The Lies They Tell

by Tuvia Tenenbom

  • • •

  Native Americans make up about 10 percent of the North Dakotan population, Warden Braun tells me, but between 30 percent and 35 percent of this prison population. I’m not sure that this is right, and I will have to check it.

  I like Warden Braun. When I first heard his name and title, before seeing him, I imagined a tough, even cruel guy. But now that I’m with him, Warden Braun strikes me as a nice, kind person. He jokes with his imprisoned folks, taps them on the shoulders, and they seem to like him. “I’m lucky to be in this facility,” one of the prisoners tells me.

  North Dakotans care about the people around them, including those in prison.

  Except for the judges of this state, the guys who will sentence you to three and a half years for one DUI. Are they really that cruel? I ask a prison official how come a DUI ends up in three and a half years of jail time.

  “He didn’t tell you the truth. He is here for a sexual offense,” he tells me. The prisoners who are here for sexual offenses are the lowest social level of the prisoner community. “If they are in here for some type of sexual offense, the likelihood of them telling you that is going to be very, very small.”

  I move on to the toughest part of this prison, its maximum-security section, Administrative Segregation, herein called the segregation unit. This is a prison within a prison, where prisoners don’t share cells with others and spend their time in isolation. In the segregation unit a prisoner is inside his cell for twenty-three hours a day. On the twenty-fourth hour the prisoner can exercise in a different cell where there is a bit of sunlight, if the sun is out. This other cell has a little more room to move around in than his own cell, but not much more.

  Life is not pretty here.

  And it is here that I meet Gerry. Gerry is fifty-five years of age and is smiling when he sees me. You look happy, I say. Are you?

  “I’m happy that I’m alive.”

  Cynthia of Englewood said just the same. What are you here for? I ask.

  “Burglary and sexual assault.”

  This guy does say the “sexual” thing… How many years did you get?

  “Twenty years.”

  How many more years to go before you’re out of here?

  “Just under ten to go.”

  He explains to me the reason for the severity of his prison term: “This is not my first rodeo. I got that many years because I’ve been here before.” There’s something called a “habitual offender,” a repeat offender, and these offenders are sentenced to double the time.

  Did you plead guilty?

  “Yes. I am guilty.”

  He was drunk, totally drunk, and he stole videos from a video store, which he realized only when he woke up the next day and noticed the videos at his residence. As for the sex offense: he had sex with a sixteen-year-old girl, consensual sex, but sex with a person of her age is considered rape. For this offense, he was sentenced to ten years in prison.

  Gerry works in the prison, in the maximum-security part of it, and it is here that he sees his mission: helping fellow inmates. “I’m tired of my previous life. I’ve had enough. I turned my life over to Christ, so now I minister as much as I can.” It will be years before he sees the sun again, because there are no furloughs for him unless to attend his mom’s funeral when she dies. Gerry will not be out of these walls before he’s sixty-five years of age.

  Ten years for sleeping with a sixteen-year-old. I ask an officer if this is not ridiculous, as there must be thousands of men just in this state who have done the same and walk freely as very respected citizens. “Gerry told you the truth. In my opinion, his jail term is extreme,” the officer replies. “I’m not the judge and there’s nothing I can do about this.”

  What will you do when you get out of here? I ask Gerry.

  “I’ll get to know my children and my grandchildren. I’ll live! I’ll minister, I’ll preach, I’ll work. I hope I’ll still be physically able to work.”

  I continue to walk between cells and prisoners.

  Prisoners can purchase a TV with a small screen that looks like a tablet, and for a fee of $15 per month can watch cable TV. As I walk past their locked cells I see some of them sitting and staring at moving pictures on these units.

  All together there are about eight hundred people incarcerated in the penitentiary. How long is the average prisoner locked in his cell per day? I ask one of the guards.

  Those who have a “job” get out of one cell and go to work in other closed rooms in the prison, he tells me. They also get out of their cells for the meals, which they eat together. Those in the segregation unit eat in their cells.

  Another opportunity to get out of the cell is for religious ceremonies. Praying in the prison’s church, for example. But not all here are Gerry, and not all worship Jesus. The Native Americans have their own space to worship. It’s a place that is shaped like a tent, though it’s not one.

  White supremacists, who have a respected presence here, also claim that they are religious, and they have their own place of worship. What do they believe in? Their religion is Àsatrú and “it is a recognized religion,” according to prison officials.

  What is Àsatrú? According to Asatru.org, “Long before Christianity came to northern Europe, the people there – our ancestors – had their own religions. One of these was Àsatrú. It was practiced in the lands that are today Scandinavia, England, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and other countries as well. Àsatrú is the original or native religious belief for the peoples who lived in these regions.”

  Good to believe in something as long as you are in prison. At the supremacists’ corner of worship in this prison, a little place, they have a few stones – or something that looks like stones. I wish I could stay long enough to watch the skinheads pray.

  It is here, by the way, that I learn something else: the logic in being a “skinhead.”

  In the old days, white men had long hair. But they had many enemies who wished them cruel deaths and beheaded them when they were captured. The enemies would grab their hair in one hand and behead them with the other. It is why their ancestors, as white supremacist legend goes, chose to shave their heads.

  I live and learn.

  • • •

  If I expected the penitentiary to be populated mostly by blacks, I was wrong. Most prisoners here are white.

  The actual breakdown of state prisoners, as I find in a DOCR newsletter called “The Insider,” is as follows:

  Number of inmates under the authority of North Dakota’s DOCR: 1,751. Average inmate age: 36. Male inmates: 1,536. Females: 215. White inmates: 1,158. Blacks: 121. Native Americans: 358. Spanish: 99. Asian: 8. And then come the rest.

  In general, I find out, Native Americans consist of about 6 percent of the overall population in North Dakota. People who claim German ancestry: about 50 percent.

  There is no classification for “German” inmates, in case you wondered.

  If you are into statistics: The largest group of people in all of the United States, in terms of ancestry, is not Irish or English, Spanish or black, but German. As of the latest available statistics, for every Jew in this country there are ten German Americans. How often have you heard of the German Americans? Almost never. But you do hear much about the Jews. Why? Because.

  As far as I can tell, no Jew is in this prison at this time.

  “When you head west, the prison population will be much different,” Warden Braun tells me, which means that it will be a much more violent prison population.

  As I leave this penitentiary, digesting what I’ve just heard and seen, I realize: in the Land of the Free, prisoners abound.

  I’m going west. But not to see more prisoners; this visit was depressing enough.

  • • •

  On my way west I see a sign for a city called Hebron, which is the name of the first Jewish city in history. What the heck is a “Hebron” doing here?

  I stop to take a peek. The place looks deserted, and the streets h
ave big potholes. Are there no living souls in this place?

  I amble about for a while until I meet Beth, the only moving object among the many potholes. Beth, a Jehovah’s Witness, tells me that Hebron is a religious town. Here, she says, there are a number of churches, plus a Jehovah’s Witnesses “Kingdom Hall.” Ten percent of the population, she shares with me, are Jehovah’s Witnesses.

  She loves the Kingdom Hall of Hebron. “It’s a beautiful Kingdom Hall,” she tells me, and her eyes glow above the potholes. “I made the personal decision to be baptized as a Witness when I was a teenager,” she informs me. Obviously, she’s not the girl Gerry had sex with.

  Unlike Christians, a Witness worships Jesus’ father, she teaches me, but not Jesus. “When I pray,” Beth continues, “I allow my husband to pray aloud, and I pray quietly.”

  Why?

  “We find it proper and respectful for men to pray out loud because they are the headships. The women, us, we are in subjection to man. Not in a demeaning way. The husbands look after us and they make spiritual decisions.”

  Who did you vote for in the last election for president?

  “No one. Jehovah’s Witnesses are neutral and they don’t take part in elections.”

  I ask Beth to tell me her opinion about ISIS. ISIS soldiers behead Christians, and anyone else they don’t like, whenever they find them.

  Beth is a Witness, a member of the Kingdom Hall, and this is her stand on ISIS: “We are neutral about it.”

  Am I in Switzerland? No, I’m in Hebron. Across the street is the office of the local paper, the Hebron Herald. I walk in and meet the paper’s owner, Jane Brandt. She shows me different copies of her paper, and, while looking at them, I ask her: Are you pro-life or pro-choice? Jane is willing to answer this question provided I turn off the recorder. It is amazing to watch a Small Town, USA, newspaper person so fearful to share a political or religious view in today’s America.

  Quite often, when initially approached people won’t talk about anything political or religious because, they say, they want to avoid “controversial” issues. Questions such as “Who did you vote for in the last election for president?” are often not answered, and some people get upset when I ask them this question. Others do answer these and similar questions but change their responses 180 degrees the moment they feel comfortable talking with me.

  In all cases, the underlying reason for their behavior is fear. Still, Jane surprises me, as this is the first time I have heard it so clear and so straight, and from a press person to boot: I’ll tell you my opinion about xyz provided you keep it secret.

  Why are so many Americans so afraid to say what they think? Maybe the Free are not that free and the Brave not that brave.

  Malibu is behaving extremely well, and we drive into Montana.

  Gate Ten

  Native American drunks and rapists have fun at the local Knife College, and you are paying for it – The good news: polygamy will soon be legal

  I’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO VISIT MONTANA. I IMAGINE IT AS A STATE OF strong colors. Don’t ask me why. In my imagination Montana is a state of mountains, horses, sexy young cowgirls, wild cowboys, great music and tons of tough loves.

  It’s the perfect place to forget Gerry and all the other inmates.

  At the visitors center on the edge of Montana, coming from North Dakota, I read this: “Montana is famous for its dinosaur fossils.” This is not all. It goes on to say, “The oldest dinosaur fossils are found in rocks of the Jurassic period, which are 155 million years old.”

  One-hundred-fifty-five-million-year-old dinosaurs; forget the young girls and horses.

  This is not good news for me. Should I avoid this state? I consult with a loveable old lady who works in the center, and she advises that I stick around in Montana. There are many cowboys, she promises me, in Miles City, which is one hundred miles from here. Faster than a deer, I reach Miles City.

  I see casinos, but no cowboys. “The cowboys are in the bars,” some folks tell me.

  Which is the cowboys’ favorite bar? I ask.

  “The Bison Bar,” they say.

  At the Bison Bar I see an older couple plus a younger man by the name of Chad, who I think has had too much to drink. He’s kind of interesting, though. In reply to a gibe by the older couple, he says to them: “Don’t make me blush, I got girls for that.” Great line!

  Question is, where are the cowboys? “In the ranches,” the drinkers reply.

  Where are the ranches?

  “Go to Doug Martin, he’s in Kinsey.”

  Where’s Kinsey? I don’t know but I’ll try to find it.

  • • •

  Driving through Miles City, I notice a house with a big Confederate flag next to a normal US flag plus a “Liberty or Death” flag. I’m looking for cowgirls and cowboys and I get dinosaurs and flags. Hopefully, Doug will save the day.

  I arrive in Kinsey healthy and happy but I have no idea how to find Doug. No GPS has a “Doug” location.

  I keep on driving. As I drive into nowhere I see a man walking on the road’s edge with big earphones on his head. Lucky me, he knows Doug, and he directs me to Doug’s place.

  Doug, wearing a cowboy hat, stares at the approaching Malibu. I’m very happy to meet a cowboy, a real cowboy, but this cowboy doesn’t seem to be very happy to meet me. Well, let’s be honest here: Why would he be? He sees a Malibu driving into his ranch, and I should be happy that he doesn’t greet it with a bullet. I read stories like that in American media.

  I get out of the car, and our eyes meet. He takes one look at me and immediately realizes that I didn’t come to steal his horses. I’m not the type.

  Doug, I quickly see, has more than just horses; he has bulls too. Actually, more bulls than horses. He should be called bullboy.

  First things first. Doug tells me that he is not a rancher but a farmer.

  Doug has more news for me: Very few individuals actually own a ranch or a farm. Most of the people working on ranches are “hired hands,” and they work for huge companies. “The Koch Brothers have hundreds of thousands of acres,” he says by way of explanation.

  If he’s right, and he has no reason to lie to me, then the cowboys of the movies don’t exist in real life. In the movies they own the land and the cattle, but in reality they are employees of some Koch Brothers, sweating much and earning little. The few who are real cowboys, most of them have inherited the land and the animals, Doug tells me.

  Doug makes his living from a business he owns; the farm he maintains as a hobby. On his farm he trains cattle and man in the art of rodeo, and that’s why he has more bulls than horses. When we advance closer to his animals, I see two female students riding two horses, desperately trying to catch a bull with rope lassos. “I don’t raise beef cattle. I raise cattle with horns and I raise cattle that run,” is how he puts it.

  I watch Doug and his students at work. It’s amazing to see the horses running to chase the bulls, as if the bulls were their biggest enemies. The horses do this because they are trained to do so, which makes me wonder if we humans are not exactly the same.

  Doug is also a man of faith and is very interested in politics. He is “definitely pro-life,” thinks that climate change “has been happening for a million years and will happen for a million years more,” and he is pro-Israel. “When America turns its back on Israel, we are done as a country. We are getting pretty close to it,” Doug warns me.

  But before America disappears, I depart from Doug and drive another couple of miles and spot another ranch, or a farm; I’m not sure which. I drive in and soon am greeted by a few dogs and then a lady. “My brother is a cowboy,” she tells me, “but there aren’t many of them left. The big corporations and technology make cowboys obsolete. There’s no need for cowboys on horses to check on cows, which cowboys used to do. Today you have four-wheelers to do the horses’ job.”

  In just a few years, I now think, Montana’s visitors center will have a big poster that will tell the story of the c
owboy fossils, celebrating a people that once upon a time lived in Montana.

  It is sad to watch a fading, dying culture. But life goes on. And I drive on.

  • • •

  Pressing west, I see a sign for a place called Lame Deer. What could a place called Lame Deer be? Probably a mental institution or a cannabis-friendly hotel. I drive in. Should be interesting.

  Guess what? It’s a reservation. I wanted cowboys, I get Indians.

  While the cowboys are disappearing, the Indians stick around.

  Imagine Chevy naming my car Lame Deer instead of Malibu. They would go bankrupt in less than an hour. But the Indians can come up with any lame excuse for a name and they make it. How do they do it?

  In an attempt to find out I go to meet Winfield S. Russell, vice president of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe. I like him from the first moment I lay my eyes on him. He tells me that his tribe owns 444,000 acres.

  I’ve been to reservations before, but none this big. Here you could build a half million Soaring Eagle casinos. How many people live here? I ask Winfield.

  “Five thousand five hundred,” he answers. That’s over eighty acres per Indian, child or adult. The fascinating thing about this is that neither of us explodes in laughter at this very moment.

  What’s totally not funny here is the crime rate. Lame Deer has a very high crime rate, Winfield tells me, especially in the drugs department. “Most of the people here have a drug problem,” he informs me.

  How many people speak the Cheyenne language?

  “About three hundred, and it’s slowly deteriorating,” meaning that the number of speakers will one day soon hover just above zero. This place, he adds, also suffers from acute poverty. If I had half a million acres I wouldn’t be poor, I’d be a Koch Brother. But in Lame Deer everything’s different.

  Given the fact that the language is dying, that crime is high, that poverty is acute and that the people spend their days drinking, which I observed while walking in, why not get out of this reservation business altogether and integrate into American life? I ask him.