“Prejudice,” as defined by Sawtooth Bigtree, was a kind of prehistoric arithmetic—a “damn fool math”—in which some people counted and others did not. It meant white names on white headstones in the big cemetery on Cypress Point, and black and brown bodies buried in swamp water. At ten, I couldn’t articulate much but I got the message: to be a true historian, you had to mourn amply and well.
