Finally Caught Up!

Santa Fe was our 'off' day. The one day where there was no driving, no ceremonies, and no meetings. In celebration, we got rooms in this nice motel right near the center of "The Plaza," and were encouraged to get out and explore.

The motel, instead of being built normally with the backs of rooms facing each other, was built so that the back of each room faces the street. The result is that all the doors are accessible via a little "hollow" formed between the two rows, making them seem more secluded and private than they actually are. Plus, the hollow was decorated with cobbled walkways and large bunches of dried peppers handing from the railings. It looks like a peaceful street in some sort of central-American / Mediterranean hybrid, and it's a great idea.

The room itself is one of the nicest I've ever been in, which is lucky since I didn't really leave all day. The city was worth exploring, but what I really, really needed was a day of dark, quiet, rest. As an added bonus, this is the first time I've ever made a post about the current day. I'm all caught up!

To clear off my notepad entirely of notes, here's everything that's left over:

Still haven't filmed that 10-minute news update. Doubting it will happen, now.

Tried backing up videotapes in the car. Too bumpy for camera. Must do it at night in the hotels. Pain in the butt.

Several former schoolchildren have complained about being used to test vaccines. I think Stewart was one of them.

Stewart apparently now also houses the department of prisons, which like every other building there, looks like it would fit nicely into either New England or Itasca Park.

Don often gets "eaten" at these stops. He's a powerful and influential guy, and people swarm his every free minute looking to be recognized, have their picture taken, shake his hand, and so forth. He's often unable to eat lunch, and has a hard time even making it to the bathroom without being physically blocked by someone who smiles, sticks their hand out, and says, "I bet you don't remember me!" He looks very tired sometimes.

Nevada reminds me of an egg carton: huge, flat 'bowls' surrounded by a ring of mountains on all sides. Make it through the mountains, find another 'bowl' on the other side.

Remember to make other posts: ceremony order, people wandering, sitting in back, religion and me, more photos. Remember to sort photos so you can upload them.

Done.

Travel, Again

Breaking with tradition, we stayed an extra night in Phoenix instead of getting directly in the car after the ceremony finished. This was apparently the plan all along, but I must have missed hearing that -- I'd already checked out of my hotel room.

Once that was sorted out, Wayne and Marlin and I (Marlin came back, by the way) went out to dinner and had our fifth consecutive chicken meal. Chicken seems popular out here, and we'd all missed breakfast that morning. As chickens go, the meal was pretty good. After that we wandered around Phoenix a little bit -- it's nicer when the sun sinks a little -- and hit up a DQ for some frozen goodness. We talked about the friendly lady at the Al-Anon booth, how getting good opening speakers makes a world of difference, and of our plans for the next few days. On the way back, something odd happened. We passed an AA meeting that was happening in one of the Phoenix branches, and both guys decided to stop in.

I know that these meetings are available for all AA members, but it struck me as very odd that they would want to 'swing in' to a meeting in Phoenix full of strangers they'll never see again. The thought rattled around my head for the next two hours as I re-packed my van and cleaned some of my equipment before it finally stuck to an idea.

As is well known, alcoholism is rampant in Indian country. The fight against it in an individual's life is a psychically draining, wrenching process that makes people stronger, wiser, more complete human beings. It's almost impossible to do alone, and requires the support of communities like AA, building lifelong bonds and creating a powerful shared experience between all recovered and recovering alcoholics. That shared experience is strong enough that my companions had no doubts about stopping in to a room full of strangers to say hi for the evening.

And maybe that's a problem.

This titanic personal struggle has become so common in some communities that it starts to look like a rite-of-passage. Drinking provides a social boost twice: once when you're young and fit in to all the parties, and once when you're a sober adult and can form instant social connections with other sober adults. Trust and comfort can normally take years to develop, but suddenly there's this shortcut where you can say, "You've done one of the hardest things to do in your life. So have I, and I know where you're coming from." Then it's okay to cry and share stories. This is a good thing.

However if you've always been sober, you've got neither of those social boosts. There are no instant friends in strange towns where you can just stop by and be greeted with open arms. You're just another passing stranger, a nobody. Then, when you go home, what if all your friends and neighbors share this bond that you don't?


I hesitated about posting this for a long time. AA is an amazing organization, and overcoming
alcoholism is a brutally difficult thing to do; I don't want to dismiss either of those or diminish them in any way. I suppose my real point is that when a community, as a whole, becomes saturated with alcohol, even removing the alcoholism doesn't fix everything. Strange community problems still linger, even in the solutions, and the sober ones aren't exempt.


After a good night's sleep, we set off on an entire day of traveling east, some 12 hours or so. I had a few thoughts about the scenery. First, it's amazing how quickly the ecosystem can change. From flat nothing, to flat green, to sudden hills, to cactus forests, to mini-mountains, to dry mini-mountains, back to flat nothing... in the space of a mile everything about an area can change, and sometimes the change is even more abrupt than that.

Secondly, cactuses are really weird. They're way taller than I expected, and go from being shriveled, highly-ribbed posts in the dryer areas, to bulbous, nearly-bursting growths in the damper areas. Plus, their 'arms' are so randomly placed and look for all the world like new, cancerous cactuses spilling out of the main stalk -- some cross between the parasites of "Alien" and mutation science gone wrong. Seriously, though, they're tall. Like 10-15 feet straight up.

I was the only one who ate dinner, mostly because Wayne was so upset that the diner we stopped at only served two kinds of hamburgers (I don't know, ask him), and it gave me an unfortunate stomache-ache. When we pulled in late at night in Santa Fe, I fell asleep immediately after nearly tearing the roof off my van in a stupid parking garage. I had no more patience that day for careful parking. Sleep came quickly.

5/27 STEELE [Phoenix, Arizona]

After finishing in Sherman we drove all night, as per usual. The night before, I had dropped out of dinner and some planning stuff, and slept for nearly 15 hours. The ability to do this was a Godsent, as I would have been in a world of hurt, otherwise. I could feel my body wearing down, between the stairs and the sunburn and the never, ever sleeping, and the constant driving -- without that break I would have probably have been physcially unable to go on soon.

As is, however, I'm feeling just fine. Hello, Arizona.

We entered the city via exit 133A, which is an awfully nice way to enter the city. Because of the labyrinthian road system, this particular exit makes a truly huge arc over a tangle of roads, and provided us with a flyby view of the lights of the whole city. It was beautiful. The lights were mostly pinpricks, of course, as it was nearing 1AM by that point and most things were closed.



I was dreading the day's filming (bright and early start!) because my sunburn was just starting to heal. Luckily, I guess, the thermometer spiked at 102 degrees and everything was moved inside. Blessings can be funny like that.


The room they put us in was just lovely. It consisted of a medium-sized white wood auditorium, with an extra few rows of seats above in a glass-walled balcony. I cordoned off the balcony, and used it as my personal camera mount and equipment storage. It ended up working out really well, both for me and for the event: this forced everyone into tighter quarters down below, which helped create a community feeling that had been absent from Sherman.

The downside of it being so nice was that they banned the use of tobacco, sage, and anything else that is used by burning. This ruffled a few feathers (so to speak) and sage, particularly, is an important part of the ending ceremony.


I suppose I should more clearly define how these days are conducted... someone remind me of that soon. For now, just know that sage is needed.


As a minor rarity, the opening speakers were great. Too often, the opening speakers have either not understood what was going on, or had an ulterior motive like re-election, promoting rennovation, or expressing some unrelated political opinion. As a result, this seems to give people permission to ramble, themselves, during the open-mic period. These speakers were focused and on-topic, and everyone who spoke after them followed their lead. As a result, we had lots of time for some amazing stories to come forth, a few of which I will paraphrase here.

One middle-aged woman (50ish) talked about her family's relationship with boarding schools. Her grandparents' history is unknown, but they feared the schools greatly. When agents came for their son (her father), they had him hide in a basket. When the police started ransacking their home, they tied the basket down, strapped it to a horse, and sent the horse racing off into the night with a hard smack. The boy was five years old.


Through tricks like this, they kept him out of school. When he grew up, however, he was not so lucky. Agents took away his eldest daughter, age 8, to 'civilize' her. The remaining family would often think about her, imagining how she was learning skills, becoming educated and successful, maybe making friends. In truth, she died almost immediately after arriving at the school. The school was a hotbed for smallpox; no measures were taken to curb the disease. It was assumed preventative measures were hopeless, because Indians just had naturally deficient immune systems. This just sped up the natural selection process. Her family didn't know she was dead until 4 years later. Her body has never been found; it's unlikely she was given a grave. Her younger sister was the one speaking, and her rage and grief were clearly still a daily burden for her. 4 years of dreaming and wondering.

One can hardly wonder, however, that no one bothered to contact her family. The teachers probably didn't even know who had died. This was a planned, carefully executed strategy employed at virtually every school: dehumanize the students by making them unrecognizable. This was accomplished by regulation uniforms, government-issued boots, and identical bowl haircuts. In nearly any picture, the students are virtually indistinguishable. This allowed the teachers to do their work with less risk of attachment or emotion.

Kneeling was a common form of punishment, both here and elsewhere. It was mentioned more often here, though. Straight-up kneeling, no matter for how long, was unlikely to be satisfactorily viscious, so it was often varied based on age. Young kids would get a few hours kneeling on rice. A little older: that would add another hour and wood chips, instead of rice. The oldest kids would have to kneel on a broom stick. One would be tempted to say that the older kids should have known better, except -- oh, that's right -- the punishments were handed out randomly as a way of keeping the students psychologically timid and unbalanced.

Clothing was not only regulated during the day, but at night, as well. Suitable clothing for girls consisted of a nightgown, and only a nightgown. Some nuns had the job of going into the girls' dorm during the night and randomly stripping the sheets off of a sleeping child. If the child was found to be wearing underwear under their nightgown, she was forced to strip naked immediately and was then whipped.

This may sound terrible, but isolated. It's not. Steele is the SECOND school so far where women have talked about being whipped for wearing underwear at night under their nightgowns. Since it's only the seventh school we've been to, and it's been brought up unprompted both times, those numbers put it pretty close to "general practice." As I'm sure everyone is thinking it already, I won't bother to put in a paragraph about the nuns following up these nightly raids with sexual molestation.

These children are now adults. This isn't distant history. Anyone else feel nausious?

Towards the end of the day, an elder stood up and told about her daily ritual at Steele. Once a day, class would be put on hold, and everyone would line up along the side of the classroom. One-by-one, each student would be bent over the teacher's knee, spanked, and told, "you're filthy and you stink." This happened every day. She then broke down completely into tears and apologized to her adult children in the audience: "The teachers were my mothers... I was only just learning how to be a mother with you." There were few dry eyes in the audience.

Another woman talked about how, for generations in her family, children would go off to school (mostly Carlisle) and vanish. It was family custom to never speak of them again or say their names. Today, she feels that's had a strong negative impact that stretches down to current day.

Also, somewhere during the day, someone talked about how the teachers would send you to Confession if they could you wearing mocassins. There, you had to confess to wearing mocassins, and you would be given a penance to make up for your "sins." How stupid.

Like every place, Steele wasn't entirely without some scrap of virtue. During the 70s, it was the only place for miles around that would give a high school education to pregnant teens. That's worth a little something, I suppose.

In all, it was a powerful and satisfying day, maybe the best so far. I appreciated not having quite so many stairs to deal with, and being out-of-the sun was great. We opened up a lot of wounds, but we left with the feeling that that's exactly what they needed to heal. Today we did good work.


Marlin uses a wing to "wipe the pain away" from a woman.

(edit: It occurs to me now that "Steele" is a fairly recent name. When it was actually in operation through the 1980s, it had a different name. I think it might have just been Phoenix Indian School, but I could be wrong.)

5/26 SHERMAN INDIAN SCHOOL [Riverside, California]

I guess this is somewhere in the vicinity of Los Angeles, insofar as there was a clearly defined smog line stretching through the desert that we had to drive through before getting to Riverside.


Riverside, like most of the towns in southern California we've passed through, has a clear "oasis" look. The town itself is very long and winding, rather than radial, no doubt closely following some little stream or spring. Everywhere throughout the town are dark green lawns, lighter green trees, and tall skinny palm trees that keep all their leaves and fruit on the very highest peak.
Everywhere else, there are no houses, no greens, no signs of life. Just flat, tan, dry desert, with one torn green patch of life surrounded by nothing.


This was expected to be a particularly wrenching ceremony, as Sherman is pretty famous, as boarding schools go. However, in the end, it was something rather anti-climactic. I have to admit that I didn't follow the ceremony very closely, because of the painting. I should explain that sentence.


The halls were being painted white that day, so my path between my two cameras took an extremely roundabout route that involved no less than five flights of stairs. I didn't want to walk through the ceremony, or through the paint, so I got the most extreme workout I've had in a long, long time. During the nine hours I was manning those cameras, I have no doubt I walked many, many miles in stairs.


Three days later, my calves are still killing me, and they complain vocally every time I stand up after sitting down for more than 30 minutes.


One story I did hear, however, was from a local man probably in his 60s. When he was young, his older brother drowned in the nearby creek, and his body was swept away. Or, at least, that's what they thought. His family believed that for almost a month, before discovering that he hadn't actually been in the creek: he had been kidnapped by missionaries who put him in Sherman 'to get a good education.' In the meantime, however, his family had dredged the river, held a funeral, and mourned the death of their child.


There were also two people who confirmed that one of the government's tactics to get children was to round up nonconforming families and lock them in Alcatraz. Yes, that Alcatraz. They would only be released when they broke down and told where their kids were hiding. By the time they returned home, their children would already be gone.


Oh, but as far as "anti-climatic" goes, the ceremony as a whole didn't have the energy we expected. People still got into it, and there were still lots of tears and prayers, but there was a defensiveness that was pretty apparent. Some people didn't want Sherman's good name (it's still open) tarnished. Also, the auditorium offered too many ways for people to spread out, so it always looked kind of empty, despite a decent turnout. It's amazing how driven people are to sit in the farthest back corner -- the back row was pretty full even though the auditorium was divided in two and we turned out all the light for the back half. It was darned dark back there, but you could still the occasional glint from the glasses of someone hiding in the shadows. Finally, there were one too many speakers who lost track of what they were supposed to be talking about, and just took advantage of the chance to be listened to. I'm going to devote a post to that phenomenon soon.


So, rambling speakers addressing an empty-looking room, interspersed with Sherman supporters who wanted to remind everyone that maybe these things happened, but today we've got an all-star track team. Go Sherman!


It was still good to be there, it just wasn't what was expected.



Picture Below: People line up to say prayers and offer tobacco to the Hoop.

Kill the Indian, Save the Man

I mentioned this phrase a few posts back without thinking about it. Just to be clear, "Kill the Indian, Save the Man," was an official government objective, written out by the originator of the boarding school system, a guy appropriately named Pratt.

It was a widely accepted and adopted saying for many years.

Here's the quote it first came from:

A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one, and that high sanction of his destruction has been an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.

The Days Inn

The Days Inn chain is a strange one, in that it appears to be up to each individual branch owner to decide how they’re going to run their business. There have been two great Days Inns so far. This, it turns out, is not one of them. I don’t wish to be a complainer, but the tub was separating from the wall. The lights in the bathroom couldn’t be turned on without also turning on the fan, which was broken and fought violently to escape from the ceiling. The “laundry room” consisted of a single washing machine from the 1970s, which I broke immediately by trying to make it start. At least six people tried to use the machine afterwards (it was right by my door), with no luck.

The walls were pretty thin, and someone was yelling all night long.

5/24 STEWART FACILITY [Carson City, Nevada]

Don't you just get a warm, fuzzy feeling from this sign?

This was our first outdoor event. That led to a whole lot more excitement and bustle than I needed first thing in the morning, but ultimately went off pretty much flawlessly. The school there was midway through its renovation into a museum, and it lacked things like, oh, electricity. So, we found an electricity (just the one lonely little electron, but he was a trooper), and turned their nicely manicured lawn into a veritable deathtrap of hidden extension cords. All of my extension cords (3 of them) got used up trying to get power into one of the buildings, and we had to use one of our lifelines to get a local to bring about 10 more cords.

Nevada, like expected, is mostly brown and tan, and very dry. In a few select areas, however, little rivers run – the riot of growth exploding away from the water is stunning. Rich greens of grasses and trees bleed away from the rivers as far as they can stretch, then fade back to the flat tan of the rest of landscape. Life thrives where it can.

It’s also, you know, sunny. I burned to a crisp, prompting the rest of the group to spend the next two days teasing me about becoming a red man. If any word of protest escaped my lips about the pain, someone was bound to shake their head and solemnly declare that “forced assimilation” always hurts.

As always, see the White Bison site for a more complete report. One thing that stuck out for me, however, was a story about punishment. If you did something wrong, you had a three-part punishment. First, you dig a trench. Then, you haul water to fill up the trench. Finally, you walk back and forth in the wet trench all night long. Nevada nights are cold. The speaker’s father underwent this punishment; he marched back and forth all night next to a fellow student who died of pneumonia a few days later.

I think people need to know how much anger is running through these communities. Don says that the alcohol and drug abuses that are so common are just a symptom of the real problem; there’s so much resentment just below the surface it’s frightening.

Imagine if the trench story was at a military training camp. There’d be an investigation, a scandal, a bunch of newspaper articles. Imagine it took place at ANY OTHER SCHOOL in the nation. The school would be shut down immediately: these are the only schools at any point in history that are allowed to simply ignore student deaths.

Or, in some cases, actively encourage student deaths. Marlin talked about his grandmother; when she was 8 years old, her best friend was killed by a nun in front of the student body to set an example. In the nun’s defense, she probably didn’t mean to actually kill the little girl. In the defense of all that is good and decent in this world, however, killing 8-year-olds is so far beyond damnable that, even if some portion was accidentally, this still qualifies as an all-out atrocity. All the little girls in the school watched their friend die, “to set an example.”

To set an example.

Wouldn’t you be angry? How could you possibly manage to not pass that anger on to your children?

It’s possible to end the pain; but it’s unbelievably hard, and it’s one of the things White Bison is trying to teach people now. Please pray for them.

This was another difficult stop, as Stewart is half-way through rennovation to become a commemorative museum. The coordinator has spent years getting the place preserved and is now on the cusp of being able to show the world the amazing piece of history she has saved. I think just about everything we said was a surprise for her, and not a pleasant one, either. She looked pretty bowled over by the end of the day. Some of the people showed up with aching hearts, and others showed up ready to wave their flags and cheer. Those goals don't mix together well.

That's not to say that both aren't, to a degree, right. Some good came out of some of the schools. They weren't all consistently, with no exceptions, hellish. The problem is how often the worst is ignored, and how often it's not even known about.

I feel we're doing good work, and necessary work, but it's harder to get excited when you leave behind someone completely dispirited.

On an unrelated note, the closest hotel we could find wasn't in Carson City, it was in Elko -- which is, apparently, in Japan.

The Turin of the Screw

This motel appears to have been decorated by the ghost of Henry James. It's clearly some kind of lush Victorian nightmare, except with running water. Running water that tastes kinda funny.

Actual ghost of Henry James may differ from that pictured.





In a looong stretch to tie two ideas together into an unnecessary pun, I will now speak of dinner.

Marlin had gone back home for his son's graduation -- he'll be back shortly. That left myself, Don, Wayne, and Maria to find some food. Before the food showed up, I made some comment about being sad about how religion is being defined by its worst examples -- I was thinking of the many, many stories we've heard of sexually abusive priests, bloodthirsty nuns, and the spiritual doctrine of "Kill the Indian, Save the Man." Surprisingly, they disagreed.

This led into a discussion lasting over an hour of the many, many abuses of the Catholic church (particularly). This list is no doubt well known by most people, and stretches from the murderous, money-driven Crusades to modern-day abortion clinic firebombings. Of course, particular emphasis was given to their actions against the Indian people; besides the boarding schools, there was the infamous Council of Bishops to determine if Indians were human beings, secret Church funding of boarding schools after the government backed out (this funding continued in some places until the 1960s, and 'saved' some of the worst schools from closing), and the current-day 'grassroots movement' of dutiful Christians who host bonfires on reservations and encourage the locals to burn their feathers, beads, and historic art.

Most of this I was aware of, and nothing they said surprised me much. Catholicism, as an organization, is beyond humongous. In any organization larger than about five people, there's always going to be someone who misuses power, uses the group to validate their own personal faults, or somehow behaves like a jackass and reflects poorly on the rest of their companions. The Catholic Church, being one of the largest and most powerful organizations in the world, has their fair share of abusers in dusty corners. That doesn't make the 'whole' bad.

If a violent crime occurs in Wisconsin, does that mean that Americans are bad? No, it means one single American was bad.

But what really shook me, during this conversation, was another perspective I hadn't considered. Corrupt individuals hiding behind a label don't make the label bad; that's clear and, I think, beyond question. But if a violent crime occurs in Wisconsin, the American police come in and stop it. That's what keeps "Americans" from being a negative -- the governing power fixes its mistakes, or at least tries to. The Church, on the other hand, protects its fallen. If a priest molests his congregation, he is shipped off to a new congregation in the middle of the night. Abuses occur ed in boarding schools, and much of what went on is still secret, thanks to Church interference.

Individual bad seeds don't bring down the Church; but what does it mean that the Church refuses to purge those seeds, and continues planting them along with the good? Even if they're not defined by the actions of individual members, they are defined by the fact that they support those individual members and enable them to act again.

This shook me badly. I didn't eat that night, or sleep particularly well.

The Catholic faith works for me, and its what I have in mind when I say my prayers. There's a lot of good in there, and a lot of good people. But other religions have good points, too, and their powers-that-be don't support the very worst members.


The others were calm, rational, and factual: the three hardest traits to argue against. They give every impression of being good, spiritual people; but they simply have no patience for a hierarchy that actively steps in to shield molesters, murderers, and psychopaths who hide behind the name of virtue.

I don't feel well... I don't feel well at all. This wasn't where I expected the conversation to go, and I think I might throw up unless I lie down soon.

Putting the "Journey" back into "Really Long Journey"

Done in Wyoming, our new goal was to get to Nevada. These, sadly, are not adjacent states.
As we got to Nevada a little earlier than expected, I was able to start writing this blog. See how slowly I’m catching up? One little step at a time. One little step.


Don pulled me aside as we started this driving segment to say that he’d like to do a video update to post to YouTube – a little State-of-the-Journey for people following along from home. I thought about ways to best do that, but we were all too tired by the end of the day. (Also, the guy at the motel said if we were going to film in his motel, we should prominently feature the sign out front.) It got put off for other reasons for the next few days, and actually still hasn’t happened yet. We still talk about it once in a while.


We pretty much sped straight through Utah. It was a strange state in that the land itself reminded me of Christmas. The plants that grew sprouted it up in deep, rich green. Big cuts into the land revealed baked red clay and earth. Completing the effect were miles and miles of salt flats. It took me hours to figure out what I was looking at; it was baffling to see. At first I thought it was shallow, pale water. Then I was convinced it was some kind of weird, low-altitude snow. Then I was thinking a very white plant. Then I decided it was probably lakes with unusually bright sunlight on them. I was wrong. It was unearthly levels of salt, just spread across miles.


Salt Lake City has extremely high walls lining their freeways. I saw almost nothing of the city. I guess they are a secretive people. All I really ever saw of Salt Lake City was the occasional billboard, most of which were for fast food or exotic dancing. That’s what I’m going to remember of Utah. That and Christmas.



Utah is a predominantly Mormon state, with low precipitation and a staunchly conservative image. It’s no wonder, then, that their road signs feature whipped-cream beehives.

Catchphrase

At one of the earlier stops, the Chief was asked to get up and say a few words. He appeared to be a politician, and coated everything with a layer of community spirit. That has its place, but this might not have been it.

"My time here was just great. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a way to instill a good work ethic; I learned everything I need to know and gained the discipline I needed to help make this community great. Etc. Etc."

Then one of his classmates was asked to speak. He got up, looked at the mic, looked at the Chief, and looked at the mic again. He started off in a different direction with his first words:

"I hated them su-HUNS of BICH-es!"


Of course, now everytime anything goes wrong on the journey, someone is bound to say, "su-HUNS of BICH-es!"

I could write a deep post about denial, community pride versus community trauma, and historical whitewashing, but I think I'll leave it as a funny catchphrase.

I suppose I could also write a post about how we're facing so much pain and hurt that we have to shield ourselves by turning the expression of one man's lifelong anger into humor... but, no. I don't think I'll do that, either.

Su-HUNS of BICH-es!

5/21 ST. STEPHEN'S HIGH [Riverton, Wyoming]

The first of many stops that have a name including “River.” I will eventually mix them all up hopelessly and require outside assistance to sort it out. The White Bison page is currently down, but I'll track down the real name as soon as I can.

This stop was an odd one. At each stop, we have a local coordinator who is in charge of making sure everything is ready for us and in charge of local advertising. We couldn’t get in contact with our coordinator as we pulled in late at night; but of course it was late. Stranger still was that we couldn’t get in contact with our coordinator the next morning, while we waited around trying to figure out which building we were supposed to set up in. To cap it off, no one at the school had ever heard her name before.

This was a bad sign.

Eventually, someone at the school let us into a dark little basement beneath the church. The feeling was instantly oppressive; combined with everyone’s confusion at our presence, I had a strong feeling that we were not supposed to be here, or that there was something we weren’t supposed to stir up.

The four walls were, at last, decorated festively. Apparently, the night before the church was used for a celebration: the Jesuit order which had presided there for 125 years had decided to pull out, abandoning the church and focusing their attentions on some other community. Last night was their last community celebration.

The Jesuit priests were in attendance, apparently having no further regular duties left to do in this place. One, an older man, stood up to speak during the day and came within a hairsbreadth of apologizing for the Church’s abuses. Then, he either became frightened or simply distracted, because his mind wandered off in new directions and he spoke for several more moments before running out of steam and sitting down. Much time was spent in the cars afterwards debating if he had intended to apologize, and about what stopped him, if so.

After lunch, the feeling in the basement started to get better, and I no longer felt so unwelcome. Keeping busy helped, too. This was the first time I needed to set up the PA system I had borrowed in Minnesota, and there was a certain amount of frenzied, hidden trail-and-error involved. Sound has never really been my forte (hehe) and there’s a lot for me to learn. For now, however, I just need to get it working and sounding not-awful with little time to spare.

Predictably, turnout was very small. I don’t think many people knew about this.

One woman, looking very, very pained, said something interesting. She said she loved the Jesuits and all that they’ve done; but maybe, (hard swallow), “it’s time for you to go.” It was clearly a difficult thing for her to say, and I ran it through my head many times while driving to the next location. I had a long time for it to run.

A Darn Fine Pizza

Mountain High Pizza Pie is still, to this day, the best pizza I’ve ever had. I never expected I’d ever be back in Jackson Hole, but here I am. Using only my nose, primal hunting skills, and yelling, I almost immediately found the place again AND convinced Marlin to stop at Mountain High instead of at the nearby Steakhouse. This was a coup, I assure you.

For a place that’s usually associated with a single, bleached skull, Jackson Hole is a remarkably beautiful place. It’s touristy, but the surrounding landscape overwhelms and cleanses that aspect. It’s like a jewel set against the snowy backdrops of the Grand (Big) Tetons (Cheeses).

The mountains nearby were named by lonely French travelers, but the resemblance isn’t
obvious. Poor guys.

The group has gelled pretty thoroughly, despite this being day four. Don and Marlin have a relationship that falls somewhere in-between “golf buddies” and “old married couple.” Luckily, they both have a sharp sense of humor and keep everyone amused. Wayne can now see, but his voice is nearly gone. He’s a good go-to guy, and actually reminds me an awful lot of my own grandfather. I’m not sure what to make of that. Maria does a great job of staying positive, and is very helpful both for keeping up our own morale, and for giving us a good public face. Early in the morning, she’s good to shake hands and sell T-Shirts while I’m still trying to get my eyes to focus, and the other three guys are trying to get Wayne’s GPS to find a Starbucks. Everyone has adopted a playful, teasing tone when we’re off the job, and the dynamic is good.

Mountain High Pizza Pie. Go there if you get the chance.

Gloria Al Padre?

The ending prayer, offered by a local elder, brought to mind a notable oddity that has already become apparent. I can’t quite put my finger on community’s relationship to Christianity. Some samples:

“And I think I would have destroyed myself, if not for the intervention of my family, acting out the will of Christ Jesus.” (Applause, Cheering)

“And I walked straight out of that Church and I haven’t needed to drink since.” (Applause) “Praise Jesus!” (Applause)

“Thank you, Lord Jesus, for this wonderful day.” (Murmurs of Approval)

“So this White Church tried to make us like them. And where is their White God now? Their God is dead.” (Applause, Cheering)

“And I walked straight out of that Church and I haven’t looked back since.” (Applause) “They can keep their Jesus!” (Applause)

“Thank you, Grandfather, for this wonderful day.” (Murmurs of Approval)

This, to me, is strange. The only way I can explain it is that people are happy that other people are energetic, emotional, and have something that works for them. What, precisely, those people are saying is more or less irrelevant.

5/19 FORT HALL [Idaho]

Another full day of filming. It’s hard to believe that this is the third one – some combination of high-stress and adrenaline makes the pattern almost instantly ingrained.

Again, I recommend looking at the White Bison site for information on the ceremony itself. This event, like the previous, was held in a school gym. The graduating class, some 30 or 40 hours from graduating, came as a group; their attention has difficult to hold. As Don has said, it’s better to have 10 people attending who need to be there than 1,000 people who don’t want to be there. The students were present, but not giving or taking much. Still, if we reached one of them, or any one person in the audience, we’ve done something.

Much of my energy was spent trying to get around the school’s security system. The gym side door was locked, adjusting the lights needed a key, and the sound system was locked. As an added challenge, the entire gym had a total of two power outlets. The result was powerbars plugged into extension cords powered into other powerbars. Anyone attempting to use the gym for basketball would have a twisted ankle within thirty seconds – or maybe just straight-up electrocuted.

Don was given a pair of pants during the ceremony. I missed the story of exactly why; maybe Maria’s news update has something about that.

(edit: it does)

The final ceremony involved a march outside of the school and into the old school grounds – the new school was built about a block away from the old grounds. Everyone who could walk went over there and we made a group apology for the atrocities committed there. If you believe in spirits, or if you don’t believe in spirits, it doesn’t much matter. Just standing there acknowledging another person’s hurt is a powerful experience. I haven’t been to the concentration camps in Germany, but I imagine the feeling is similar. “This happened, and I’m sorry. We’re all sorry. Never again.” It’s an experience I recommend, if you get the chance.

I almost met a guy during the final ceremony; another cameraman, we shared sprinting lanes through the fields around the old school, racing to get far enough ahead of the procession to get a good shot. We didn’t really speak, and I know nothing about him, but the shared experience of running full-bore while cradling expensive electronics had curious bonding properties. On some level, we are now brothers.

The video footage didn’t actually turn out so hot, in the end, but the stage was set to get some great stills. For what would not be the last time, several birds followed the procession, but were never around to be caught on film except in the most glancing and blurred ways.

Of course, truth be told, I’ve never filmed any animal whatsoever with any success. Maybe don’t read too much into this.

A Full Day of Driving

buuuuuuuuh

All I really knew about Oregon was from the game Oregon Trail. I expected lots of typhoid, buffalo-filled deserts, and an eight-color palette with blatting music from an internal computer speaker. In all, it was a lot greener than I expected – not terribly different from Washington.

We all got typhoid, though.

Idaho seems to be made out of mountains, which I also didn’t really expect. When I thought of Idaho, before, I thought of a potato. Not potato fields, mind you, or a state shaped or textured like a potato, but literally just a potato. I guess it’s more like mountains.

5/17 WARM SPRINGS [Washington]

I don’t really know what happened here. We almost certainly went to a school gym of some kind. I remember wiring one of my cameras into the sound system, which is a strangely satisfying thing to do. We filmed some outside interviews, and I got to try out my new microphone for the first time – it worked really, really well in the wind.

Setting two long-running patterns, attendance was less than anticipated, and most of the audience sat as far as possible towards the back. No one ever really sits in the first three rows, regardless of where they’re actually location in relation to the speaker.

The final ceremony was a long march around a huge courtyard area, with drums and all the trappings. As the cameraman, my job was to sprint ahead of the group, film them approaching, then sprint forward to a new place.

The rest of the day is pretty fuzzy, although I’m pretty sure it ended with a few hours of driving, just like almost every day. Why was the day a huge success? Some of us were working on under five hours of sleep in two days – the others were close to that, too. Even so, we put on a whole day worth of ceremony and presentation, plus hours of driving; and no one snapped at anyone else, no one gave up or quit, no one broke down. That is success.

I did fall asleep and miss lunch, though.

Mt. Hood

Leaving Chemawa behind, we set out east towards our next destination. It was meant to be about a three-hour drive, leaving us with just enough time to meet with the site coordinator and sleep for an hour or two before beginning to set-up equipment. Thanks to a little good-fashioned luck, we were able to dispense entirely with the trifling little drive and replace it with a much more satisfying seven-or-eight-hour version.

Our plan seemed foolproof, with a map, two GPSes… or whatever the plural of GPS is. 1 GPS, 2 GPS? 1 GPS, 2 GPSs? No matter. Now, where was I? Oh, that’s right. I had no idea.

Neither did anyone else. The map indicated that we should go through Mt. Hood state park and come out on the other side, with little indication of how on earth one accomplished that fact. 1 GPS pooped out almost immediately, due to poor reception (thanks, Verizon!). The other GPS calculated a hundred different ways to get off of the mountain, every single one of which involved driving so far straight up the side of the rock that our vans eventually could move no further forward due to the sheer amount of snow they were pushing through.

Notable highlights included a 10-miles long dirt path that became less and less like a road with each of its many, many twists and turns; it eventually terminated in a spider-like formation of other roads. We followed each and every single one of those roads, dead-ending each time thanks to downed trees, colossal snow drifts, lakes, or the road simply crumbling away to wet, snowy nothingness.

We also had the pleasure of abandoning our cars a couple of times and hacking our way through the forests in pursuit of far-off little lights. We hoped those little twinkles would turn out to be campfires lit by professional cartographers on vacation, or will-o-the-wisps who would playfully lure us to our dooms off a cliff or into a bottomless cave. Either way looked better than just driving around.

Each light eventually turned out to campfires lit by non-cartographers, who gave us conflicting information. Luckily, all of it turned out to be false, so we don’t feel pressured to pick favorites from amongst them.

After exhausting each of the spider legs, we began to run low on supplies. Specifically, we ran out of any use from the GPS, which conked out completely; we ran out of water, which was sorely missed by the people who had just spent ALL DAY speaking to a large crowd and moved directly from there to their cars; and we ran out of gasoline in the blue van.

Personally, I also began to run low on patience for my new van. Yes, I’m awfully glad I wasn’t driving the Bumblebox, but any other vehicle on earth would have handled better on Mt. Hood. Yes, that includes jetskis, thanks for asking. The primary problem was the turning radius. To make a U-turn requires more than five car widths – a fact I later verified by trying to U-turn across five lanes of traffic and still hitting the curb. But that’s another story. These dirt paths going up the side of Mt. Hood are (to use math) less big than a five-lane highway. Turning around required outside assistance and way more time than either of the other vehicles needed.

So, we hit upon a three-fold plan. First, we would return down the endless, worthless little dirt path and try to find our way out from farther that way. Secondly, Marlin was to turn his car off and coast for as many miles as possible, so we might maybe someday find him again. Finally, my plan was to try to turn around at least once, because I was pointed the wrong way. This time, no one would wait for me because Marlin’s van was already rolling a tiny bit, and he wasn’t about to put on the brakes. The only aspect the plan didn’t cover was how we’d escape the mountain once we made it through the path, but that was clearly a problem for a future date.

To reduce a long story to a medium-length one, Marlin drove his van ON EMPTY for nearly an hour – apparently going on nothing but Don’s prayers. We found our way back to a town we’d already been through, and coasted in neutral for several blocks before we found an open gas station. I turned the car around eventually and made it safely and carefully down the mountain, only to drive into a phone pole at the gas station. We found our new hotel and were tucked into bed by 4 AM, ready for a new day and a new ceremony to start at 6:30 AM.

It was the end of the first day.

The Names (A Poem)

THE NAMES
By Laura Tohe

Lou Hon,
Suzie,
Cherry,
Doughnut,
Woody,
Wabbit,
Jackie,
Rena Mae,
Zonnie,
Sena,
Verna,
Grace,
Seline,
Carilene

"Virginia Spears," the Alegebra teacher calls roll
(Her name is Speans)
And Virgie winces and raises her hand.
"Here." Soft voice
She never corrects the teachers.

"Leonard T-sosie."
(His name is Tsosie.) Silent first letter as in
ptomaine,
Ptolemy.
Silent as in never asking questions.
Another hand from the back goes up. No voice.

"Mary Lou Yazzy.
Are you related to Thomas Yazzy?"
Yazzie is a common Navajo name,
like Smith or Jones.
She rhymes it with jazzy and snazzy.
Mary Lou with puzzled expression, "No."
"Oh, I thought you might be. He's quiet too."

I start to tense up because I'm next
with my name that sticks out
like her sensible black high heeled lace-ups,
clap, clap, clap down the hall.
"Laura Toe."
And I start to sink,
to dread hearing it on the bus tossed around
like kids playing keep-away.

Suddenly we are immigrants,
waiting for names that obliterate the past.
Tohe, from T'ohii means Towards Water.
Tsosie. Ts'osi means Slender.
And Yazzy, from Yazhi,
means Beloved Little One/Son.

The teacher closes the book and
we are little checkmarks beside our names.

Roanhorse,
Fasthorse,
Bluehorse,
Yellowhorse,
Begay,
Deswod,
Niilwod,
Chee,
Atsidi,
Tapahonso,
Haabaah,
Hastiin Neez.

Sneak Peak (Fort Hall)

All rights reserved. Do not use without permission from White Bison. (c) 2009


Yeah, I pretty much take pictures. This is just a little sneak peak of Fort Hall. Stay tuned.