as hot tears fell.

Fuuuck the feds I screamed in my head.  They won’t hold me down to ever feel this way again.

I put my head up, tears kept falling and I looked through every person in that courthouse as if they were invisible.

This will all be over soon.  I thought as I boarded the cargo elevator in my chains.

Destination Rez

The state winning championship team sat in their bus.  The girls basketball team were weary.  They had been beaten and bruised in that battle called a basketball game.  they were tired of hicks calling them squaws, and tired of stupid people putting their hands to their mouth as if making a war cry, tired of being told to go back to their trashy reservation. 

They could have fought the big tractor ass white girls, instead the fought on the court without trying to foul out the best way they knew how.

They played rez ball.  they ran and ran the big thunder thigh girls in circles.  They had them sweaty and pink like the hogs they farm.  Some were so red in the face their eyebrows glowed white.

Down right ugly.

The game ended with the rez girls being up by 7.  A small crowd gathered and cheered them on.  They walked out of the state arena proud, heads held high, and spit on and booed and called names.

Go back to the rez!  Screamed the crowd.

We will as champions, you honky fuckers.  Screamed one of their fans back.

When they hit reservation lines, people wrote on sheets, on cardboard, congratulating the girls, on the side of the road.  They still had over 70 miles to drive.  And people stood outside their houses, cars followed them in.

The girls started to get fired up despite their bruised and tired bodies.  They took turns peeking out of the emergency hatch on top of the bus at the caravan behind them in the fading evening sun.  They waved and their reservation honked and cheered.

When they pulled into town, there was a crowd waiting, along with tribal council, and a drum group.  The smell of sage in the air…

The girls cried as the drum group sang an honor song.  They were home, where they were loved.  They did all that only to come back home and show the rez they made it.  Made it ok to be from the rez.

 

Spring Represents

Spring is beautiful, but Autumn was always my season.  The crisp Autumn air, cook-outs—even if it was just hot dogs, brats,  and football.  Many people find the phrase “promise” goes with spring but it always fit autumn in my life.  A promise of a season of football, holidays that warm the home with delicious scents.  Baseball winds down and soups bubble slowly on  stove top with promies of a harvest…yeah that is what autumn is to me.

Being from the rez, spring meant melting snow, trash appearing, and mud.

Until two years ago.

Two years ago in the spring of 2011 I walked out of a federal prison with 98 dollars in my hand.  (Don’t believe rumors that they let you go with hundreds to make a new life.)  That was my monthly 18 dollar paycheck for working at 12 cents an hour @40 hours a week plus what the country deemed I needed to start a new life.

Just the fact that I had nickels and dimes and quarters and twenties and ones and fives and tens in my hand…in my hand!  I felt stupid staring at the money as if I just jumped off a boat at the Statue of Liberty and walked into a new land.

It was an ugly spring day, grey….dreary.  The girl I went in with from Sioux Falls onto the con-air flight to the federal transfer center to the con-air flight back towards Minnesota (This government flew me to Kansas City to Oklahoma City for a week to fly me back to a prison that was only three hours away from where they picked me up and threw me shackled on a plane, yo taxpayers) Anyway, I made this journey with a few women and this girl was one that had the same release date as me.  So on this ugly spring day while I breathed air that always stunk from the inside, I never smelled air like that, it was freedom.  Everything about that day was epic and I was so punked.  Everything was beautiful and monumental and my friend was sitting there crying like a bitch for her girlfriend she left on the inside.  I felt like slapping her.

We spent money at the gas station where we waited for our bus to take us to our halfway houses.  The small towns flew by in my memory.  I saw people going on with their everyday life and here I was thinking, we were just locked up in a complex not to far from where you all live.  All these emotions, thousands of people inside this fence who miss home and hate your fuckin town.  Yet they never seen your town, and here you go bringing homemade fudge home from a bake sale that was at a church probably not far from where all these emotions are fenced in.

I got off the bus to catch a ride to the halfway house.  It was a Christian halfway house and it sucked worse than prison and county jail.  Young twenty year olds running it and totally disrespecting your humanity because of a few bad apples.  I don’t care if you just peed, I need a drug test in five minutes and all you get to drink is a tiny 4 oz cup of water so pee!

Fuck that.

Horrible, horrible spring, except-I did everything right.  I wasn’t a twenty year old who knew everything.  I been around the block a time or two and wanted my freedom.  I kept to myself.  Lent my shoulder for other twenty year old roommates to cry on.  Felt the pain of their lives.  Listened.

And I got out.

And I looked over my shoulder all the time.  I still do.

It was a beautiful spring of freedom but I think of those I left behind everyday. I think of their stories I listened to.  I think of the tears I saw but never looked at.  I think of the woman who did 14 years and still cried for wanting to go home, yet her home was no longer there.  I think of the roommate who still has 20 years.  I think of the tears I cried in the shower because it was the only place I could.  I think of people that shouldn’t be there.  Like the elderly Native lady whose kids sold drugs and she knew.  18 years because she knew her kids sold drugs.

These memories shackle me to the past so judgment from the outside don’t fuck with my head.

I don’t give a crap what people think of me, I move forward.  I regret losing time, but I don’t forget.

The other day, people on the news were harsh because two of the girls in Cleveland didn’t try to escape for their freedom like the one Native girl did.

This country has no empathy.

I only want people to understand, when you do time,  it stays with you.  You move on in life, do great things for people or yourself but that time taken from you never leaves.  I understand why they didn’t run.

It’s why I look over my shoulder everyday.

Spring now represents freedom to me.