6/10 WHITE EARTH [Minnesota]

It feels good to be back on friendly soil. Minnesota, I've missed you. I've missed gas stations where you can pay after you pump, where it's all self-service, and who sell magazines inside. I've missed water. I've missed towns I can pronounce. I've missed strong expressions of support being masked by negating negatives (It's not as bad as I thought!). I've missed being able to understand the locals the first time they say something.

Car problems in Texas: "Did you check your awl?" (BAD)
Car problems in Minnesota: "Didja check your oil?" (GOOD)

I don't really spend much time in White Earth, although I've been told that the White Bison office is planning on writing up this stop as my return to my homeland or some such. So, look for that. They have a gorgeous tribal facility there; I say "facility" because I didn't get a good sense of what it was used for outside of the meeting room we borrowed. Parts looked kind of museum-y, parts seemed to be governmental... and there were several meeting rooms. Anyways, it was a beautiful structure.

Now a few days behind on blogging (go figure), my memories of White Earth are fading quickly.
What I do remember is that my family drove down to attend; it was very good to see them all again. This is also the first time I'd seen Patrick in a long time, and he didn't seem terribly miffed that I'd missed his college graduation a few days earlier.

My mother is much smaller than Don.

For our M.C., we wanted someone comfortable in front of a crowd. Andy Favorite is a storyteller by nature and occupation. And so, everything he said was interesting and well-said; unfortunately, he said nearly everything that was possible to say. Missing the increasingly less-subtle clues that he should wrap up his stories or stick to the topic, we listened to the history of timber harvesting until the kitchen staff (in desperation over their rapidly-cooling meal) just started dishing up food as a way of starting the long-overdue lunch.

I'd love to sit down with him sometime and just listen to him talk. Now wasn't that time, however; I'm not sure what timber harvesting had to do with anything, either.

Two elders look at... something?

The ceremony ended with the gift of two bricks to Don: relics from the ruins of the original boarding school in White Earth. I think I've captured the exact moment where Don realized he didn't have any idea what he was supposed to do with two bricks.

Seriously, though, we're going to take them to Washington, have them blessed, then bring them back. They will become part of White Earth's proposed "Healing Wall," based on the Vietnam Wall. Each brick will have a story or something -- these two will form part of the foundation.