I was stunned.
My father had never practiced any form of corporal punishment on me. And my mother had, at that point, only physically assaulted me once. And, yes, she’d used a thick twig to spank my butt. But she’d punished me that severely because I had forced my little sisters to smoke cigarettes until they vomited.
And while I’d been slapped, punched, and kicked by other kids, I had never been struck by an adult.
And then my aunt slapped me again.
I fell to the ground in a fetal ball as she continued to slap my head, arms, legs, and back. She slapped me at least a dozen times. I would have many bruises. She screamed at me for losing my moccasins. She reminded me again and again that she had bought them for her son, and not for me. She called me an idiot. She called me a loser.
And then I rolled away from her, ducked under the edge of the tepee, and made my escape.
I didn’t return to my aunt’s campsite that night. I walked the powwow, barefoot and alone, for hours. Until the sun went down. Until the last powwow song ended. Until the food stands closed. Until even the last drunk had passed out. I was nine years old. I was angry and afraid. But I wasn’t going back to my aunt’s campsite. I refused to surrender, to concede, to seek her shelter.
I don’t remember if I slept that night. I do remember that an old Indian woman gave me a piece of fry bread the next morning. She took pity on me, I guess. I give thanks to her.
And then I walked around the powwow all that next day and again into the night until I heard my mother call out to me. She had returned to the powwow.
I remember she was carrying my shoes.
I remember that I fell asleep in the backseat of our car as she drove us back to our reservation.
I don’t remember arriving back home on our reservation.
When my father returned home from that particular drinking binge, he had shaved his hair into a mohawk.
I was embarrassed for him. Embarrassed for me. Embarrassed for every Indian in the world.
“I look like a warrior now,” he said to me.
“No, you don’t,” I said.
As I finished the first draft of this chapter, I smelled ozone, a common olfactory hallucination that happens to epileptics. I also tasted mud and tears. Silt. I thought of my mother carrying my shoes. I thought of my father removing his cowboy hat to reveal that mohawk hair.
A few years after I lost my new moccasins, my sister died in St. Ignatius, Montana, less than twenty miles away from the bridge across the creek.
Ozone.
Ozone.
Ozone.
I didn’t have a seizure while writing this chapter. But I smelled ozone. I smelled the dank water of that creek flowing away from me.
And I tasted blood in my mouth.
Over the last four decades, I have visited my friends and family on the Flathead Indian Reservation, but I have never again stepped foot on the Arlee powwow grounds.
And I have not worn a pair of moccasins in four decades.
110.
Kind
AFTER BEING PSYCHOLOGICALLY and physically tortured by our missionary teachers—by all of those cruel white women and men—and after finding little solace at home from our Native parents and grandparents, who’d been tortured in the same way, we Indian kids are hungry for any tenderness from anybody.
We fall in love too easily.
We get pregnant too young.
We run away with strangers.
Then we run away with other strangers.
Or we fall in love with the same boy or girl who was tortured alongside us. We spend our lives with the person who has the same scars in the same places. We make love with the person whose open wounds snap into ours like LEGO pieces. And then, of course, we rage at our neediness.
We might turn racist and sexist and homophobic—turning against those people as powerless as or more powerless than us.
We hate power.
We hate weakness.
We hate all white people.
Or we fall in love with all white people.
Or we fall in love with the white liberals who want to heal us.
Or we fall in love with the white conservatives who want to hurt us again.
We reenact the racist torture and salvation in our beds.
We cry in the arms of white people.
We cry in the arms of other Indians.
We boast and brag.
We insist our damage is greater than all of the damage suffered by all of the other damaged people. We are the gold medalists in the Genocide Olympics. Or maybe just the silver medalists. Or maybe we just win the bronze because Custer was only 25 percent as bad as Hitler.
In response to our generational pain, we Indian kids become addicted to torture—to the memory of torture. Or, wait, no, maybe we are addicted to gentleness—to gentle white people.
Hello, my name is Sherman and I am addicted to white people.
Or maybe, after centuries of being tortured by white civilization, I am addicted to those white folks who will reward me for being Indian. I am addicted to those white folks who will not torture me.
Does any of this sound like love?
111.
Tribalism
A NON-NATIVE friend said, “Native Americans were the victims of genocide. So why isn’t there a Museum of the Native American Genocide?”
And I said, “Because we Indians would spend years arguing about whose tribe suffered the worst massacre.”
I have visited museums of genocide in other countries. Though I realize “visited” is the wrong verb. “Endured” is too self-serving. Perhaps the best sentence is “I have experienced museums of genocide in other countries.”
And what do I remember?
I remember that I kept having to close my eyes against the pain. I often had to look away from the pain. I often had to sit on benches and stare at the blank floors.
And what do I make of the genocide museum in our own country? What do I make of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum?
It is a vital place. It is a grievous reminder. A warning. It is as necessary as any museum ever built.
But it also proves to me how the United States closes its eyes against the pain it has caused. The United States often looks away from the pain it has caused. The United States often sits on benches and stares at the blank floors.
So, if ever built, what will the United States Native American Genocide Memorial Museum contain? What will it exhibit?
It will be one room, a fifty-foot square with the same large photo filling the walls, ceiling, and floor.
There will only be one visitor allowed at any one time.
There will be no furniture.
That one visitor will have to stand or sit on the floor.
Or lie on the floor if they feel the need.
That visitor must remain in that room for one hour.
There will be no music.
The only soundtrack will be random gunshots from rifles used throughout American history.
Reverberation.
What will that one photo be?
It will be an Indian baby, shredded by a Gatling gun, lying dead and bloody in the snow.
It is a photo taken by a U.S. Cavalry soldier in the nineteenth century.
Very few people have seen that photo.
I have not seen that photo.