Whiskey Tender: A Memoir of Family and Survival on and off the Reservation

by Deborah Jackson Taffa

So many people could tell this story, it is shocking how rarely it has been told. Too many mothers have watched their kids thrown into cop cars without protest. Too many aunties have put ice on black eyes without saying a word. Too many grandmothers have watched their grandchildren, their hope for the future, head out to a party and never come home. Too many girls have pretended nothing happened after experiencing sexual harassment, only to redirect the hate toward the innocent face staring back at them in the mirror.

“Do not participate in the erasure of your own people,” the voices murmur. “Do not be a silent witness as we fade.”

The rage I feel today isn’t toward my old classmates—social change is a long time coming, and the Reagan years were still full of ugly realities. My rage is against the fear this country has of its own history.

The totem pole, the Bodhi tree, the hearth. We are at home on this planet when we feel the sacred places rising up through our feet, when we embrace the mountains and desert arroyos as holy. The Ancient Ones walk beside us, and all we must do is keep our fingers on the pulse of music. If we listen, we can hear it rising up from the planet: the sound of the spirit that was, is, and always will be.