In my memory, the Arlee powwow grounds were bordered on one side by a creek. Looking at Google maps, it appears that creek is farther away from the grounds than I remember. But I would swear that some Indian folks were camped almost next to that creek. I could easily fact check this geography by emailing my friends who live on that reservation. But, emotionally speaking, it feels more accurate to think of that creek as being a part of the powwow grounds rather than flowing a football field distance away.
I ran with those Indian kids to that creek, which was maybe two feet deep and flowing fast. The creek was perhaps five feet wide. And I remember running back and forth across a pedestrian bridge. A bridge across a creek? If my memory is true, then that creek must have been a popular destination. I remember those other Indian kids kicking off their sneakers and socks and splashing into the creek. It was only two feet deep. But I didn’t know how to swim. And so I was afraid. But then, bravely and irrationally, I pulled off my new moccasins, set them on that little bridge, and stepped into the water.
The water was so cold that I gasped. And it was moving fast. Looking again at Google maps, it appears that creek flows into the Jocko River, so that might account for the speed of the current. The other Indian kids, stronger and more graceful than me, ran with and against the current. But I could only carefully and clumsily walk with the current. I remember the feel of the slippery rocks on the creek bottom. If my memory is correct, then that creek must have been flowing fast for many years in order to smooth those rocks. It was a very hot day, so the water felt good. And I splashed the cold water at the other kids as they splashed water at me. We laughed. It wasn’t easy for me to make friends. But I thought these kids, who were nondancers like me, might become my friends for the rest of the powwow and help me forget my loneliness.
And then I heard a commotion behind me. A different kind of laughter. And I turned around to see an older Indian kid pick up my new moccasins from the bridge and drop them into the creek. I don’t remember if I said anything. If I cursed or shouted. But I distinctly remember those moccasins floating and flowing down that fast creek toward me. More than that, I remember that eight or ten or twelve Indian kids stood still in the water and watched my moccasins pass by. And then it was just me, unsteady in the current, as I crouched like a soccer goalie and tried to intercept my moccasins. I reached for them and missed. And then I dove after them as they floated away. But I missed again. I was briefly submerged in the shallow creek, and when I got back to my feet, I watched my moccasins disappear around the bend and then presumably flow into the Jocko River.
I know this is a sad story. In the context of a different and better and calmer childhood, this sad story might not even be all that sad. It might be worth a sigh or two. But this sad story has mythic power for me. In fact, this story is so painful for me that I almost didn’t include it in this book. Indeed, I added this chapter at the last possible moment before publication.
I vividly remember watching my new moccasins disappear. But I don’t remember stepping out of that creek. I don’t remember walking back to my aunt’s campsite. I can only recall stepping into the tepee and telling my aunt that I had lost my moccasins.
And then she slapped me hard across the face.
I was stunned.
My father had never practiced any form of corporal punishment on me. And my mother had, at that point, only physically assaulted me once. And, yes, she’d used a thick twig to spank my butt. But she’d punished me that severely because I had forced my little sisters to smoke cigarettes until they vomited.
And while I’d been slapped, punched, and kicked by other kids, I had never been struck by an adult.
And then my aunt slapped me again.
I fell to the ground in a fetal ball as she continued to slap my head, arms, legs, and back. She slapped me at least a dozen times. I would have many bruises. She screamed at me for losing my moccasins. She reminded me again and again that she had bought them for her son, and not for me. She called me an idiot. She called me a loser.
And then I rolled away from her, ducked under the edge of the tepee, and made my escape.
I didn’t return to my aunt’s campsite that night. I walked the powwow, barefoot and alone, for hours. Until the sun went down. Until the last powwow song ended. Until the food stands closed. Until even the last drunk had passed out. I was nine years old. I was angry and afraid. But I wasn’t going back to my aunt’s campsite. I refused to surrender, to concede, to seek her shelter.
I don’t remember if I slept that night. I do remember that an old Indian woman gave me a piece of fry bread the next morning. She took pity on me, I guess. I give thanks to her.
And then I walked around the powwow all that next day and again into the night until I heard my mother call out to me. She had returned to the powwow.
I remember she was carrying my shoes.
I remember that I fell asleep in the backseat of our car as she drove us back to our reservation.
I don’t remember arriving back home on our reservation.
When my father returned home from that particular drinking binge, he had shaved his hair into a mohawk.
I was embarrassed for him. Embarrassed for me. Embarrassed for every Indian in the world.
“I look like a warrior now,” he said to me.
“No, you don’t,” I said.
As I finished the first draft of this chapter, I smelled ozone, a common olfactory hallucination that happens to epileptics. I also tasted mud and tears. Silt. I thought of my mother carrying my shoes. I thought of my father removing his cowboy hat to reveal that mohawk hair.
A few years after I lost my new moccasins, my sister died in St. Ignatius, Montana, less than twenty miles away from the bridge across the creek.
Ozone.
Ozone.
Ozone.
I didn’t have a seizure while writing this chapter. But I smelled ozone. I smelled the dank water of that creek flowing away from me.
And I tasted blood in my mouth.
Over the last four decades, I have visited my friends and family on the Flathead Indian Reservation, but I have never again stepped foot on the Arlee powwow grounds.
And I have not worn a pair of moccasins in four decades.
110.
Kind
AFTER BEING PSYCHOLOGICALLY and physically tortured by our missionary teachers—by all of those cruel white women and men—and after finding little solace at home from our Native parents and grandparents, who’d been tortured in the same way, we Indian kids are hungry for any tenderness from anybody.
We fall in love too easily.
We get pregnant too young.
We run away with strangers.
Then we run away with other strangers.
Or we fall in love with the same boy or girl who was tortured alongside us. We spend our lives with the person who has the same scars in the same places. We make love with the person whose open wounds snap into ours like LEGO pieces. And then, of course, we rage at our neediness.
We might turn racist and sexist and homophobic—turning against those people as powerless as or more powerless than us.
We hate power.
We hate weakness.
We hate all white people.
Or we fall in love with all white people.
Or we fall in love with the white liberals who want to heal us.
Or we fall in love with the white conservatives who want to hurt us again.
We reenact the racist torture and salvation in our beds.
We cry in the arms of white people.
We cry in the arms of other Indians.
We boast and brag.
We insist our damage is greater than all of the damage suffered by all of the other damaged people. We are the gold medalists in the Genocide Olympics. Or maybe just the silver medalists. Or maybe we just win the bronze because Custer was only 25 percent as bad as Hitler.
In response to our generational pain, we Indian kids become addicte
d to torture—to the memory of torture. Or, wait, no, maybe we are addicted to gentleness—to gentle white people.
Hello, my name is Sherman and I am addicted to white people.
Or maybe, after centuries of being tortured by white civilization, I am addicted to those white folks who will reward me for being Indian. I am addicted to those white folks who will not torture me.
Does any of this sound like love?
111.
Tribalism
A NON-NATIVE friend said, “Native Americans were the victims of genocide. So why isn’t there a Museum of the Native American Genocide?”
And I said, “Because we Indians would spend years arguing about whose tribe suffered the worst massacre.”
I have visited museums of genocide in other countries. Though I realize “visited” is the wrong verb. “Endured” is too self-serving. Perhaps the best sentence is “I have experienced museums of genocide in other countries.”
And what do I remember?
I remember that I kept having to close my eyes against the pain. I often had to look away from the pain. I often had to sit on benches and stare at the blank floors.
And what do I make of the genocide museum in our own country? What do I make of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum?
It is a vital place. It is a grievous reminder. A warning. It is as necessary as any museum ever built.
But it also proves to me how the United States closes its eyes against the pain it has caused. The United States often looks away from the pain it has caused. The United States often sits on benches and stares at the blank floors.
So, if ever built, what will the United States Native American Genocide Memorial Museum contain? What will it exhibit?
It will be one room, a fifty-foot square with the same large photo filling the walls, ceiling, and floor.
There will only be one visitor allowed at any one time.
There will be no furniture.
That one visitor will have to stand or sit on the floor.
Or lie on the floor if they feel the need.
That visitor must remain in that room for one hour.
There will be no music.
The only soundtrack will be random gunshots from rifles used throughout American history.
Reverberation.
What will that one photo be?
It will be an Indian baby, shredded by a Gatling gun, lying dead and bloody in the snow.
It is a photo taken by a U.S. Cavalry soldier in the nineteenth century.
Very few people have seen that photo.
I have not seen that photo.
But I know it exists.
The Smithsonian keeps such photos locked away from us.
The United States wants all of us to forget the crimes it committed against the indigenous.
The United States wants us to forget.
The United States wants us to forget.
The United States wants us to forget.
A non-Native friend said, “Native Americans were the victims of genocide. So why isn’t there a Museum of the Native American Genocide?”
And I said, “Because we Indians would spend years arguing about whose tribe suffered the worst massacre.”
112.
Security Clearance
AFTER I’D AGREED to teach a writing workshop in a women’s prison, I received an application in the mail that asked me to “list the names of any relatives or close associates who have served or are currently serving time in correctional facilities anywhere in the world.”
I thought of my father and brother and uncles and reservation friends and cousins who’d been inmates. Then I called an official number. I was transferred, put on hold, ignored, interrogated, dismissed, and finally I was helped.
“So I’m supposed to list all of the people I know, or are related to, who have been in jail or prison?” I asked the friendly clerk.
“Yes,” he said.
“Even the ones I haven’t seen in years? Or decades?”
“Well, it’s safer to answer as completely as possible.”
“What if they’re dead?”
“Put them down and write ‘Deceased’ by their names.”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “You’re sure I need to put all of them?”
“That’s what I advise,” he said. “And what kind of crimes are we talking about here?”
“Murder and attempted murder,” I said. “Rape, child rape. Assault. Robbery. Drug possession and drug dealing. Domestic violence. Forgery. Failure to appear in court. Failure to pay criminal fines. Contempt of court. Theft. Public intoxication. Driving while intoxicated.”
“Wow,” the clerk said. “Have you ever been convicted of a crime?”
“Two speeding tickets,” I said. “One in nineteen eighty-nine, and one in two thousand eight.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah, I’m the rebel of the family.”
I again looked down at the small space where I was supposed to supply the required information about my convict family.
“You know,” I said. “There’s not enough room on the application to list everybody.”
“You can put them on a separate sheet,” he said. “And attach it to the application.”
“Are you sure it’s okay to do that?” I asked.
“You wouldn’t be the first,” he said. “Some people have attached two additional pages.”
“Wow,” I said, and laughed.
Then I said my good-byes and, as a long-distance and complete nonparticipant in a one-page indigenous criminal clan, I listed all of those felons who share at least some of my genetics.
It took me approximately an hour.
113.
Ode to Gray
Has anybody written an ode to gray?
Well, if not, then let me be the first. Let me praise
The charcoal pit, tweed suit, and cloudy X-ray
That reveals, to your amateur dismay,
Nothing you understand. Who has been amazed
Enough to write a breathy love song to gray and gray’s
Nearly imperceptible interplay
With other grays? Oh, how beautiful the haze
Of charcoal pits, tweed suits, and cloudy X-rays
Of airport luggage. I love the dog day,
The long delay, the existential malaise.
Has anybody written an ode to gray?
If not, then let me proceed without delay.
Oh, let me construct an army made of clay.
Marching, marching, they will be my ode to gray,
To charcoal pit, tweed suit, and cloudy X-ray.
114.
Tyrannosaurus Rez
Yes, I’ve survived
All of the genocidal shit that killed
So many in my tribe,
And it is absurd
That I’ve made a great career
Out of nouns and verbs,
But, look,
It’s a miracle when any writer
Sells even one damn book.
So listen to me: I was conceived
With twenty thousand years
Of my ancestors’ stories
Locked in my gray matter
And flooding my marrow.
So don’t think I’m flattered
With your homily
About how I must be
Some kind of anomaly.
I am my mother’s son.
I am my father’s child.
And they left me a trust fund
Of words, words, and words
That exist in me
Like dinosaurs live in birds.
115.
Objectify
“Desire is the inconvenience of its object.
Lourdes isn’t Lourdes if you live in Lourdes.”
—Don Paterson, Best Thought, Worst Thought
How often have I walked through my front door
And forgotten to exult? Why won’t I roar
For all of the obje
cts that I adore?
When did I stop praising the books I hoard
And the bookcases, lovingly restored?
Why do I ignore the baskets and gourds?
O Lord, let my love for things be reborn.
Let me sanctify my hand drums, adorned
With feather, paint, and bead. Let me drum for
The star quilts piled on the beds and floors.
I own so much yet want for so much more.
Why do I greet the sacred with my scorn?
From this day forward, let us be forewarned:
Lourdes isn’t Lourdes if you live in Lourdes.
116.
My Mother as Wolf
Reintroduced into the wilderness, my mother
Struggles to remember what
Her wolf ancestors knew in their DNA—
and here, just as this poem begins, I have to tell you that when that first stanza originally popped into my head, I dropped into a fugue state that had me flying through the universe while dodging planets and suns. This flying-through-the-universe thing had previously happened only when I tried to meditate. Whether guided by teachers or during some half-assed attempts of my own, I’d never been able to calm myself and empty my mind. Instead, moments into any attempts to meditate, I’d fly with light speed through the endless dark. I’d be awed by the beauty of the universe and terrified by the isolation. Some friends tell me that I might have been in a meditative state anyway. I don’t believe it because I’d fly for only a minute or two before I’d fall asleep. So I think I might have been disassociating instead of meditating. Maybe I’m too terrified to let go of this terrifying world. Maybe I’m just sleep-deprived. I often get sleepy during moments of stress. I could fall asleep during a gunfight. Sounds like disassociating, right? And it seems to me that disassociating is the opposite of meditating—