Winter Counts

by David Heska Wanbli Weiden

wondered what it was like to live without that weight on your shoulders, the weight of the murdered ancestors, the stolen land, the abused children, the burden every Native person carries.

We were told in movies and books that Indians had a sacred relationship with the land, that we worshipped and nurtured it. But staring at Nathan, I didn’t feel any mystical bond with the rez. I hated our shitty unpaved roads and our falling-down houses and the snarling packs of dogs that roamed freely in the streets and alleys. But most of all, I hated that kids like Nathan—good kids, decent kids—got involved with drugs and crime and gangs, because there was nothing for them to do here. No after-school jobs, no clubs, no tennis lessons.

What I’d discovered was that sadness is like an abandoned car left out in a field for good—it changes a little over the years, but doesn’t ever disappear. You may forget about it for a while, but it’s still there, rusting away, until you notice it again.

As I walked back to my life, the words my mother used to say finally came to me. Wakan Tanka nici un. May the Creator guide you.

felt so alive as when I was administering some righteousness. When I started fighting, I’d lose myself, enter a zone where I stopped thinking. Often I’d forget who it was I was pounding and begin to imagine I was back in junior high school. It was like being in a dream, except that the fighting began to feel like my real life, and everything else felt hollow, fake.

Yes, he was my nephew, not my son, but Indians never made that distinction. Nieces, nephews, cousins—these were all viewed as family by Natives, not as lesser kin that could be ignored. Of course this sometimes led to some titanic battles between family members. I knew quite a few tiospaye on the rez where warring relations had refused to speak to each other for decades.

the white man sticks their old ones in nursing homes, assisted living, whatever you want to call them—I call ’em warehouses, ’cause that’s what they are, a place to stick the old folks until they die. You know Indians don’t hide away our elders, we keep them with the little takojas so they can learn from us. Pass it on to the little ones, that’s what the Creator wants.

THERE IS NO WORD for goodbye in Lakota. That’s what my mother used to tell me. Sure, there were words like toksa, which meant “later,” that were used by people as a modern substitute. She’d told me that the Lakota people didn’t use a term for farewell because of the idea that we are forever connected. To say goodbye would mean the circle was broken.

Winter counts. This was the winter of my sorrow, one I had tried to elude but which had come for me with a terrible cruelty.