Ohitika Woman

by Mary Brave Bird

  If my kid does something wrong with another kid, I’ll go to the parent and talk to them about it, and straighten it out. And I’ll tell my kid what’s right and wrong. And the other parents have to correct their children too. If the other parents can’t correct their children, that’s where the law will come in. That’s about the only time I’ll call the police, when my kids are involved, because it puts me in jeopardy too. Then I’ll tell the cops straight out: “I tried to make peace, I tried to do the right thing, but please talk to them.” Sometimes it’s better to have someone in the middle to talk to them, because it gets bigger, it gets into gangs, and it gets into family feuds, and it might be over a little thing that’s not even worth it. It’s really sad. My friend Debbie, who I had the talk with after I wrecked, had a son about thirteen years old who died in a wreck. There’s a lot of tragedies like that. This year a lot of young people died in wrecks. There’s usually alcohol or drugs involved.

  But Pedro is a grown man now. You can’t tell a father: “Behave yourself,” tell him what to do. Pedro is becoming very mature. He and Anwah run yuwipi ceremonies. You have to be respected in order to do this. He still has some eggshells from the old he-warrior mentality sticking to him, but they are falling off. He’s growing up. He and Percetta live in a small apartment in Antelope together with their little daughters. Like everybody else on the res, they struggle to survive.

  As for me and Rudi, life is in some ways idyllic, down to basics, to the simplest kind of life—still, you have to pay for rent, gas, electricity, groceries, everything. It’s hard. The politicians, the part-time Indians up there, have nice homes and ranches with horses, but everybody else is barely surviving. Some wasichus grow rich on the liquor they sell—the bar owners and those who have the package stores. You can sometimes see a guy on a horse, with a big Uncle Joe hat, riding up to the liquor store’s window for his bottle of Jack, then galloping off with it after paying twice as much for it as somebody in a big city.

  Rudi’s trying hard to make a good life for me. He’s gifted. He’d like to do something with art or sculpture, maybe do book illustrations. He is a good musician and plays the Spanish guitar well. But what can you do with that on the res? If it doesn’t work out at Rosebud, we’ll pretty well have to move to a city. Jim and Barb are struggling too. They have a little burrito business going. Jim gets up at four in the morning to cook up his burritos—some with and some without meat. At seven-thirty in the morning, Barb starts driving around selling them. By ten or eleven they’re through and they have the rest of the day for themselves. But they have their problems. Their car barely makes it from day to day and needs constant repairs. The business depends on Barb’s being able to drive around. So when the old crate is in the shop she has to borrow one from a friend. She once borrowed my ancient lemon and that promptly broke down too. So on that day there was no business. They now have a “new” car, an ancient Lincoln Continental they bought for fifty bucks. Then they got a motor for it for another fifty.

  Life is not without excitement even now. When Rudi and I moved in together on the res, in 1991, bounty hunters came after us. It was like a Grade B movie. Some time back, Rudi had gotten into an argument with some racists in Denver who called him some names. It resulted in a fight in which Rudi came off second best because it was two against one. As a matter of fact he had his ankle broken and was still limping and bleeding when I met him. He was up for a misdemeanor charge—kid stuff. Bur a thousand-dollar bond was posted for him pending trial. Since he was leaving Denver for South Dakota with Jim and Barb, he ignored it. Well, there is a guy in Denver who has had it in for Rudi ever since they were young kids. This guy is a bounty hunter and he saw his chance to get after Rudi. They came to the trailer I lived in then, in Antelope, the one with the sign I had put up: INSURED BY SMITH AND WESSON. Rudi and I were out and Pedro threw them out of the house. We had pulled up to Jim and Barb’s place just as those guys had left. It was perfect timing.

  The bounty hunters came back. I don’t know who gave them the address. They really played me cheap. The guy who hated Rudi said: “My dad’s a chief here on the reservation.” I said: “Oh yeah?” He went on: “That Rudi’s a convict—he’s extremely dangerous.” I made a face: “No shit? I’d better be careful.” They didn’t connect me. I went back to Jim’s, picked up Rudi in the car, and lit out for my mom’s place at He Dog. They got my mom’s phone number but had no idea where we were. They called us up: “Better surrender. We are at the Mission Police Department, right across the street, with the detectives, and we’re going to arrest you.” Right across the street was twenty-eight miles away. I started laughing: “Just try to find us. The res is a big, wild place.” They went on: “We’re going to bring the tribal police and the U.S. marshals.” I told them: “Fine, bring them, but you’d better have search warrants.”

  I was a bit concerned because I didn’t need the Man coming around. I didn’t need the heat after the recent run-in I’d had in Pine Ridge, when tribal cops stopped me for having booze in my car. Rudi told my mother: “I’ve got warrants, and the bounty hunters showed up at Mary’s place.” Mom was cool about it. She said: “Well, you stay here, down in the basement. They ain’t coming on my land.” Right away she was in our corner. Mom’s real straitlaced, but I think she liked the action, the excitement. The way the bounty hunters work, if they arrest you and bring you in, they get 10 percent of the bond. Rudi’s bond was only a thousand dollars—so the bounty hunters would have gotten only a hundred dollars, not even enough to pay for their gas from Denver to Rosebud. It was all bullshit, a teenage vendetta. Before hanging up on him, I said: “Mister bounty hunter, get your ass out of here or I’ll call the tribal police on you. You are in Indian country, on my turf. But thanks for the entertainment.” We never heard from them again.

  As far as the res is concerned, things are getting worse and worse. We are getting poorer and poorer. Under the Carter administration, .04 percent of the federal budget was earmarked for us noble savages, that is, for all the Native Americans, from the East Coast to the Pacific and from Alaska to the Rio Grande. In 1981, Reagan cut this by five hundred million dollars, and Bush cut it again—"got to cut that deficit.” There’s nothing left to cur now. Whatever little money comes in is skimmed off at the top. The bureaucrats have taken the cream off the milk. Otherwise things go on as usual. The tribal chairman had a heart attack. There is the fight about the renewal of grazing rights. The people who warn: to dump the nation’s garbage on our res still seem to have the upper hand and still have a chance to turn the place into a toilet. We had a bunch of rape cases, one involving a tribal policeman, and some of our councilmen—or should I say council persons—are pushing for a scheme to put up a big gambling casino on the res in order to raise money. Gambling on Indian land is now all the rage. State and federal gambling laws don’t apply to reservations. That’s about the only instance where our “sovereignty” is respected, and so the tribes are under siege from a whole mob of promoters smelling big bucks. I don’t think it’s a good idea. I can’t see the high rollers traveling great distances to get rid of their money at Rosebud, of all places. There are no towns of any size near us. In the north there’s Kadoka, Murdo, Interior, Scenic—jerkwater towns, all of them. To the south is Valentine, Nebraska, not exactly a metropolis either. It’s 170 miles to Rapid City to the west. There’s nothing to attract the high roller to the res, no amenities, no glitter, no gourmet restaurants. And we have too many problems of our own to handle an influx of tinhorn gamblers.

  A cop in Gordon, Nebraska, shot and killed a doddering, intoxicated Indian. AIM has sent a team to investigate. When I heard this I thought: “Here we go again! That’s where I came in.” Gordon, Nebraska, that’s where it all started, over twenty years ago, with the senseless and brutal murder of Raymond Yellow Thunder by a bunch of drunken rednecks and American Legionnaires. That’s when AIM came out from Minnesota to join the Lakota traditionalists, and that was the beginning of the movement.
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br />   AIM did a lot of good because it brought back awareness of the treaty, and of the danger of losing the Black Hills, awareness of the land’s sacredness. It made us conscious of being Indians and what that means. It made medicine men radical activists, and it made radical activists into sun dancers and vision seekers. It gave a new purpose in life to young drifters who knew nothing of their proud past. It gave a voice to our women and brought them into the tribal councils. It changed my life. AIM will always live in our hearts. It still exists, but it has grown middle-aged.

  Nowadays, the status of AIM on the res is pretty much a matter of individual efforts. The old AIM people still relate to each other and reminisce about the glorious past, but it’s not a real strong organization anymore. It’s more of a personal thing. There are other things to occupy our thoughts now—treaty rights, studying at the Sinte Gleska College, fighting legal battles, handling our local problems. Last year AIM started coming in again. Clyde Bellecourt came down, with Joe Nogeeshik, from the Twin Cities. They travel from one res to another, speaking to groups, dealing with drug problems, counseling young people. That’s the main preoccupation now. And I think AIM is more strong in Minnesota, where it started, than anywhere else. It is weak in South Dakota because people have gone back to the old traditions, to the sweats and the ceremonies, and to them that’s the movement right there—a spiritual movement. And, of course, for that revival they have to thank AIM, but they no longer remember that. AIM and its old leaders are hardly mentioned anymore. There’s a thin line between the spiritual part and the radical part. There are other organizations now and most of them, even though they recognize what AIM has done for all Native Americans, don’t want to go about doing things the way we once did, through confrontations. They’d rather go through legal channels now. AIM was never meant to be violent, but, as at Custer, the other side always started swinging first. Thinking back on it all, comparing what has been and what is now, I feel like an old, old woman, though I’m only thirty-seven. Being involved wears you out. AIM is now sensitizing the world to our plight by organizing running groups—running all the way from Alaska to the tip of South America, or running through whole continents. I’m a little too old for that. My legs are not what they were in those good red days. But there’s something to be said for slowing down, for being slower but more effective, more sure of yourself, for thinking with your brain instead of some other parts of your body. Power does not always come from the barrel of a gun—in the end the spirit wins out. Anyhow, I had a lump in my throat when, at the last sun dance, some of us veterans were honored by being given a new rainbow-colored patch with the words WOUNDED KNEE. Everyone who was at the Knee in 1973 wore it with pride.

  There is an old Lakota song that begins: “To be a man it is difficult, they say.” Well, to be a Native American woman is even harder. I do the dishes and I am again changing diapers. But I’m still fighting. I try to be sincere, try to hold on to the medicine, try to make my kids understand what it means to be Indian. I have become an environmentalist, because it is over the environment that the last of the Indian Wars will be fought. I try to help other women to cope with life. It does not necessarily have to be ceremonial, but just through understanding, and friendship, and support. And I think that unless our men can be free, we won’t make it either. I rejoice because there are now medicine women, who have their own medicine bundles and their pipes and feathers, taking good care of these sacred things, passing on what they know to future generations. I try to raise my own kids in a traditional way while also trying to get them a modern education. I know that this is a hopeless contradiction, but then I’ve never lost hope yet. I will endure. I will fight to the end of my days—for everything that lives. MITAKUYE OYASIN—ALL MY RELATIONS.

  Richard Erdoes (1912-2008) was one of America’s leading writers on Native American affairs. A prominent illustrator and photographer, Erdoes was the author of more than thirty books, including Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions’, American Indian Trickster Tales; and Lakota Woman (with Mary Crow Dog).