6/19 THOMAS INDIAN SCHOOL [Gowanda, New York]

I've only been in New York once before; I had an extended layover at the airport. I thought, perhaps, I could go check out the sights and pick up some souvenirs while I was there; instead, I ended up falling asleep on a bench in the airport. I imagine sleeping on a bench sums up at least some of the New York experience.


More recently: The drive through the New York state was notably different than the flight through New York City. The highway system appears to be composed of nothing but windy back roads through forested, hilly areas. Overall, it looks a little like Michigan or Wisconsin, but more faded around the edges. It's pastoral without brilliant colors.


On reaching Gowanda, we drove straight to the clinic where the coordinators worked. Their goal in promoting this event is promotion of community mental health, and they were glad to see us. We discussed the upcoming event a little, but the conversation got sidetracked by stories of how unpleasant the clinic is and how often staff members die.

As a piece of background information, the clinic had been built over a burial ground. If Hollywood has taught me anything, it's that there are four buildings you should never put on Indian burial grounds: homes, hospitals, pet shops, and hotels. I think a clinic is close enough to 'hospital' to put it in the danger zone.

What followed was, I think, an exorcism.

Actually, whatever it was that we did (it involved feathers and a bell and smoke) differed from an exorcism in at least one important way. In an exorcism, it's a direct conflict between a human and a supernatural agent. They fight, and one is destroyed. (disclaimer: my understanding of the procedure comes mostly from The Exorcist III: Legion)

The feel here was friendlier; inviting any lost spirits to come home. No one wants to hang around a clinic, anyways: here's an open door for you.

This was one of the stranger adventures. Personally, I'd be surprised if a bell made the clinic suddenly better; but if everyone shows up for work tomorrow believing things are improved, that's bound to make it a more pleasant place to be. In that way, I'm sure we helped.

That said, my mantra for this Journey still holds true: "There are more things in Heaven and Earth..." What the heck do I know, anyways?


The next day saw me get a late start out of bed. The bizarre little hotel we stayed in neglected to provide any clocks, and my cell phone ran out of juice during the night. I say "bizarre" not just because of the oddly-shaped rooms and obvious widespread mildew, but because the owners clearly were hedging their bets about how best to make a buck. This was possibly the world's only combination hotel/lounge/restaurant/karate academy. I dare you to find me one other than in Gowanda, New York.


In the parking lot, I met an early arrival who spent the day trying to get an autographed picture of Don to go with his autographed book. I tried to help a time or two, but you have to admit that it would be pretty creepy if any of us traveled around the country with a stack of pre-printed photographs of our boss. After a certain number of weeks, human relationships just don't work that way.


The person slated to wire the microphones didn't show up, so I bowed out of the outside march-to-the-site so I could tinker with sound. The plan was to walk from the public library to a wing of the clinic constructed on the grounds of the old boarding school. My focus on equipment was not, I guess, appropriate: Marlin drove up looking for me and communicated via frantic hand gestures that I should leave whatever I was doing and go take pictures.

This is not the type of situation in which I work best, and in my hurry to get into Marlin's car I left behind my "shoe," a small but important piece of plastic that holds a video camera onto a tripod. I realized it was missing once I was at the library, and I tried to run there and back before the procession started.

If you've ever spent any real amount of time with me, you know what happened next. I got horribly lost. Luckily, the moment I left the library door, Wayne inferred both what was happening and what was going to happen; it took only a few minutes before his car caught up with my headlong plunge in the wrong direction. He drove me the rest of the way. Thanks.

The whole adventure turned out to be for naught, however, as the batteries on the camcorder gasped their last soon after I turned it on. The constant draining and recharging that they've been put through the last few weeks have all but destroyed all four of the lithium-ion packs I purchased. The wear and tear on equipment is really starting to add up; this will be a much more expensive trip than I planned. There's a lot that I'm just going to have to replace when I get home. In the meantime, I can't count on using my cameras without direct access to AC plug-ins. At least I got some stills.





After the opening speakers finished, it became clear that my microphonery had been inadequate -- thanks to problems in the building's wiring I couldn't have anticipated and hadn't previously had time to test. Although the speaker was, technically, amplified, her words were still inaudible in most of the room and raising the volume on the mic caused it to move directly into wild distortion. To fix the problem, I executed what may have been my very best set-up operation. NASCAR had nothing on me. I had our own speaker system brought in, set up, wired, and running in half the time it took at any other location.

Oh, man. I re-read that sentence and realized how proud I am about setting up speaker cables quickly. Geez. No wonder I'm single.

Anyways, foolishly proud of myself, I left the newly-mic'd podium behind to see if any local businesses had donated snacks (this sometimes happens). Like most places, they had bottles of water available for people; unlike anywhere else, however, they also had little packets of powder for people. With a few seconds of shaking, you could have your very own personal bottle of fruit punch, lemonade, or berry juice. What a great, great idea!


The morning went fine after that.

If I had to condense the afternoon into a single theme, I'd have to go with: "Thomas Indian School was okay for me, because it was an escape from my alcoholic parents who couldn't afford to feed their kids." The dark irony here, as I'm sure I've written about elsewhere, is that those parents wouldn't have been abusive alcoholics if they hadn't learned that behavior themselves at Thomas Indian school. When the disease is hailed as its own cure... no wonder the community is sick.


Even while people were grateful that they'd been fed as children, there was still a lot of resentment. The school had been a big supporter of the 'outing' system, in which children 'learn by doing.' This sounds like such a great idea, but it devolved into nothing more than child labor. One man vividly related his years of getting up at 5 AM every day to bale hay. For those not familiar with farm life, baling hay is not a terribly time-sensitive job. So, he worked for a white family for a few years for no pay and little food; but at least he learned a valuable on-the-job skill -- provided he hoped to go into a career of baling hay and nothing else.

A woman spent every summer being 'outed,' and she had no qualms today about calling herself a slave. She ended up at the same farm with a rotating group of other Indian girls, working the fields for long hours every day. The farm family had a daughter of their own, the same age: "their natural daughter [. . .] never set foot in the fields."

Another man remembered the school's policy on brushing teeth. If, at bedtime, your teeth weren't perfectly white, the punishment is that you'd be held while a teacher brushed your teeth until blood was clearly visible. He ended his story with a sardonic: "But I learned how to brush my teeth!" which got a few laughs.

Quote: "Everywhere you went... it was marching."

One young lady's grandmother was permanently blinded in one eye with an iron poker. Once, I would have thought the teacher disciplining her had made a terrible mistake. Now, I immediately entertain the idea that it was completely intentional. My thinking about the world has changed, and that gives me pause. But then again, how many innocent forms of discipline can you think of that involve an iron poker and a little girl's face?

Yet more men talked about going straight from school into the military. "I thought the military was the easiest thing there was!" No amount of control was seen as unusual; no order was questioned. Violence was second-nature.


And even with all the grievances, almost everyone at this stop said that going to school was still better than being left at home.


Their parents had no idea how to raise children, and struggled with their own scarred psyches through self-medication. And then their kids went off to school and grew up with scarred psyches and no idea how to raise children, but a vague appreciation that the school had saved them.

Many people talked about the shame they felt about having no idea how to be a parent to their children, and many confessed to a lifetime of "cold" relationships. The ability to form a meaningful connection with another person had been squelched after being continually thwarted during their formative years. One man put it nicely when he said: "No school teaches intimacy, or love. Parents teach that. And they took us away from our parents!"
And that brings up a fundamental problem with the whole concept of the boarding school, even the "good" upper-class English style. There's a reason why every successful culture in history has had some form of family unit. Some things can never be learned from a textbook, and many lessons can never be beaten into someone. Families are necessary; when removed from the equation, there's a kind of education that is forever lacking.

In the words of one man, "here at the school, you were SEPARATED." His older sister went to the same school. Thanks to the careful oversight of his teachers, he didn't know who she was until he was in his teens.

One older woman revealed the emotional scars she's carried her entire life from never being told about puberty: she had no one to turn to. In a world where every action might potentially lead to harsh, violent discipline, she hid her body's changes in desperate fear and confusion. To this day, it pains her to remember those years.

The last few speakers all touched on the theme of damaged self-image. One man said that his thoughts as a child followed the pattern: "I'm not an Indian. I don't want to be an Indian. Everyone looks down on you..." Another man said: "Growing up, I thought we were second-class citizens;" a belief that he could find endless justification for in the way that he and his family were treated. One elder, at 72 years old, had an audible crack in his voice while talking about his lifelong inability to fit in. School left him "neither white, nor Indian," and he hasn't yet found his full identity, an absence which still hurts.

Luckily, the day ended on a high note, with a man defiantly shouting: "I'm proud to be an Indian, whether I'm wanted or not!" Applause and cheers followed.


Fun Fact: while it was open, Thomas Indian School was almost universally called "Saalem." Now that it's closed, people are willing to admit that the nickname was made up by the children who attended it -- it's a shortened form of "Asylum," modified just enough in pronunciation so as to not be clearly recognizable. Although the word has two meanings, it was always intended to be a reference to a prison, not a sanctuary. That the school actually acted as a dark combination of those definitions is just one of life's ironies.