Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder (Canons)

by Kent Nerburn

“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “There’s something else. You don’t try to be an Indian.”

“I’m not much thrilled with the culture we’ve created.” “Yeah, okay. But how about white people?” I didn’t know what he was driving at. “I like white people just fine,” I said. “I mean, after all, I am one.” “That’s what I mean,” he chuckled. “That’s good. That’s good. If you hate your own people you can’t be a very good person. You have to love your own people even if you hate what they do.” He gestured toward the mug on the table. “Here. Drink your coffee.”

If the mountain can forgive the scarring and the mining, and can cover over her gashes with the fresh grasses of summer, should I not, too, be able to cover over the gashes with the fresh grasses of kindness and understanding? If the forest can survive the murder of all her children, and rise again once more in beauty, should I not, too, be able to survive the murder of my people and once again raise my heart toward the sun? It is not easy for a man to be as great as a mountain or a forest. But that is why the Creator gave them to us as teachers. Now that I am old I look once more toward them for lessons, instead of trying to understand the ways of men. They tell me to be patient. They tell me I cannot change what is, I can only hope to change what will become. Let the grasses grow over our scars, they say, and let the flowers bloom over our wounds.

Silence is the lie of the good man, or the coward. It is seeing something you don’t like and not speaking.”

“Listen, Nerburn. I’m not trying to say bad things about you and your people. I’m just trying to tell you how it was for us. I hope you don’t get mad.”

When I make a promise, I see my grandfathers looking over my shoulder. If I break my word I disgrace them. Do you see what I mean? How could I do that? They’re in the spirit world. It’s up to me to act for them here. That’s why I want to speak now. That’s why you’re here.

We had watched the seasons pass on this land. It was alive, like our grandparents. It gave us life for our bodies and the life for our spirits. We were part of it.

“You need to understand this. We did not think we owned the land. The land was part of us. We didn’t even know about owning the land. It is like talking about owning your grandmother. You can’t own your grandmother. She just is your grandmother. Why would you talk about owning her?

“We had never seen the kind of things they did. For us, the earth was alive. To move a stone was to change her. To kill an animal was to take from her. There had to be respect. We saw no respect from these people. They chopped down trees and left animals lay where they were shot. They made loud noises. They seemed like wild people. They were heavy on the land and they were loud. We could hear their wagon wheels groaning in the next valley.

“Then something strange happened. These new people started asking us for the land. We did not know what to say. How could they ask for the land? They wanted to give us money for the land. They would give us money for the land if their people could live on it. “Our people didn’t want this. There was something wrong to the Creator in taking money for the land. There was something wrong to our grandparents and our ancestors to take money for the land. “Then something happened that we didn’t understand. The people who came said that we didn’t belong here anymore. That there was a chief in Washington, which was a city far away, and the land was his, and he had said they could live here and we could not. “We thought they were insane.

“And here is what was really happening. They were talking about property. We were talking about the land.

“I don’t know. Maybe long, long ago, Europe was just land, too, like this land was for us. But that was so long ago that no one remembered. It had all been turned into property.

“We didn’t know this. We didn’t even know what it meant. We just belonged to the land. They wanted to own it.

“This is what you have to understand. To us the land was alive. It talked to us. We called her our mother. If she was angry with us, she would give us no food. If we didn’t share with others, she might send harsh winters or plagues of insects. We had to do good things for her and live the way she thought was right. She was the mother to everything that lived upon her, so everything was our brother and sister. The bears, the trees, the plants, the buffalo. They were all our brothers and sisters. If we didn’t treat them right, our mother would be angry. If we treated them with respect and honor, she would be proud. “For your people, the land was not alive. It was something that was like a stage, where you could build things and make things happen. You understood the dirt and the trees and the water as important things, but not as brothers and sisters. They existed to help you humans live. You were supposed to make the land bear fruit. That is what your God told you.

Now our mother is silent. But we still listen for her voice.

“And here is what I wonder. If she sent diseases and harsh winters when she was angry with us, and we were good to her, what will she send when she speaks back to you?

“You had better hope your God is right. That is al...

“It feels disrespectful to me to leave when he falls asleep,” I answered. “Don’t worry about it. That’s the Indian way. When you are here, you are here. When you are gone, you are gone. It isn’t a problem to be gone, so long as you are really here when you’re here.”

Why do you think this is?” I told him I didn’t know. “I think it’s because the white people know we had something that was real, that we lived the way the Creator meant people to live on this land. They want that. They know that the white people are messing up. If they say they are part Indian, it’s like being part of what we have.”

“You’re getting better with silence,”

“With you it is just the opposite. You learn by talking. You reward the kids who talk the most in school. At your parties everyone is trying to talk. In your work you are always having meetings where everyone interrupts everyone else and everyone talks five, ten, or a hundred times. You say it is working out a problem. To us it just sounds like a bunch of people saying anything that comes into their heads and then trying to make what they say come around to something that makes sense.

We know that when you are in a room and it is quiet you get nervous. You have to fill the space with sound. So you talk right away, before you even know what you are going to say.

“Our elders told us this was the best way to deal with white people. Be silent until they get nervous, then they will start talking. They will keep talking, and if you stay silent, they will say too much. Then you will be able to see into their hearts and know what they really mean. Then you will know what to do.”

“I remember one teacher telling me I needed to learn how to think. She really didn’t care about my thinking. She just wanted me to talk. She thought talking meant thinking.

I thought it was disrespectful to talk when I didn’t have anything to say.

They want everyone connected to everyone else by words and looks. They don’t like silence and they don’t like empty space.”

White people like to argue. They don’t even let each other finish sentences. They are always interrupting and saying, ‘Well, I think...’

“To Indians this is very disrespectful and even very stupid. If you start talking, I’m not going to interrupt you. I will listen. Maybe I will stop listening if I don’t like what you are saying. But I won’t interrupt you.

“When you are done I will make my decision on what you said, but I won’t tell you if I disagree with you unless it is important. Otherwise I will just be quiet and go away. You have told me...

“You don’t convince anyone by arguing. People make their decisions in their heart. Talk doesn’t touch my heart. “People should think of their words like seeds. They should plant them, then let them grow in silence. Our old people taught us that the earth is always speaking to us, but that we have to be silent to hear her.

“Owning things is what white people’s lives are about. I watch TV, and every ad I see tells me something is ‘new’. That means I should get it because what I have is old and this is new. That’s no reason to get something, just because it’s new. Your way teaches people to want, want, want. What you have is no good. What you don’t have is new and better. “From the first you are told, ‘This is mine, this is yours’; ‘Don’t touch that, it doesn’t belong to you.’ You are taught to keep away from things because of ownership, not because of respect.

“Now we have been turned around. We think that good people should be rewarded, just like the white man thinks. Can’t you see how much better it was when good people thought they should give, not that they should get?

They might get a bike and ride it, then just leave it somewhere, like that. You say they are irresponsible. They are just being like their ancestors who believed that you owned something only so long as you needed it. Then you passed it to someone else.

“No wonder white people need such big houses. They aren’t to live in, they are to store things in.

All you really care about is keeping things clean. You don’t care how they really are, just so long as they are clean. You see a dirt path with a pop can next to it and you think that is worse than a big paved highway that is kept clean. You get madder at a forest with a trash bag in it than at a big shopping center that is all clean and swept.

“You got to pee on the earth, Nerburn. You got to pee on the earth.”

“I’m not cutting my hair for any damn hippies,” the old man grumbled.

I counted it a deficiency when I was forced to ride in quiet. Now, in the enveloping dark of Grover’s old Buick, the pleasures of silent travel came back to me from my childhood. I slid down in the back seat and listened to the whining of the tires and the steady, purring throb of the ancient V-8 under the hood.

“You’re lying again,” he said. “Listen to me. I’m trying to teach you some things. You’re not listening. You keep worrying about that truck of yours. It’s not that big a deal. Either Jumbo will fix it or he won’t. If he can’t, then you will go home another way. You’ll get another truck. They’re making trucks every day. Don’t worry about that truck. Think about the day. Listen to the earth. The earth is here forever, but it will only be exactly like this on one day. Today.”

I went to my hill and spoke to my grandfathers. They gave me that song. They gave it to me in the wind. They said I had too much anger to speak. They told me that anger is only for the one who speaks. It never opens the heart of one who listens. There are good white people, they told me. They want to do right. They are not the enemy anymore. The enemy is blindness to each other’s ways. Put away your anger, they said. Our earth is crying now, and we need to remove her tears. That is what they told me. Someone will come, they said. Then they gave me that song.”

Then it struck me. If he could barely see the ground in front of him, how had he seen the buffalo on that ridgetop almost half a mile away? “How did you see that buffalo?” I asked him. He turned his head and nodded several times, as if satisfied with the question. “I didn’t see him, Nerburn,” he said. “He showed himself to me.”

Your world was made of cages and you thought ours was, too. Even though you hated your cages you believed in them. They defined your world and you needed them to define ours.

“So we started noticing. Everything looked like cages. Your clothes fit like cages. Your houses looked like cages. You put fences around your yards so they looked like cages. Everything was a cage. You turned the land into cages. Little squares.

The only freedom you had was inside your own cage. Then you wondered why you weren’t happy and didn’t feel free. You made all the cages, then you wondered why you didn’t feel free.

It was more important for us to know what was right than to know what was wrong. “We looked at the animals and saw what was right. We saw how the deer would trick the more powerful animals and how the bear would make her children strong by running them without mercy. “We saw how the buffalo would stand and watch until it understood. We saw how every animal had wisdom and we tried to learn that wisdom. We would look to them to see how they got along and how they raised their young. Then we would copy them. We did not look for what was wrong. Instead we always reached for what was right. “It was this search that kept us on a good path, not rules and fences. We wanted honor for ourselves and our families. We wanted others to say, ‘He is a good man. He is as brave as the bear’ or ‘as clean as the fox.’ We had freedom so we did not seek it. We sought honor, and honor was duty.

The man who sought freedom was just running from duty, so he was weak.

“If you take an animal from the woods or the prairie and give him a house inside a fence, is that giving him freedom? No. All it is doing is taking away his honor, because if he accepts it, he is no longer free.

One other boy once told me he thought she said as many words in a day as there were stars in the sky. I never forgot that. “When I learned English I realized it was a trick. You could use it to say the same thing a hundred ways. What was important to Indian people was saying something the best way. In English you had to learn to say things a hundred ways. I never heard anything like it. I still watch white people talk and I’m surprised at all the words.

Sometimes they will say the same thing over and over and over in different ways. They are like a hunter who rushes all over the forest hoping to bump into something instead of sitting quietly until he can capture it.

“There was an old man who told me when I was a boy that I should look at words like beautiful stones. He said I should lift each one and look at it from all sides before I used it. Then I would respect it.