Ah, listen to the singers drumming and them drummers singing.
Ain’t they celebratory? Ain’t they mournful? Ain’t they angry? Ain’t they sweet?
Listen to the drum, the drum, the drum, the drum, the drum.
Hey, grave-dancers, I’m calling all of you grave-dancers, come and grave-dance with me.
40.
Rebel Without a Clause
I AM Sherman Joseph Alexie, Jr., and I have always struggled with being the second of my name. Everybody on the reservation called me Junior. Most of my family and childhood friends still call me Junior. During my youth, there were at least five or six other men and boys who were also called Junior. A couple of guys, named John and Joseph after their father, went by John-John and JoJo, which makes me wonder if things like this have ever been said:
“Hey, my name is Joseph, and this is my son, JoJo, and that’s my grandson, JoJoJo, and his best friend, John-John-Johnny.”
There are a lot of Juniors in the Indian world. That might seem like a product of patriarchal European colonial culture, and maybe it is, but we Indians have also created patriarchal systems of our own. My tribe has elected only two women to Tribal Council in 122 years. Even Crazy Horse, the famous Oglala warrior, was named for his father. But nobody called him Junior, for rather logical reasons.
“Look! There’s the most feared and mysterious Indian of all time! Behold! It is Junior!”
So, yeah, as a name, Junior lacks a certain gravitas. And Crazy Horse, Jr., isn’t all that much better. It seems oddly formal and carnivalesque at the same time:
“Hello, my name is Crazy Horse, Jr., attorney at law, and I am here to fight for your tribal rights!”
I never hated my father, but I didn’t want to share his moniker. This personal struggle is the reason I wrote a picture book, Thunder Boy Jr., about a Native boy’s rather innocent and ultimately successful quest for a new name.
My quest wasn’t as innocent and it wasn’t all that successful either.
At age three, when I was first taught how to spell my name—my nickname—I immediately added a u and wrote “Juniour.”
“That’s wrong,” the preschool teacher said. He was an eccentric white man who did double duty as my speech therapist. He was also an ex-Catholic priest and would later be the publisher, editor, writer, and photographer for an alternative rag that directly competed with the tribe’s official newspaper. So, yes, that white man was the Village Voice of the Spokane Indian Reservation. He was the White Fallen Holy Man with a Mimeograph Machine. Years later, he would take my first official author photo. But in 1969, he was just trying to teach a rez boy how to spell his own damn name.
“There is only one u in Junior,” he said.
“I know it’s wrong,” I said. “But that’s how I’m going to spell it. That’s my name.”
Many of you doubt that a three-year-old could speak like that. Some of you are probably worried that your doubt is racist and classist. After all, how could a poor reservation Indian kid be that self-possessed and radical? Well, that was me. I was the UnChild.
I said, “I will spell my name the way I want to spell my name.”
I vividly remember the expression on the ex–holy man’s face. I have seen that expression on many faces. I have often caused that expression. That expression means “I might win this one fight with Junior, a.k.a. Sherman Two, the son of Lillian the Cruel, but he will immediately start another fight. And another. And another.”
For the next three years, in my own handwriting and in official school reports, I was Juniour, pronounced the same as Junior, yes, but it carried a whole different meaning.
I think the u in Juniour was short for “Fuck you and you and you and you and especially you. Yeah, you, the one who still thinks I am going to obey you.”
41.
Unsaved
ABU GHRAIB.
Abu Ghraib.
Abu Ghraib.
Do you remember Abu Ghraib?
Do you remember that American soldiers tortured detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraq War?
Has Abu Ghraib already become a historical footnote? Is it mentioned in the history textbooks? Do the tortured prisoners have names? I didn’t remember any of their names until I Googled them. I don’t remember if I had ever heard any of their names. But I certainly remember some of the names of the American torturers. I don’t want to use their names here. Naming them gives them more respect than they deserve. They were convicted of relatively minor crimes. They were sentenced to short prison terms. They are free back here in the United States. Two of the torturers—a man and woman—married each other. I don’t know if they are still married. I don’t know if they have children. I don’t want to know. Or maybe I’m lying. I imagine that moment when their children go online and find those images of torture, when they see their mother and father posing—smiling—with naked, humiliated, wounded, and helpless prisoners. And when I imagine that moment, I feel like it might be a form of justice. I feel a slight sense of satisfaction. Or maybe it just feels like revenge for a crime that wasn’t even committed against me. Maybe this just reveals my own cruelty. But I feel something mostly grim and partly good when I imagine that painful conversation between those torturer parents and their children. I realize those parents—if they have any sense of decency—would be forced to reveal their crimes to their children before they discovered them themselves.
“Mom, Dad, how could you do that to another human being?”
Jesus, how do you explain that evil shit to your own kids?
But then I imagine those Abu Ghraib torturers have long ago forgiven themselves, have repeated their self-justifications so often that they have become personal scripture.
I imagine those torturers have exonerated themselves. I imagine they’d be able to persuade their children toward forgiveness, understanding, empathy, and agreement. Maybe those torturers have become good parents. Maybe they have become good people, better than could possibly be expected. Maybe they have earned the forgiveness of their children. But will they ever deserve the forgiveness of their prisoners? Have those torturers ever apologized to the tortured?
One of the tortured prisoners was named Satar Jabar.
Do you remember the photo of Mr. Jabar, hooded, standing on a box, arms eagle-spread, with electrical wires connected to his hands and penis?
He was told, repeatedly, that he’d be electrocuted if he fell off that box. Mr. Jabar testified that he was indeed electrocuted many times. His torturers claim he wasn’t. Whom do you believe? Whom do you want to believe?
If you fall off that box, you will be electrocuted.
Say it aloud.
If you fall off that box, you will be electrocuted.
Say it louder.
If you fall off that box, you will be electrocuted.