There is only one Creator, and he cares and watches out for us all.
When He appears, some will see an angel.
Others will see a white bison.
When He appears, some will see an angel.
Others will see a white bison.
Thank you for reading.
Chris
What Now?
And that leaves us with a question. The big one. What now?
For me, my work is fairly well cut out for me. I need to sort thousands of photographs and 163 hours of footage, trying to make some sense out of the image overkill. The question still lingers as to how that will integrate with my normal work schedule. The possibility of closing Novamation Studios semi-permanently to focus on this one project seems... well, a possibility.
Emotionally, things are less clear. On arriving home, I found myself almost immediately adrift. Besides the instant disappearance of the brutal but exciting pace of the last six weeks -- which is a notable factor, itself -- I'm left with a head full of thoughts that have nowhere to go. I immersed myself into a world of tortured children and shattered adults; now I'm back in Nebish. What do I... what do I do with these things I know? How do I make my peace with a world that's changed, with a country that will never seem the same again? And that other world I experienced for all that time -- it hasn't gone anywhere. The truth is that it's still all around every one of us; a living world that's still in deep pain.
And I'll have to learn to live with that fact. The first step: I acknowledge that this world of mass graves on American soil is true. I acknowledge that horrible things were done in the name of my country and my religion. I acknowledge that the victims are still here today. I acknowledge that everyone who has ever looked away bears responsibility, including myself. I am guilty. And I am sorry.
I will do my part to aid the healing. The time to overcome has arrived, and I'm thankful I was given an opportunity to contribute in such a direct way.
And, surrounded by 163 tapes, perhaps my work has really only just started.
***
For you, Gentle Reader, I can't answer the question. Everyone decides "What Now?" for themselves a thousand times for a thousand different issues. If you'd like to know more, resources are out there, as are other perspectives than mine. Or, if you'd like to forget about all of this, you'll lead a life that's a little more comfortable -- I can't deny anyone that choice.
For me, for better or for worse, this story is now a part of who I am.
If you want to keep learning, here's a few stepping stones for you.
WHITE BISON
Main Page
News Updates
Daily Meditation
LONNY'S VIDEOS
These are a little difficult to watch, as they haven't been edited in any way, but they can give you an idea of what went on.
Main Page
Chemawa, Part 1
DC, Part 1
MOUNT PLEASANT
These people were unbelievably well-organized. Their web site has (edited!) videos of the event in Michigan, written summaries, statements from local leaders and more. They even have images from DC. I love Mt. Pleasant. I've heard there's a great slideshow available on the site, as well, but I haven't found it yet.
Web Page
NEWSPAPERS
Sequoia
College Media
Indian Country
Lac Du Flambeau
Oklahoma
FACEBOOK
Mt. Pleasant, Again
Healing Project (not sure what this is, but Lonny recommended it)
White Bison (the pictures seem to be down today)
BOOKS
Many books are available on Amazon. I can't specifically recommend any myself, as I haven't read any of them yet.
THE MOVIE
I am, essentially, done with this blog now. In a few months, when clips from the eventual movie start coming together, I may post short clips here. I will certainly post them on my "normal" webpage, and I imagine they will appear at White Bison, as well.
There and Back Again
Finding ourselves parked in several cars deep (I guess it was the valet section. Oops.), Patrick and I spent a day checking out Washington. The plan had been to head north and visit my friends in New York, but those plans were foiled by the need to return the rental van and my sudden driving urge to be back home.
The van probably deserves its own paragraph. Penske found one last way to screw with us. These are, mind you, the same people who gave away the car I had reserved initially, triggering all this vehicular wackiness in the first place. At the 11th hour, they changed their mind about the return of the van, refusing to accept any other options. The plan had been to drop it off in Fargo, catch a ride somehow to Minneapolis, and use car (parked there) to make it home. Penske decided it would be better if we returned it to Oregon, instead. I cannot be clear enough: they went back on their original word -- Fargo had originally been fine.
I hear good things about U-Haul.
Anyways, we found someone in Minneapolis willing to drive it back -- for an appropriate fee and airfare home. My job became getting it to him as soon as possible, in hopes that it would return to Oregon by the 1st.
But, being parked in, we spent a day looking at the city. A brief trip to the Holocaust museum quickly became more than I felt I could handle. The worst problem was the research I'd been hearing about; people are now looking into the lessons of the boarding schools (started in 1879) that the Nazis may have implimented during the 1940s. Evidence seems to indicate that some ideas, particularly about dehumanization, may have been directly borrowed. Whenever something truly meaningful happens, for good or ill, the ripples stretch out for incredible distances.
***
Once we finally got out of the city, Patrick was good enough to do almost all the driving. I wrote, thought, and slept... and played Zelda. We travelled in an almost straight line, with few stops. I needed to be home.
Maryland is very pretty. Wisconsin has reasonably affordable lazer tag. That's pretty much all I remember about the ride home. We dropped off the van with little fanfare in Minneapolis; I noted with smug satisfaction that everything in that huge, ungainly van fit into my '96 Camry. Together, Patrick and I made it to within 40 miles of home, at which point the transmition exploded.
I finished playing Zelda (Oracle of Seasons) in a ditch less than an hour from home. We'll call that something like an accomplishment.
Washington, The Photos
The Saganaw Chippewa have been huge supporters.
Joe looks on as the drum plays.
We had at least three drums at various times.
Joe, our master of ceremonies.
Horace opens with a prayer.
The space reserved for us.
Marlin addresses the crowd.
Even in our end-of-Journey celebration, we steered clear of "light-hearted." There's just too much hurt out there.
Patrick helped run the cameras, often getting a sky-view.
One of the drummers reflects.
Dr. Duran.
Ozzie and Horace, again, along with Horace's wife.
The second drum group.
The third drum group.
Hunter talks about cultural impact.
I can't remember her name right this instant...
This is actually the first time he's ever been asked to speak at the Smithsonian.
Look at those balconies start to fill!
Everyone's prayers are needed, and the room filled when the time was right.
A mother and child dance around the cedar-ring.
The singers from Mt. Pleasant return.
It takes everyone.
Horace ends with a sacred song. Also pictured: Ozzie and Hunter.
Sometimes, interesting shots come from being forced to hang back from the action.
One of the ending songs, with innumerable hand-drums.
People begin to disperse.
Kateri and Ozzie, in that order (left-to-right).
6/24 NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN [Washington, DC]
And, suddenly, here it was: the end of the line. The last drop. The bitter end. The end credits. The bottom of the barrel. The final bow. The last of the Mohicans.
Too far?
The day was divided into three basic sections. I'm going to deal with each part briefly: as I said before, in many ways the Journey has already ended. Honestly, the day felt much less like a final verse -- rather, a coda. Also, as I am now home (hooray), I find myself increasingly anxious to move on; this is the most difficult that writing has been.
Part One: Setup
The setup was, simply put, incredible. It was nice to be admitted into the Smithsonian atrium hours before it opened, and to be recognized by the guards as an important person (wheee!), but the real thrill was watching the other key members begin to fill the space. For the first hour, every person who entered was a familiar face from some previous stop. There's Joe and Hunter from Michigan; and there's Lonnie from Chemawa; there's Jolene and her daughter, who we last saw in Idaho; the drummers from White Earth; singers from Mt. Pleasant; Horace and Ozzie, who saw us off on this Journey; Kitty and her crew from New Mexico -- and her crew from the East Coast, too; the little girl who sang with the drum group in Carlisle; and so many more: faces from around the nation who all gathered here today with a shared cause and a belief in healing.
If I could walk away with only one emotion, it'd be whatever it was I was feeling at that moment. Some pride, yes, but more a sense of openly-bemused wonder as I discovered that my life was a TV show and I'd just wandered into the cast reunion episode -- or maybe a "best of" clip show.
Part Two: The Ceremony
Besides the familiar faces, there were any number of normal museum visitors who came and went throughout the day, making the crowd more fluid than any we'd seen before. That was to be expected, I suppose.
Dr. Duran said something interesting from a linguistic point-of-view. In his theory, this level of white-on-red violence could only have been perpetrated by people of European-decent. The reason, he argued, is that Europeans have noun-based language and thinking patterns. This becomes crucial in dehumanizing the victims. If you're going to cut the fingers off a child, you must be able to see the child as an object, and the fingers as separate objects to remove. Otherwise, you simply couldn't go through with it.
Most Indian languages, by contrast, are fundamentally verb-based. There is no word for "child," and the very concept is difficult to grasp; instead, you have a person who is "childing" - a process, a motion through time. The way we speak has a deep impact on the way we're able to think; most people who speak Native languages as a first tongue go naturally to "living" when faced with a child. The objectification of the "person"-noun never occurs. Violence on a European scale simply couldn't occur -- human nature would rebel against the orders without a way of distancing one's self.
It's an interesting thought.
The best part of the ceremony was at the very end, when people were invited to say their prayers for forgiveness in front of the Hoop. It was a magical moment -- the seats had been sparsely-filled only seconds ago; in the time it took me to reposition my camera, every seat was suddenly filled. I have no idea where these people came from. Additionally, the atrium was filling with people standing around the edges, looking in, and every balcony and staircase to the top of the building was packed with faces. I stress again that I don't know where these people came from; it was as close to science-fiction materialization as I expect to ever see.
This is an extremely-rough cut, making it difficult to see the people on the balconies; they're too dark. They're there. And there's a lot of them.
Part Three: Wrap-Up
Wrap-up was strangely quiet. We had planned for some processing time, but Don was unable to get away from people asking questions and wanting a moment of his time. Eventually, Marlin ushered him out a back door to give him some time to himself. Maria was in charge of making sure that some of the guests made it to their hotels safely, and she left shortly afterward. Wayne and I cleaned up a little, then went to get gas for his car. We got horribly lost on the way.
And this is the way the Journey ends: not with a bang but a whimper.
We never got that debriefing time, and we scattered our separate ways to head back to our different states. I guess this is the way of things; Don is apparently already knee-deep in planning for a series of community-grief ceremonies, and Marlin and Wayne are likely to be assisting him in various ways. There's an awful lot of work left to be done in the world, and I think it's time for me to be back home, knowing I helped a little bit with one small piece.
--
edit: Unfortunately, due mostly to Iran, the White House was pretty well booked up with responsibilities. In the end, no one arrived to accept our petition. Its time will come, however.
America Town
In some ways, the Journey is over. Well, that is, our part of the Journey is over. The neat thing about this is the feeling that it will keep going on in various places in different ways long after we've gone back to real life. But our piece might have finished in Carlisle.
But we said we'd end in Washington, and that's our plan. The last event is scheduled for the atrium of the Smithsonian, where we hope to present the petition to a White House representative. We'll see how that goes: I turned on the news that night for the first time in over a week. Apparently, our arrival coincided with the worst train crash in Washington history, a sharp outbreak of violence in Iran, and threats from North Korea. My chance to fist-bump Obama seems to have dimmed a little.
Since the Smithsonian is not known for being a boarding school, I think this last event will be more of a celebration and wrap-up. We'll see.
We arrived a day early to make sure all arrangements were finalized. Suddenly having a day without driving or filming was shockingly jarring. I spent the whole day in a daze, feeling like I was leaving something important undone. I chose not to look around the city much; this was due to a combination of being worn out, being already overstimulated, and not having transportation. The van might have made its last lousy turn: trying to park it in an underground garage, I got it wedged between the floor and the ceiling. I'd say the sign they've got that says, "Maximum Height" is off by about an inch and a half. Until they fix the sign, I think I'll just leave a van there to remind people.
edit: Wayne got the van unstuck, doing yet further damage to it. He often mentions that it might have been cheaper to just buy me a vehicle. Sadly, he might be right. We won't be taking the van to the Smithsonian tomorrow morning, as neither of us dares to try to park it again.
Patrick (little brother) also arrived in Washington at about the same time. He's volunteered to help out with the final event, and to drive half of the way home. This is wonderful news, as I'm about done driving, and it'll be nice to share this event with someone I'll see again.
Speaking of which, I feel like we're rapidly heading towards a remake of "The Breakfast Club." You know the sense where the weeny one says something like, "We're still gonna be friends after this, right?" and the answer is no? Once this is done, Marlin's going to go back to being the secretly lonely jock, Wayne's going to be the science fair nerd, Maria will be the girl, I'm going to be Emilo Estevez, and Don will be Don Corleone.
Kateri, Don's daughter, also arrived. She's been the voice on the other end of the HQ telephone and organized all our hotel rooms, credit card procurement, coordinator coordination, and the like. She seems really organized and almost immediately started telling Wayne what to do. As he's been the taskmaster so far, I had a little twinge of unfair and perverse delight at seeing him get orders. I say unfair, because he's been really good about getting us where we need to be and making sure we're doing the right things. I imagine his job is akin to herding cats, some days, and he's done well.
In the interests of saving money and not sleeping on the curb, Patrick and I shared the crummy little bed in the hotel. That's not something we need to do, ever again; and if we must, I'd use a mattress with at least one spring. And I'd put it in a room with air conditioning.
The Hotel Harrington, Washington: Now With Bars of Soap in the Sink!
I'm afraid that's the best product placement I can manage right now. It's going to be a big day tomorrow.