6/11 RED LAKE [Minnesota]

Patrick came along to help with this one, leaving me with more time to think and process. As a result, I resumed my long-since abandoned practice of taking notes during the ceremony, and may have more to say now as a result. Pictures will be few, as the lighting was lousy.

Patrick and I left home plenty early, which was probably good as we drove past our destination at least once before successfully finding it. When we arrived, the person I talked to didn't know anything about us, but there was a gym which seemed to be set up for a presentation, so I assumed we were in the right place and started setting up.

After ten or fifteen minutes, I started to worry. Security guards kept entering by the bleachers, watching us, then leaving. There was no sign of the rest of the group. The cameras were set, Patrick was working on sound, and I began assembling the lights.

Another twenty minutes went by. We couldn't find the light switch for the gym, so we'd been working in darkness all along. No sign of anyone. I used my roll of gaffer's tape to make sure every last wire was stuck in place. The event was supposed to officially start in a little over a half-hour. Patrick gave up on their sound system, which featured lots of heavily-frayed wires and bent plugs. We began setting up our own sound system.

And, then, validation finally came. It turns out we were in the right place all along; however, we'd entered during the narrow window when the door was unlocked to let the staff in to other parts of the building. Everyone else, along with some local volunteers, had been waiting by the front door for 20-odd minutes hoping someone would let them in.

Unfortunately, once they arrived it was decided that it would be better to have everyone facing a different direction than I had assumed we would use. All of my preparations were for naught and had to be stricken completely. All we really accomplished in that time, then, was deciding that the gym's sound system was worthless. Hooray for us!

On the whole, it was a good ceremony, and helped rebuild my energy and enthusiasm for the Journey. If you're just tuning it, I was in an emotional low spot for the last couple entries.

***It's probably worth mentioning, now that I think about it, that I do not speak for White Bison. I'm sure they met their objectives at each location, and were much better at seeing the positive. My objectives are always different from theirs: I want good film footage. My negativity is not their stance, it's mine. End disclaimer.***

Don changed his opening speech to discourage people from using up valuable time to talk about how great the local schools were. When I talked to him about it later, he didn't remember doing that. Curious. We had decided at a recent stop that a lot of the "everything was fine" people loved their boarding schools because it was a chance to get out of their abusive homes. The deadly irony here is that their homes were abusive because their parents went to boarding school. Those schools were very good at what they did; they even made themselves indispensable to future generations by removing all other options.

One woman ran away from home at 16 so she could join a boarding school in Oklahoma. For reasons unspecified, she later ran away from boarding school, making it all the way to northern Kansas on foot before being apprehended. Her search for a stable life was a difficult one.

One of the first speakers talked about how critical forgiveness has been in her life. This set an excellent tone -- the first speakers matter so much.

One elder, aged 68, still has marks running up and down her legs from being whipped by nuns as a child. The most moving part of her speech was when she broke down on the line: "And they pretended to be good people." It took two tries due to the flood of bitter tears. They pretended to be good people. Looking at it on paper, I realize sadly that it will never have the same effect as hearing her say it. It was chilling and heartbreaking the way she spoke.

Another woman was able to recognize the damage that her own anger has done to her, and how her childhood experiences shaped her life. This showed immense self-awareness, and it was pretty impressive. The crux of her story came when she was in a physical dispute with her white husband, and suddenly a lifetime of repressed, hidden pain and anger came rushing out. "To all the white people of the world, from me," she said to her husband just before she "beat the crap out of him" with a frying pan. This was a point of ultimate decision, for her. She had two paths: the easy one would be to continue as-is, becoming an increasingly desperate and bitter human being, the almost-impossible choice was to identify the buried anger and learn to forgive as a way of letting it go. The fact that she was able to speak today indicates that she's done something incredibly difficult and come out a much better person for it. As cool as that is, imagine how much better her life would have been if she didn't have a reason to shape her first 20- or 30-odd years around hatred of white people and acceptance of violence as a solution to problems.

To put it another way, it's amazing that you were able to hold your breath for that long -- but that doesn't make the fact that someone was holding you under water any less awful.

Looking back, it occurs to me now that men were pretty severely underrepresented. I wonder what that means. One of the men who spoke took me aside beforehand and made me promise to turn the cameras off, take no pictures, and write no notes while he was up front. I'm not sure if he was secretive or lost his nerve, because what he finally said wasn't likely to be something I'd write about (or remember), anyways. I suppose there's a valuable lesson in there about how important everyone's world is to themselves. Each of us knows only our own experience, and it's hard to remember (or understand) how something so important to you could be so uninteresting to everyone else.

The irony of writing that last sentence on a blog is not lost to me.

I had the impression there were some horror stories that stayed hidden. Almost everyone who spoke in Red Lake talked about "trauma" and their "experiences," but almost no one gave any specifics. Even the allusions seemed difficult for people to vocalize. This is obviously a hurting community. As I'm sure most readers of this blog are aware, Red Lake is the home of one of the deadliest school shootings in American history. Judging by people's reluctance to divulge details, it was probably also home to a lot of children who grew up knowing terrible things. When they had kids of their own, that trauma passed right along through their parenting. The tragic results are clear.

Usually, when someone is having a particularly difficult time speaking, Marlin will stand next to them, holding burning sage. Today, for the second time, Marlin replaced the sage smoke with the Forgiveness Staff. It calmed people considerably. Interestingly, it was never meant to be the Staff's purpose -- it was meant to stay stationary in its stand. Its use in this fashion was never discussed, and it wasn't used that way for the first several weeks. Suddenly, however, it just felt right; no one's ever questioned its use as a form of comfort.

One speaker gave their observations on how religion's use in the schools hindered moral development. What should have been taught, early in these childrens' lives, was: "Whatever religion you are, whatever you believe in, this is what you respect." In other words, dogma replaced an understanding of respect and basic goodness. I liked the way it was said.

One woman talked about going into near-shock (as an adult) when she realized that one of her friends was a nun. She'd grown up associating Catholics with extreme physical violence and little else. Only very recently has she been able to see any other side. This depresses me. There's a long-standing Catholic belief in accepting sinners, welcoming them to you and finding the good in them. I believe this. I also, however, believe that our best hope of redeeming our name is to expose and remove people like these corrupt nuns who broke childrens' bones to keep them in line. How does one reconcile those two impulses? We can't be a collection of the worst the world has to offer; but we can't presume to pass judgement on other mortals and must love even the lowest sinner. I like the sound of "lover the sinner, hate the sin," but our collection of sinners have done terrible, terrible things to children in God's name. It bothers me greatly.

Father Pat, the local priest for Red Lake and for my own parish of Nebish, was in attendance. Apparently, he's just been transferred, and this was perhaps his last appearance in Red Lake after 12 years. While he's a good man, and certainly works hard, he contributed to my gradual removal from church services at home due to a largish personal struggle he has: his almost complete inability to plan ahead. The last time I went to church at home must be about ten years ago. He hadn't planned a homily, so he flipped through a Reader's Digest to see if there was anything worth using as a topic while the entire congregation waited. I didn't go again after that day: it was a final straw for me. Not surprisingly, this manifested today, too. He gave a difficult and heartfelt apology to the people in attendance for the abuses committed against them by men of the cloth -- this was exactly the right thing to do. It appeared, however, that he didn't start thinking about what he was going to say until after he had already been handed the microphone. I have it on videotape: a full four-minute pause where he stands and thinks in silence. That's a long, long time to hold the mic without saying anything. Of course, when he did speak, he had good words to say; he usually does. They just weren't planned and everyone else was stuck waiting.

I wish Father Pat the best in his new assignment. He's a good man; I hope someday he's able to realize the damage he does to his own image by disregarding the value of other people's time. A little preparation would do wonders for him.

On a side note, if you haven't heard Don speak, find a way to do so. It's worth your time. Here's a picture.

It was a difficult space to work in, today. The lighting was poor, it was difficult not to get in the way, and there was no ventilation to speak of so it quickly become unpleasantly smoky. Someone with asthma might have had a difficult time breathing. Counterbalancing that, however, was the wild rice stuffing that was served as a side dish during lunch. It might be my favorite thing to eat so far. Man, that was good stuff.

During lunch, I also noticed that today was the first time since Arizona that I looked like I had a sunburn that was peeling. Every day up until this point, it looked like I had redish skin and severe leprosy. This is a good change of pace.

One thing that was particularly fun about this stop was how many people in the audience I recognized. With Patrick helping, I could take a somewhat-extended lunch and mingle with the crowd a little. There were probably nearly ten friends or family-friends that I was able to catch up with; it's important not to forget the value of having a circle of friends. Lunch was very soothing, that way; endless procession of meals with strangers in strange towns never felt as good.

I suddenly realized I forgot to add something to the White Earth post; specifically, Katie Houg was there. She's been a globetrotter for a year or two, now, and just returned to the States. She still smells a little of New Zealand, South America, and the numerous places in-between that she's been calling home. But everyone knows that this is REAL home. Welcome back, Katie.

The day ended with a disappointment. After all the sudden whirl, Patrick decided to formally back out of joining the Journey. I might have done the same, myself, if it had been an option when I first experienced the hectic pace and distressingly-malleable "planning" we live on. Luckily for me, however, I was in Oregon when I realized how difficult this really is; Patrick was only a few miles from home. So, he's going to visit his girlfriend and start his job, as planned. We move on without him.

I haven't seen much of Patrick the last few years; but each time I'm impressed by how much he's grown up. I think a trip like this might have given me some insight into the man who almost certainly isn't the same little boy I grew up with. He guarded his privacy during high school and college, and changed a lot. I hope some other opportunity comes up in our lifetimes.