Perma Red

by Debra Magpie Earling

It just seemed to me the more good the white man tried to do for us the more trouble we had. The government thought it was a good thing for the Indians to attend the white man’s school, to be instructed by a group of women who had never known love.

She died because she was Indian, and Indians are stupid. Stupid, stupid, the whole while I attended the Ursulines’ the nuns told me how stupid Indians were, again and again, so many times that I began to believe we were stupid.

I could feel my bones ache with a loss that would sink me when I was old.