More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
It is not necessary for eagles to be crows. —Tatanka Iyotake/Sitting Bull
I thought about a conversation we’d had, right before she died. Brother, you remember when we were kids, and we used to draw winter counts, like they did in the old days? Yeah, I guess so. Winter counts were the calendar system used by the Lakota, but they weren’t like modern ones. I’d loved the little pictures in the calendars, each image showing the most significant event from the past year. Sybil and I used to make our own with paper and crayons when we were kids. Do you remember what symbol we used for the year Mom died? Why do you ask? Because it’s important to remember. It’s no big deal.
...more
As I looked down on my mother’s gravestone, I remembered what she told me just before she died. “Akita mani yo,” she said. See everything as you go. I think she meant that I needed to be aware of the world as it really existed, not the way I wanted it to be. Indian awareness.
When Sybil died, everyone said that the grief would get better over time, but that hadn’t happened. 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.
I USED MARIE’S SMART PHONE and found out that the bar was located on the north side of Denver, in a neighborhood called Swansea/Elyria. The name sounded fancy, but a little internet searching revealed that the neighborhood was one of Denver’s poorest, almost completely Latino, but was starting to change as wealthier people in search of cheap and quirky housing began driving out the original inhabitants. The newspaper article I found said that the earliest residents were openly hostile to the gentrifiers, but that there was little they could do against the tide of the neighborhood settlers.
...more
“We have the perfect spot for you! It’s been here forever, it’s kitschy and fun. Everybody goes there at least once; it’s like a restaurant and theme park. The food is meh, but you will have a great time, we promise! It’s called Casa Bonita.”
😂
“Virgil, what do you do?” I hated that question. It was such a white way of looking at the world, that a person is judged by their job, not their character.
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.
I sat there, and the wind stopped. The sun set, but I remained. I didn’t want to get up and face what I’d almost certainly lost. What I’d lost and still had yet to lose. The country of the living was gone to me, and I knew that I’d entered a different space, one that offered no solace but only the wind and the cold and the frost. 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.
Though Nathan was really yelling at me now, I still wasn’t listening. I thought again about the vision I’d had in the yuwipi, and the little child—the lost bird—who had been shot by the soldier at Wounded Knee. The baby had looked at me in her last moments, and that’s when I’d seen everything I would ever need to know. The expression on her face was compassionate, and I saw she’d accepted her fate and wanted me to understand that. She wanted me to know that I was forgiven, and that there was mercy for me and for all the wounded and the lost. I focused on the baby, her little face filled with
...more
The reluctance of federal agencies to prosecute certain felony crimes on reservations is well known in Indian Country, and there’s no shortage of academic and journalistic accounts on this topic. A good place to start is the book American Apartheid: The Native American Struggle for Self-Determination and Inclusion, by Stephanie Woodard. Other useful resources are American Indians, American Justice, by Vine Deloria Jr. and Clifford M. Lytle, and Braid of Feathers: American Indian Law and Contemporary Tribal Life, by Frank Pommersheim. Regarding opioids and heroin distribution systems, I’m
...more
My approach in this book was to use other Lakota writers as my guide and only write about those details that had been previously disclosed by them, and to write about these matters respectfully, in the manner of many authors I admire, such as Susan Power and Joseph Marshall III. I relied primarily upon the venerated Native intellectual Vine Deloria Jr. and his book The World We Used to Live In. I also used Native American Healing: A Lakota Ritual, by Howard P. Bad Hand, and Sacred Fireplace: Life and Teachings of a Lakota Medicine Man, by Pete Catches. These writers portray some Lakota
...more
