For Future Reference is retired.

For Future Reference is retired.

My Grandpa Knew That will debut on September 1, 2009.

For Future Reference: I am I cried

part two

President Obama's words to as-Aribiya refuse to leave my ear hole:

"[I]f you look at the track record, as you say, America was not born as a colonial power, and that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there’s no reason why we can’t restore that. And that I think is going to be an important task."

When Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication of Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) Bishop Richard Williamson there was a swift and strident outcry. Williamson's denial of the Holocaust is unpardonable. Few could tolerate his statement: "I believe there were no gas chambers."

In the midst of the uproar his SSPX colleague Father Floriano Abrahamowicz, another of the four "traditionalist" bishops excummunicated by Pope John Paul II, told the Italian newspaper, the Tribuna, "I know the gas chambers existed—at least, for disinfecting—but not whether they caused deaths or not."

In response to Obama's recent words, there has only been shrill silence.

Even when I repeat his words to others the response has been, "Yeah. Right. What's the problem."

This is hardly the same.
No it isn't.

Recognize: 2., to know by some detail

The United States of America is a settler colony. The settlers moved in and continue to occupy our homelands. In response the Nations within (Indigenous Nations) have continued to assert three things: we exist, it happened here, and it is happening now. The details of America's history as a colonial power go beyond this writing.

Historically we, Indigenous People of the America, have failed to register as a people. Our history does not seem to bare weight. Our elders lack authority. We've spent the last 517 years simply asserting our existence.

Invisibility is a power many of our ancestors used to great strategic affect. This is different.

Recognize: 4., to acknowledge the existence, validity, authority or genuineness

The day after the oral arguments for the California case against Proposition 8 opened and closed, the San Francisco Chronicle was already reporting that the court seems to favor the validity of Proposition 8.

During the arguments proponents for Proposition 8 said that the weddings performed during the 5 months when same sex marriages were legal, would not be invalidated, but they would not be recognized.

Where is Duane Big Eagle when you need him?

Obama's election has been hailed as a turning point in the U. S. national consciousness, a day after of sorts, a moment in linear time reflecting an evolution of thought, a wholescale shift in character, a now to oppose a then.

We are flooded every day with words and images that deny our humanity and experience. On June 6 of 2008, in McLean VA, the USPS issued the new priority mail stamp. On Janaury first of 2009, additional postage was already required. Regardless it was my only option. I refuse to send an elder a SASE with the defaced Black Hills as postage. I asked for other stamps. The Postmaster said there were none. I can do math. So I asked for other stamps that would add up to the new rate. It took nearly 15 minutes and her constant sighing, but I left with a SASE that looked not unlike the image on the official USPS poster for suspect mail.

California AAA's western wonder page sports the "Mountain Men" this month. Sculpting of Gutzon Borglum's giant homage to four U.S. presidents—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln—began in 1927. Fourteen years later, Mount Rushmore National Memorial stood head and shoulders above South Dakota's Black Hills. The magazine arrived shortly after my frustration at the post office.

These are trifles. Yes. But these trifles wear us down in a relentless assault on our souls, as we face our occupied homelands today, as we face an academic and popular insistence that we don't exist, we did not know who we were, or where we came from, and our conquest is complete and definitive.

Recognize: 9., to acknowledge as having the right to speak.

The most painful memory I have, in relation to homophobia, is the trip my wife and I took to Minneapolis to bless our nephew. His maternal grandmother introduced me to her mother as "This is Reid. We met her at the wedding."

I stood there, dumb. What do you say to that? How do you maintain your dignity in silence?

I was not even a friend, or a roommate. I was someone met at the wedding.

I am the oldest of the generation of "children" and my wife and I have been together the longest. We flew at great cost, to my health and our one income household. In a sentence I was reduced to no one of no consequence. And I stood there and swallowed.

Some say the Navajo philosophy is to walk around the rock.

My soul is tired and my feet not rested.

No matter how many times my wife and I marry there are many who will refuse to recognize our vows. My own Nation included. I understand that we are asking precisely for what they refuse to give: an acknowledgement of our humanity.

In the 3 years since my nephew's baptism I've developed a fetish for Nebraska, somehow convincing myself that if I could understand their minds I could somehow make a space within it.

There's the rock. Walk around it.

When I was little I used to run the house singing Neil Diamond.

"I am," I said
To no one there
And no one heard at all
Not even the chair
"I am," I cried
"I am," said I
And I am lost, and I can't even say why
Leavin' me lonely still
1971 Prophet Music, Inc. (ASCAP)

Some things are old. We feel them even when we are young. We do not know how. We do not always know why. But we know we do.

painting: Sitting Bear by Niki Lee

For Future Reference: Our Trade Networks Once Ruled This Land

"The White Man makes us forget our holy places. He makes us small."
-D'Arcy McNickle, Wind From An Enemy Sky

Mexico and the United States of America signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildalgo on February 2, 1848, ending the Mexican American War. Mexico exchanged over 1.2 million square territorial miles (land that is now claimed by the states of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and California) for 15 million dollars and additional considerations, namely citizenship, Spanish language and land rights for Mexican citizens and their Spanish speaking descendants. The United States acted decisively and quickly in respect to their new found land wealth, the only obstacle being the Indians.

Indians have always been a problem for the United States and Mexico. The problem being, unequivocally, who we are as a People, our concepts of the world and our understandings of our place within it.

In Nations Within, Vine Deloria Jr., clarifies this concept: "In almost every treaty. . .the concern of the Indians was the preservation of the people. . .The idea of the people is primarily a religious conception, and with most American Indian tribes it begins somewhere in the primordial mists. . . because the tribes understood their place in the universe as one given specifically to them. . .a council to remind the People of their sacred obligations to the cosmos and to themselves, was sufficient for most purposes. The tribes needed no other form of government except the gentle reminder by elders of the tribe when the people were assembled to maintain their institutions."

The solution to the problem of us has also remained the same: extinguish our spiritual title, traditional knowledge, and physical occupation of our homelands through war.

In 1864 Christopher "Kit" Carson was recruited to finally and definitively subdue every Navajo who stood in the way of United States and New Mexican settlement and occupation. In a letter dated, Jan 24, 1864 he wrote:

"They [Navajos] declare that owning to the operations of my command they are in a complete state of starvation, and that many of their women and children have already died from this cause. . .I sent the party to return through the Cañon [Tséyi'] from west to east, that all the Peach Orchards, of which there were many, might be destroyed, as well as the dwellings of the Indians. . .but it is to the ulterior effects of the 'Expedition' that I look for the greatest results. We have shown the Indians that in no place, however formidable or inaccessible, in their opinion, are they safe from the pursuit of the troops of this command; and have convinced a large portion of them that the struggle on their part is a hopeless one."

The United States desires our absorption into America— by means of violent and absolute dissolution. Full assimilation as citizens (English speaking mass consumers) in exchange for the territory of our souls as well as our homelands is the only option afforded us. Even when we are granted nominal or ceremonial management of our souls and lands (via such acts as the IRA of 1934) the terms are clear and unforgiving.

We, across all first nations, have been and continue to be punished for who we are, what we believe and how we propose to live on our own homelands. Those punishments have historically taken place in military, religious and educational arenas (Wounded Knee 1 and 2, The Long Walk, The California Mission System, the persecution of Carrie and Mary Dann, Western Shoshone sisters, and the boarding and vocational school system). Regardless of the terrain the enemy has remained the same: landed cultures and landed peoples whose world and life practice are most usually defined as traditional.

When the United States burned our peach orchards and cornfields, and slaughtered our sheep (during the livestock reduction period) their message to us as Navajo and to all first nations was simple: you cannot remain alive if you continue to be who you are. You can join the regular citizenry or you can die. America can afford her Indians but she cannot abide the Diné Nation.

The United States makes some believe they are weak and they have no choice, it promotes a relentless force that acknowledges nothing and no one outside its terms or agenda, claiming that your best defense is to find a way to make the best of a bad situation, and live with what it claims are a series of inevitabilities.

Never has it been practical or realistic to be Indian, and certainly it is not today. Punishment of traditional peoples who live traditional life ways are largely economic. There are many areas we do not have legal access to (The Black Hills, The San Francisco Peaks, LA City and County) but my concern today, on the eve of the anniversary of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildalgo, is our use of money.

Tribal language speakers know that traditional culture requires tribal language. The best way to create and maintain language immersion is to live in traditional culture. Living traditional culture often feels economically impossible—every one will tell you that, over and over. During the best of times it is a fiscal challenge on the books of our nations and in our individual pockets.

Our trade networks once ruled this land. People and goods moved in the four directions, forming alliances, families and enriching individual cultures without jeopardizing our identities. These networks were shaped and built on honor and responsibility. Goods were expected to be well made, raw materials were expected to be of high quality and craftmanship was rewarded fiscally.

Some say those days are over.

I don't believe it. But, I know our only hope, as humans, is to place our faith in land based philosophies and ethics. Traditional cultures that express and nourish humanity are still viable today. With our little money we can start supporting traditional ethics by supporting artists, educators, scientists, and engineers (farmers, herders, horsemen and builders) financially. Everyone needs to make a living, everyone.

All of America's economic stimulus plans seek the same thing: the rescue and fortification of American ideals and standards of living. We can stimulate our own economies, even and especially those of us who live in cities, simply by only supporting, with currency, people and institutions that contribute to our health as humans on Earth.

Objects have power. The power to foster the health of the planet and our health as humans. The politics of poverty are clear to everyone. Yet we often resign ourselves to our own dehumanization, simply because it seems cheaper, faster, more convenient, or somehow inevitable. These are advertisers' and politicians' lies. They are paid to manipulate our commerce.

Food, dolls, stories, baskets, beadwork, silverwork, weavings, hand drums, flutes, songs and dances tell us who we are and teach us how to care for ourselves and our relations. Farmers, artists, wise men and women, weavers, dancers and singers invest their time and money living tradition, making a place for us in the here and now. They invest their resources in us and our future, creating and forging relationships that support us as individuals and as people. When we support them we support ourselves. When we purchase objects or services based in hate and exploitation we are funding hate and exploitation.

Trina Secody of Runway Beauty and Secody Records, Navajo, wife, mother, and independent business woman reminds us all, "Walk in Beauty. . .they are more than words. . .it is a lifestyle"

Photo Credit: Beauty Unlimited by Reid Gómez

For Future Reference: At the Crossroads, Knowledge Is What You Know

This is the month of the melting snow. The first, today, the feast day of the Ifa God of the Crossroads. Rain. Dark mornings and early nights. Winter Solstice reminding us that we are close, together, to spring. Work requires hands. We have them. Hands working. The men take this time to plan how they will plant, while children sit and listen to narratives that tell us who we are.

For many January first marks the time when Christmas bills start arriving. Credit and debt shapes many lives more intimately than the ancestors, what they taught, what they know.

For a long time I've said, with pride, "we don't have a casino." Now we do.

Fire Rock Casino opened on November 26, 2008. The doors opened at 4 pm. The people standing in line since 8 am. Once open the casino hit capacity in 45 minutes. While more waited outside over 400 got in. The first day totals were $1.2 million.

Navajos are noted for a great and many things, the least of which is not our pride. We have numbers. We have land. We have many living speakers.

As recently as the Unites States Great Depression many Diné were living well, grazing their sheep and teaching their children. Sheep is life. K'é the fundamental law of the nation. The seasons providing the time and space necessary for our teachings. The U.S.'s general economy and culture was on the periphery of our daily lives. In practical terms we stood firmly in the center of the world.

This is no longer the case.

Our world is touched and our daily lives shaped by the world wide web, employment/unemployment, formal education, Christianity, drug and alcohol abuse and the consumer-entertainment industry.

The same day the Times reported the Fire Rock opening, Jason Begay wrote a significant article about the effect of gas prices (rising and falling) on the nation.

Some facts from his article (Officials Study Impact of Falling Oil Prices," Window Rock, Nov. 26, 2008): People are happy about the fall in pump prices. The U.S. federal government served notice they were cutting $10 million from federal grants for the nation's operating costs. Oil costs have gone down approximately 66% in the last 4 months. In the 2008 fiscal year the Navajo Nation Oil and Gas company was earning $47.2 million. The 2009 fiscal year projections for the nation were $172 million, providing oil prices remained the same. The Budget and Finance Committee will have to address and account for the difference in projections and actual returns.

For all the details please read Begay's article in full: http://www.navajotimes.com/news/2008/1108/112608oilprices.php

A week before, former Chief Justice Robert Yazzie and Lorraine Ruffing and James Singer of the Diné Policy Institute of the Diné College published an opinion piece in the Times: Wall Street, Navajo Way meet at Crossroads.

Some facts from the article: 70% of Navajo income is spent outside of the nation (off reservation), after the recent fall of the U. S. economy the Nation's trust portfolio fell over $240 million.

I recommend everyone read their article in full: http://www.navajotimes.com/opinions/index.php

Yazzie, Ruffing and Singer conclude with the following: "With the current economic crises we as a people have the freedom and responsibility to examine where we are and where we are heading. A choice, then, is laid on the road before us: whether to continue down Wall Street, or hang a U-Turn on Navajo Way."

In 1934 Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas arrived from Paris for Gertrude's American lecture tour. The first line of one of her lectures was: "Knowledge is what you know."

Fire Rock Casino. The Navajo Nation Oil and Gas Company. The Nation's Trust Portfolio. Money. Do we know how to live without it? The U. S. Economy. Do we know how to live outside it?

In previous writings Judge Yazzie has remarked that our strength as a people came, in part, from our homogenous culture and our isolation from the U.S..

No one doubts our ability, as a people, to take what we see as the best in other worlds and refashion them into something uniquely and passionately our own. Perhaps our defining characteristic is our ability to adapt to the changing world while retaining our indescribable core: K'é, Diné Bizaad, these our winter stories and the time to tell them.

Our challenge today is no different than the challenges faced by our ancestors. They too had "the freedom and responsibility to examine where we are and where we are heading."

In practical terms we must untangle our minds and our national and personal economies from the U.S. economy and culture.

The U. S. economic crises is a direct consequence of certain beliefs about the world and the people who inhabit it. Our grandparents know this. We know this too. The problem is that many no longer believe it is possible to live whole, in the center of the world, or they lack the practical steps to return our daily activities to those practices which maintain balance (ecologically, socially and spiritually) and identity.

For Future Reference: Each Death is Different

Nathan Goodiron's wake was held two years ago, today, at Mandaree North Dakota. He was the eldest son of Harriet and Paul Goodiron. The father of three and the husband of Eileen, of Minot, was a graduate of Mandaree Senior High School. He enlisted in the North Dakota Army National Guard on April 17, 2001. In May he was promoted to Private E-2. The following April he was promoted to Private First Class, E-3 and in December 2003 he was promoted to Specialist E-4.

He was killed in Afghanistan on November 23, 2006, Thanksgiving. That day, posthumously, he was promoted to Corporal. He was 25 years of age, a Hidatsa.

Roughly 1,500 people from the MHA Nation, Fort Berthold Reservation, filled the halls and gyms of two schools for the funeral. After a prayer, a Flag Song by the Oakdale Singers, the Veterans Posts and Ladies Auxiliary marched in procession. Chairman Wells, Eah-Bah-Dah-Gish (Bald Eagle), offered words to everyone and a memorial song was sung for Cpl. Goodiron, Young Eagle. A closing prayer was given for him and for all the TAT men and women soldiers serving the U. S. Armed Forces.

At the Bearstail Family Cemetery in Mandaree, Cpl. Goodiron's uncle, James Johnson, watched over the graveside ceremony ensuring the Honor Guard was in place.

Young Eagle's mother said, "It's hard to accept how he died. When kids are growing up I never knew I was raising my son to go into war and be killed. You read it in the paper and see it on tv, but you never know it could be you."

In 1969 Vine Deloria Jr., wrote: "consider the history of America closely. Never has America lost a war...but name, if you can, the last peace the United States won. Victory, yes, but this country has never made a successful peace because peace requires exchanging ideas, concepts, thoughts and recognizing the fact that two distinct systems of life can exist together without conflict."

Antiwar.com offers the following numbers: the official count of the U.S. wounded, as of 25 November 2008, is 30,832, the estimated count is over 100,000. Since the war began, at least 3,395 American servicemen and women have died.

JustForeignPolicy.org estimates that over 1,288,426 Iraqi's have died as a result of the U.S. invasion.

CNN offers larger numbers, noting that 97 U.S. women have died in combat, and 3,979 U.S. men have died. Of these men, 1,205 were under the age of 22, and 991 were under the age of 24, 1,033 were in Nathan Goodiron's age classification (25-30). Of the total 30,275 U.S. wounded 20,710 were his fellows from the Army, 620 were Navy, 8,462 Marine and 390 Air Force.

This Thanksgiving was an especially cruel one.

Jdimytai Damour was killed in a stampede at the Valley Stream Wal-Mart in New Jersey. His mother is traveling from Port-Au-Prince Haiti to Jamaica Queens to prepare his funeral.

30 years after the original God Is Red, Vine Deloria Jr., revised the entire text and reissued an anniversary edition. Unlike most anniversary editions, his 30 years later offers a true revision and update to the original. In both books he offers a painstakingly detailed indictment of Christianity, naming it as the source of the U.S.'s weakness and consequent inability to keep a peace.

Christianity as a program of Assimilation and resource management gains its strength from its inability to respect and tolerate those who are different. Evidence lies in the article, the. While the Christian faith may be a bitter pill to swallow for some, it is an easy pill and by its own declaration to the world, it is the only pill. I am the Resurrection and the light.

Assimilation is to the United States as conversion is to Christianity. Holidays and Holy Days are more than symbols of faith, they actually keep the faith by clearing space and forcing observance, even if that observance is in opposition (ie., a Thanks for Taking Day, or a Gratitude Day). Holidays force participation. They form a present axis around which everything, in some way, spins. Offices are closed. Mail is undelivered. I am forced to either ignore or answer, politely or rudely, honestly or dishonestly, when people offer a perfunctory "Have a Nice Thanksgiving."

The United States national culture is characterized by the feeding frenzy known as shopping. It's a positive feedback system of sameness and speed. Everyone has to have it; they have to have it now; and they have to have it cheap.

Poverty and subjegation go hand in hand. We've known this for generations. During the Navajo Round Up the U.S. sought to exterminate the People by burning our fields and stealing or slaughtering our livestock. In this way they brought even the wealthiest and most isolated of our community in to the agency. Once there they were forced to make the Long Walk to be incarcerated at Bosque Redondo. Through ceremony were won a return to our traditional lands, in exchange we were given education.

Chief Manuelito said it was a ladder. Taking us where?

In exchange for our culture and traditional knowledge we were asked to assimilate. Once we (all of us) knew who we were, how we came to be and how we were to act in relation to the land and each other. At great cost to our intellect and spirit, and at great cost to the earth, we have been asked to become full participants in the U.S. economy and to adopt the Christian faith.

Poverty and subjegation form a positive feedback loop it is difficult to get outside of. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan is an unequivocal example of hatred and intolerance. Some call it a Holy War, some say it's about U.S. security, each explanation is fueled by fundamentalist thought and greed.

The Church is a fiscal entity and a political institution.

Black Friday and the credit crunch (a.k.a. World Financial Crises) reflect the use of poverty to subjegate. The passage of the hateful Proposition 8 in California is a direct consequence of the unwillingness to hold Christians and bigots accountable for their beliefs and actions.

Wealth, today, is largely created by the adoption of new, instantly obsolete, technologies and the manipulation of tax law. We, at the bottom, are left with two options in this reality: get what money you can and spend what money you have. When our participation in this system is given we are left alone, to work and shop. Those who refuse to play the parts set aside for them are targets of violence and poverty, personally and communally.

War in Iraq and Afghanistan, here on the Americas, and in our most private and sacred of spaces, our homes, takes two approaches: the Christian and the consumer.

As the world attempts to stabilize the economies of the most affluent nations, and the wealthiest citizens of those nations, people and land are still being destroyed by armed violence, environmental abuses, dehumanizing and inappropriate technologies and the assault on individual and communal land based identities.

The U.S. has been driving its car into a granite wall at 190 miles per hour. The Land and Housing Era was driven by credit and the fanatical desire for endless growth. Instead of calling out the perversion of this way of living many developing nations (like China and the Navajo Nation) are following the model, though a few steps behind, laid out before them.

Every death has meaning.

Each death is different.

A man was murdered and people continued to shop. They want toys, clothes, food, all the same products, made by strangers. Their desire driven by marketing campaigns, not by self awareness or self possession, they lined up to prepare for the celebration of their Christ by buying things. They did it because it's an American thing to do. They did it because it's a good deal. And in the process Jdimytai Damour died, at work.

The key to understanding the obscenity of his death is to acknowledge its relationship to the blind faith of Christianity and commerce.

For Future Reference: This is About You

We left the Castro just before President elect Barack Obama began his acceptance speech in Chicago's historic Grant Park. We listened on the radio as he said:

"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference. It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America."

I was divided; overwhelmed with happiness that we had elected our first non-white President, a Black man, a man with a Kenyan father and white American mother, and this man could name me, a gay disabled Navajo Indian in his speech. Especially when race in this country is consistently framed in black and white, and gays and lesbians are considered dirty secrets, at best kept private.

This is not the Castro I was raised with. This is not the San Francisco I was raised in. This is not the California I was raised in. People were dancing in the street, even while the early numbers for 8 were being posted. "Oh, Obama, he has our back."

This is not about Obama. This is about you and the fact that Californians saw absolutely no problem immediately casting a yes vote on Proposition 8 immediately after they cast their yes vote for Obama.

Obama's campaign placed a great emphasis on unity. He prioritized thoughtfulness, articulateness, and people coming together for a greater purpose, call it community or call it pragmatism. He spoke against the divisiveness that characterized the last eight years. His actions were considerate and measured—a salve on the bitter ill will that has come to shape relations between people. He asked us to refuse the categories that encourage and allow us to dissociate from one another—red/blue, black/white, male/female, Christian/Muslim/Jew—and to work together on a larger project, best defined as a human project, a global project.

Many were moved when he offered a hope not hate based project. Many see his victory as a civil rights victory, a long overdue triumph over the racism and bigotry on which this country was founded and continues to thrive. God bless America. A new day has dawned. We're going forward. "Oh, but not you. You stay here."

How can over 5, 344, 012 people vote yes on Proposition 8? How can 70% of the black vote and 50% of the Latino vote yes? How can Christians and elders overwhelmingly support 8? If this is purely a question of Christian values, how can the same voters split on proposition 4?

Maybe I hold the wrong assumptions about my fellow Obama supporters. Perhaps I relate to easily to people I don't identify as—white, black, asian, heterosexual, Christian. Maybe it's a simple consequence of having my entire existence, my priorities, my values negated daily in the media, in social relations, buying groceries or renting a movie.

My grandparents taught me that first and foremost I was human, where their arguments went from there I was expected to keep up with, but never to lose sight of one fundamental truth: we are all related.

In its simplest terms proposition 8 eliminates a right that already exists. On May 15, the California Supreme Court voted to overturn proposition 22; affirming the right of one individual to enter into a contract with another.

Prejudice and fear trumps these simple terms. Prejudice determines who you can relate to and why. Hatred of others, and feeling completely, utterly and fundamentally disconnected from them is a consequence of not being able to relate. I'm not like you and this isn't about me are both statements that reflect an inability to relate.

Proposition 8 exposed Californians’ notion of precisely who is a person deserving rights and exactly what rights you have access to if your personhood is suspect.

Recognizing another soul as a sentient being is a philosophical question the elders have debated since time immemorial. The United States Government itself has taken up this question; famously in African American history and less widely remembered in a case dealing with the Ponca.

Standing Bear et. al. V. Crook: Standing Bear was a Ponca. The Ponca are Those Who Lead. In May of 1879 the federal court in Omaha Nebraska began hearing his case. Standing Bear was a Christian, an Episcopalian. Early in 1877 the Ponca were told they were being removed to Indian Territory. They had never fought against the U.S.. They farmed and had moved from their Earth Lodges into their own, hand built, log homes. As an old man Standing Bear lacked the resources necessary to resist the U.S. soldiers and over three days he brought his household, his wife, their three children, two grandchildren and son in law to the agency for removal. His household assets—valued at over $4,000, in "buildings, land, stock, goods and chattel"—were confiscated and either destroyed or sold off. He received no compensation. On their stormy walk to Indian Territory his daughter was among those who died and his son was among those who became ill. A devastated Standing Bear promised the youth he would carry his bones home to the ancestral ceremonial burial grounds, ensuring that Bear Shield would not face the afterlife wandering the earth alone.

Because he was an Indian, by law, Standing Bear the Ponca leader was a ward of the nation and consequently not allowed to leave the reservation. Standing Bear was a father. With his son's bones, and his small band, he left the reservation. He was arrested on the Omaha reservation. They too were Indians, by law, and he was trespassing on federal lands, even though they were relations and had offered him and his band refuge. In fact, he had come to their reservation at their invitation. As wards they lacked the authority, the propriety, necessary to offer such hospitality to their cousins.

Standing Bear sought redress, but the question before the court was could he? Did he meet a simple qualification? Was he a person in the eyes of the law. On this point they argued. The DA maintained that he and his fellow Poncas had no recourse to Habeas Corpus and "regardless of what they said they were still Ponca Indians, due to their ancestry and place of birth, they could not cease being Ponca Indians because they said they were no longer Ponca Indians."

Standing Bear's council maintained that "an Indian who has severed his tribal relationship and sought to live as a citizen was entitled to protection under the law." There was precedent. Habeas Corpus had been applied to the insane, to children and to slaves irrespective of their citizenship, so unless the court wanted to decide that Standing Bear and his band were beasts, they were human beings, and consequently entitled to protection under the law.

Sympathies were with Standing Bear and his band but Justice Dundy reminded everyone "in a country where liberty is regulated by law something more satisfactory and enduring than mere sympathy must furnish and constitute the rule and basis of judicial action."

He ruled: "An Indian is a PERSON within the meaning and ways of the U. S. and...Indians possess the inherent right of expatriation, as well as the more fortunate white race, and have the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, so long as they obey the laws and do not trespass on forbidden ground."

He was a person, but was still not free to stay with his relations, the Omaha or even the Ponca. In the eyes of the law he had severed those relations. Once he set foot on any reservation land he would be arrested, again.

Bear Shield's bones still had not been returned to mix with those of his ancestors.

Personhood is incompatible with tribal identity. Standing Bear could not be a person and a Ponca simultaneously. He had to relinquish one in order to assume the social-legal position of the other, a distinctly different position, not even an separate but equal position. He was granted humanity, but not allowed the specific details of his humanity.

In Standing Bear's case the difference in positions was racialized. The idea seems to be that with the election of Obama as the 44th President of the United States we have moved past these categorical inequities and government sanctioned bigotries.

As every American Indian knows, Indianness is still incompatible with American personhood. Even the briefest glance at our sovereignty movements reveals this contemporary fact.

The U.S., historically, has sought to extinguish those people seen as somehow unfit for personhood. In 1962 the Ponca of Nebraska were abolished by an act of Congress and their 800 acres of land were confiscated. Their status as a People was not reinstated until 18 years ago, the lifetime of a voter coming to age.

When it was impractical or impossible to extinguish the unfit the U. S. has, historically, sought to confine and contain them.

Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving married in the District of Columbia in June 1958. When they returned to their home in Virginia they were arrested. She was black. He was white. Their marriage violated the states anti miscegenation laws. In 1959 they plead guilty and were convicted to a year in prison. In lieu of serving that year the trial judge offered them a suspended sentence, for 25 years, contingent on their leaving, and not returning to, Virginia.

In his opinion, delivered on the Day of the Kings, he stated: "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."

These arguments, these sentiments, are the same; they are founded on a narrow notion of the normal and feign a concern for potential harm to children (mongrel offspring or not). They are familiar to anyone following the debate surrounding proposition 8, as is the insidious invocation of "Almighty God."

The Lovings’ took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Chief Justice Warren delivered the court's opinion, stating:

Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942). See also Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190 (1888). To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

These convictions must be reversed.

It is so ordered.

Up until 1974 same-sex intimacy was a crime in California.

The question for Homosexuals, at this point, seems to involve two issues. Are homosexuals people under the law, entitled to equal protection, and under which law should these cases be decided: U.S. or Biblical?

It is common knowledge that the Christian right, along with the Mormon Church, are the primary funders of the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign. And the popular appeal for the Yes on 8 campaign has been to religious sympathies. Many of those polled said they were compelled, as Christians, to go to the polls specifically to cast their yes vote on 8, while voting for Obama, especially the 70% of Blacks polled.

Darryl Scott, a father, a black man, and an Obama supporter voted yes on 8 because "He has no hatred for gays but was raised to believe marriage is between a man and a woman...people should do what they want to do, but it shouldn't be forced on others."

Ignoring the backward logic of voting to eliminate the opportunity of people to "do what they want to do," while "forcing [it] on others" it is essential to note his reasoning relies on his religious sympathies and as Justice Dundy reminded the nation in 1879 "something more satisfactory and enduring than mere sympathy must furnish and constitute the rule and basis of judicial action." Presumably that is the law.

One of the two largest individual donors to the Yes on 8 campaign has admitted, in print, "my goal is the total integration of Biblical law into our lives."

Evangelical fundamentalism gains its strength, numerically, politically and financially by exploiting the lonely, the poor, the isolated and the uneducated. They have masterfully manipulated the fear and alienation people have from and with each other, to the extent that even their salvation is an individual salvation, their spirituality shaped by a private relationship with their Father God. Though the super churches clothe themselves in the drag of community their message is divisive.

The Nebraska Ponca were being forced at gun point to ford the surging Niobrara River during a fierce storm. Women and children of the three villages wailed. The men unloaded their 72 wagons and 500 horses, struggled through the high waters. On the other side they reloaded their goods. The women and children wailed. In the midst of this organized effort the United States's troops were swept from their mounts. The current was too swift and strong. Ponca men dove, immediately, into the waters and rescued the soldiers.

Why?

They were men.

And the Ponca's are those that lead.

For Future Reference: A Long War Like This

"When people accommodate themselves to a landscape, they learn the parameters of their spiritual existence, although sometimes these boundaries change according to the needs of the people." -Vine Deloria, Jr.

Last Sunday, the 21st of September, I went to a workshop, "Off The Grid Living: In the Urban Ecosystem" hosted by the Ecology Center of San Francisco (http://www.eco-sf.org/). We were a group of nearly 8 people in the outer Sunset, at Ocean Beach. Before taking us outside to demonstrate solar cooking methods and a compostable toilet, Devin of the ecology center raised the question of "appropriate technology."

Appropriate technology: Technology that creates the smallest ecological impact while serving basic human needs. Instead of using the most convoluted and complex technology, appropriate technology is the use of the simplest level of technology that can effectively achieve your goals in a specific landscape.

He then asked the group if they think about how much energy, water and people are consumed for each piece of equipment and hard good they use.

As the workshop went outside to see a solar oven (a cardboard box, covered with a piece of glass, with a black reflective surface inside), Devin explained "this will always work, as long as there is sun."

At this point I was having my regular Duane Big Eagle moment: My Grandpa knew that. Though I cook inside my apartment on electric coils, and while I have a flush toilet and am not composting my own fecal matter, all I could think about was my recent visit to Acoma Pueblo. Old Acoma remains, off the grid.

Some say that we, tribal people, live that way because we have to, not because we want to.

Understanding the relationships that exist between our twisted notions of poverty and wealth requires a shift in perspective, a change of language and a willingness to admit the systematic assault on traditional knowledge and skills. Traditional peoples living traditional lifestyles, the very lifestyles some are creating an industry out of, have been and continue to be punished economically-spiritually-corporally for living those very lives. Identifying necessary skills and appropriate technology requires a specific understanding of poverty and its relationship to wealth as well as a commitment to live in balance. For many traditional people it has become relatively impossible to live a life not bound by the global market and its consumption of land and human labor.

Bilagáanas themselves are writing books about this, "going back." My phone bill recommended one: Ultimate Guide to Wilderness Living: Surviving with Nothing but Your Bare Hands and What You Find in the Woods. "Your ancestors knew this stuff. You don't. But you can rediscover it, everything you need to live off the land for weeks or years. Like starting a fire and making a bow and arrows."

My grandpa knew this stuff. I know this stuff. The question is—who has lost this knowledge and why?

My grandfather raised us on the food his stories grew, here, in the city of San Francisco. He butchered the livestock he raised in our back yard. Our family ate the eggs Mamacita's chickens laid. I helped hide her rooster from the Health Board. When I would visit my Aunti Cora, at that time living in Denver, we'd walk to Kmart across Federal Avenue, and stop to pick the tségha’ nílch’i (wind through the rocks) that grew up through the cement to eat for dinner. We "stole" water to keep her garden.

There is so much tribal people know, technologically and spiritually, and yet tribal lives are viewed as something we are to be rescued from. The people on Acoma are largely viewed as poor. The people on Navajo, living traditional lives, are largely viewed as poor and uneducated. Butchering your own livestock, growing your own food, living without electricity is all seen as a clear indication of poverty—every aspect of our decision to remain who we are as tribal people is seen as a backward step, an inadequacy, an archaism.

If we do not want a five bedroom house, an iPod, a cellular phone, flat screen television or a month's supply of clothing we are viewed as stupid. Our culture is viewed as primitive. If we are fluent in our own language, and speak a little of another tribal language but have accented English, our skill set is thought to be limited, our manner unprofessional. If we have no potable water, or lack enough fuel to burn for heat or to cook our food it must be because we refuse to progress and connect ourselves and our homelands to the rest of the United States.

The material conditions of hunger, illness, and homelessness affect millions of people world wide, but we will never be able to adequately address those problems if we continue to believe that poverty is saying I can't have everything I want and live in the "Versailles House," and if knowing how to manage your iTunes and print your digital photos is considered having skills. Blaming the people for their position in an economic system of inequality side steps the fact that the rich require the poor. In this economy poverty ensures square footage and flat screens.

Every one of us is reeling from this convoluted logic and language. Each of us faces the consequence of decisions made by people so alienated from the land, from each other and from their ancestors and origin stories, that we have homelessness in the midst of a "housing crises." And most eat food other people have cared for, killed and cooked, without even thinking that is strange. Who cooks now days?

Accommodating ourselves to the land requires maturity. And yet we are in the midst of the therapy generation, where I have heard children being told, "you don't have to say hi." These young people are learning they are not bound to acknowledge another human being's presence. And we, each one, live with those instructions. You don't have to stop for people crossing the street. You don't have to stand up for elders who need a seat.

At the end of the Victorian Age, Henry James noted America's movement into "the children's century."

"There is an immense literature entirely addressed to them, in which the kicking of shins and the slapping of faces is much recommended. As a woman of fifty, I protest. I insist on being judged by my peers. It's too late, however, for several millions of little feet are actively engaged in stamping out conversation, and I don't see how they can long fail to keep it under. The future is theirs; maturity will evidently be at an increasing discount. " (From James', The Point of View)

James' body of work reeks of his estrangement to the land. After his first tour of America , following a 20 year stay in England, he wrote the following about the homes he viewed: "We[the homes] are only installments, symbols, stopgaps, 'they practically admitted, and with no shade of embarrassment; 'expensive as we are, we have nothing to do with continuity, responsibility, transmission, and don't in the least care what becomes of us after we have served our present purpose.'"

People are starving. People have no potable water. People are homeless. People are ill. The need for capital and credit is another thing entirely.

On BBC News, in the midst of analysis of the current financial crisis, they aired a brief story about the Kalinago of Dominica. The Kalinago Chief Charles Williams is asking the Kalinago women to marry in, and not leave their homeland. With nearly 3,000 members they are facing the threat of "extinction." The threat of vanishing and the burden on women to change the tide is an old hustle. We indigenous women know it well. What struck me was the grand hope the BBC reporter offered: Cruise ships. Dominca is a cruise destination and the tourism brought in with each boat could bring in thousands of answers to the Kalinago's problem: cash.

Real change, in an attempt to live with the land, will require a change in what is experienced and named as poverty and wealth, as well as the strength to value ourselves and our traditional knowledge and cultural practices. Living off the grid accepts a certain reality as an inevitability, a certain idea of progress and evolution, as does pumping cash into a system that requires inequality and subjection.

Every tribe makes its own decision but we must consider ourselves in our own terms. Survival is a question of language. Can you introduce yourself? Can you recognize your relations? Can you pray? Can you navigate the land without a GPS? Can you grow and recognize food? What type of soil do you have? Is it toxic? Can you butcher a sheep? Can you harvest plants?

"A long war like this makes you realize the society you really prefer." -Gertrude Stein, Wars I Have Seen

For Future Reference: September 11 is My Grandmother's Birthday

Lines from here to there are drawn every day. Together we agree to their integrity and meaning. Together we maintain their placement on the land or within our soul. Tying one thing to another requires resources and cooperation. People draw lines every day, and as firmly as they divide us they join us.

We don't always admit how concretely and firmly those ties bind us—one to another like the fixed utility networks (waterworks, electrical utilities and cable television lines) that unite our homes and workspaces. These ties are less open to denial, easier to recognize and acknowledge: open a faucet, turn on a light, use a computer or cable television. Their physical reality undercuts the American mythology and obsession with absolute freedom and individuality—in contrast, phrases, holidays and symbols are more easily masked in the drag of universality and truth. Even less tangible but equally as powerful are popular and ceremonial narratives, like 9/11.

When does the four directions become a cross?
When does corn become a cash crop?

We are supposed to believe many things.

When I was young we sang, "Jesus loves me, yes I know, because The Bible tells me so. . ." TV had a button and we pushed it off or pulled it on. More often then not I was "working" with my Grandmother, following her around from place to place, picking up our box of food, or dropping off our box of Leis. Living her life, my life was a part of the pattern. At night we embroidered and once in bed she told stories, some from the prayer book and others from some place she kept to herself.

There are definitive moments in my life; her birth is one.

Today we are supposed to believe.

9/11 marked a unique moment in time, a cataclysmic break in the land, a unique and unprecedented letting of blood and loss of life. The end of the national innocence maintained by the idea that the United States has never been subject to foreign war within the contiguous 48. This moment and those who lost their lives in consequence have been used to shape a sense of who we are and who we can become.

Every birth and every death has meaning and results in a changed perspective.

Some take these changes for granted.

Meaning, like fast food and coffee, is produced and consumed in mass quantities. The power of franchise is its commitment to producing an unchanging product in an recognizable package. National news, coffee and celebrity networks are largely a single linked advertisement, played in an endless loop. Flip the rock over and I'm not sure what colonial maggot is underneath: poverty, hate or environmental destruction.

9/11 has become the new "shot heard round the world," labeled as a point of departure, serving as a moment of severance, defining a before and an after. Saying we no longer are who we are. That was then and this is now, a pre, a post, an undeniable change in the way things are and have been. The America that was is no longer. The America that is: victim, vulnerable, innocent. One grain of sand in the oyster's shell, 9/11 has been cultivated into the pearl of national outrage and mourning.

Those twin emotions of hate and despair motivate and disorient even the strongest and most firmly grounded.

Never forget: In 1837 it is estimated that small pox killed 7/8 of the Mandan (leaving only 23 men, 40 women, and 60-70 young) and nearly half of the Arikara and Hidatsa. In 1864, over 8,354 Navajo were interred at Hweldi. The sick, old, and young who died during The Long Walk were left on the road and remain uncounted. In the Vietnam War, during Operation Rolling Thunder, Mr. Mc Namara (United States Defense Secretary) estimated that bombing campaign over North Vietnam killed 1,000 civilians a week, roughly equivalent to more than one 9/11 a month, for 44 months.

Traditional life requires continuity. Lineage. Stories. September 11 will always be, for me, my Grandmother's birthday. Her life places each of us into something ancient.

I write these words on the eve of the Harvest Dance at Sky City, Acoma Pueblo.

Acoma has no running water, no electricity, and their matriarchal homes are still made of the surrounding sandstone, straw and gypsum. The Acoma people have maintained continuous residence at the place that was prepared for them, Sky City. They still care for and restore their family homes. They protect themselves by guarding their way of life. They've stood face to face with the Spanish Conquistador, the Catholic Friar and the Mexican Government. They stand, today, face to face with American colonials and tourists. They speak the Keresan language. Once they learned Spanish. Now they learn English and Keresan. As a Pueblo they survived carring 30 foot beams, on foot, the 30 miles from Mt. Taylor to build the San Esteban Del Rey Mission and today they own and operate the Haak'u Museum at the base of Sky City.

Even the shortest visit to Acoma Pueblo reveals the power of which events you choose to remember and the significance of how you remember them. Like Silko's Man To Send Rain Clouds they've maintained their traditions and traditional lives by absorbing the world into the fabric of their existence, speaking their language, dancing their dances, protecting their social and ceremonial spaces—maintaining their line from here to there and when a break occurs they repair it.

For Future Reference: Water Is Not a Renewable Resource

On August 1, 1953, during the 83rd Congress, the House unanimously passed House Concurrent Resolution 108, and while house resolutions are not enforceable by law, as statements of general intent they are binding.

Here is some language: Whereas it is the policy of Congress, as rapidly as possible, to make the Indians within the territorial limits of the United States subject to the same laws and entitled to the same privileges and responsibilities as are applicable to other citizens of the United States, and to end their status as wards of the United States, and to grant them all of the rights and prerogatives pertaining to American citizenship; and
Whereas the Indians within the territorial limits of the United Sates should assume their full responsibility as American citizens. (emphasis my own)

H.C. 108, Termination policy, was comprised of a bevy of interlocking pieces, each designed to sever the U.S.'s Federal trust relationship with tribes and Pueblos, ending the trust protection of tribal lands, and liquidating tribal assets (disbursing after sale funds through per cap payouts) from tribal to individual ownership, converting homelands into "fee simple" titles sold at large and to (former) tribal members. In other words, dissolving the tribe as if it were a corporation. In this way the People would become Americans.

Termination would in effect grant them all of the rights and prerogatives pertaining to American citizenship, and in return the People would assume their full responsibility as American citizens. The tribe, as an entity, a body with a mind, a spirit and a responsibility of its own, would no longer exist, as would the U.S. Federal government's responsibilities and obligations to the Nations.

In the House Report No. 2680, 83rd Congress, Second Session, 1954, The Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara of Fort Berthold were determined to be one of 96 in a list of 179 tribes and Pueblos local BIA officials believed ready to "handle their own affairs."

When tribes vocalized their opposition to being eliminated Senator Arthur V. Watkins of Utah countered, "They want all the benefits of the things we have, highways, schools, hospitals, everything that civilization furnished, but they don't want to help pay their fair share of it."

The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara nations have paid.

George Gillette, Hidatsa leader, wept while the Secretary of the Interior J. A. Krug signed the document that allowed the flooding the prime river bottom lands of the Missouri River to build the Garrison Dam, resulting in the creation of Lake Sacajawea. The U.S. snatched 152,360 acres, one quarter of the reservation was flooded by the dam reservoir and 325 (80% of the total tribe) families were relocated, losing 94% of their agricultural lands, as well as their ability to "handle their own affairs."

Forced relocation and homeland destruction has left a spiritual and psychic wound in every member of the three tribes that comprise the MHA Nation, both on and off the reservation.

The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara continue to pay. As part of the national Fossil Fools Day (April 1) Kandi Mossett, coordinator for the Campus Climate Challenge (Indigenous Environmental Network) scheduled a meeting on Fort Berthold to discuss clean (solar) energy on the reservation. The tribes are currently in the midst of heated negotiations regarding a proposed oil refinery on the MHA Nation. The signs for the meeting were torn down, the event unceremoniously moved and the North Dakota Division of Homeland Security was contacted. (For a full account see ICT, April 14, 2008, New Town, N.D.) Aside from the particulars of the MHA Nation's thinking and action, what is clear is that they are still paying for other people's resources (fuel, electricity) and entertainment (tourism in the form of water based recreational activities) while trying to address the poverty that has resulted from the U.S. reservation system and the MHA Nation's relationship to U. S. citizens, at large, as well as their own status as U.S. citizen, under the 1924 Citizenship Act.

During the Termination Era roughly 3% of the U.S. Federally recognized tribes were terminated, including 41 California tribes in a single "Rancheria Bill" in 1958. The unsophisticated language served further notice to tribal people of the time to what our ancestors knew during the U. S. government sanctioned wars and mass western expansion of settler colonists in the 19th Century. These policies still stand as statements of intent today.

Today, on the anniversary of the H.R. 108, it is necessary to remember that the desire to absorb First Nations into the general American populous remains the same. If we wish to maintain our position, in the land, as handed down to us (in oral tradition and tribal history) through our medicine, wise people and elders, we must discriminate and evaluate our daily participation in American culture.

Water is not a renewable resource. Those with dams on their homelands and on their sacred rivers (like the great Colorado) know this intimately.

Termination policy makes clear the entire project of Americanization—to rid the hemisphere claimed by the "original settlers " of all obstacles to what they envision as life via extermination (of people and their way of living). American consumer culture is not an inevitability, though many cannot see anything outside it, but the culture does exert itself with such force and persistence that it feels irresistible, and somehow a natural part of "progress" as if it is the very definition of "civilization" itself.

We face the legacy of Termination today in advertising, commerce, education, home improvement, enrollment, federal recognition and employment: Nike, Pepsi, Exxon, iLife, MySpace, TMobile, ATT/Comcast Broadband Cable, Direct TV, NASCAR, alcohol, Meth, Water Recreation, English, French and Spanish.

We face it in a flat and unimaginative notion of civilization.

Termination told the truth: They don't want us here and will stop at nothing until we disappear. The immigrant mythology of the U.S.A. is a powerful tool, able to lead new arrivals on the program of abandoning their origin stories, their ancestors and their way of life in exchange for the promise of full participation in the American Dream, in exchange for a flat screen TV, cell phone and iPod.

We are not immune; never forget. What's at stake and what are the costs? America needs Indians, for their mascots, entertainment, and for their national history, but tribal people engaging in tribal culture are the problem—always have been and always will be.

For more information about these policies read Creek/Seminole/Shawnee/Sac and Fox historian Donald L. Fixico's book Termination and Relocation: Federal Indian Policy, 1945-1960

For more information about the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nations visit: http://www.mhanation.com/main/history/history_garrison_dam.html

For Future Reference

"The learner of an endangered language has a greater task than merely to learn the language. He is also working with the speaker to re-create a speech community." (p. xv, How To Keep Your Language Alive)

The problem with us is who we are, the substance of our daily lives, and the practicalities of our existence.

"The Master-Apprentice Program requires both the Master and the Apprentice to develop new language habits in order to create the desired immersion situation." (p., 9, How To Keep Your Language Alive)

As Vine reminds us in The Nations Within: The Past and Future of American Indian Sovereignty, "Anyone could act like an Indian; it took a certain amount of self-discipline and knowledge of the customs to act like a Lakota, a Navajo, a Nez Perce, or a Crow."

On April 5th I went to the 8th Biennial Language is Life Conference for California Indian Languages, organized and hosted by the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival (www.aicls.org). The Advocates do not leave the task of being or becoming to anyone, not to the schools, not to the Government, and not to the institutions whose purpose it is to destroy them. They take it on.

Many of the Advocates come from Peoples whom have been declared extinct, or who fail to meet current Anthropological standards of recognition. According to external measures they fail to have a history, they fail to appear as distinct, they fail to appear viable, the fail to appear at all. Some come from Peoples whose languages no longer have living speakers and some come from villages where the fluent generation is a dying one.

If we can no longer think of ourselves in our own words, in our own grammar, we will no longer be. Language is life, it prepares and eats our food, it hunts, it recognizes medicine, it prays, it teaches us what it means to be, who it is we uniquely are as a people from a place.

I come from a multilingual family that chose to stretch English to its breaking point, instead of teaching us the languages we sprung, like tségha'nilchi', from. In the stretching though we learned the power of thought, the strength of hearing and vision required to live in San Francisco shaping words from multiple alphabets and worldviews. Few understand us when we sit together laughing our toothless laughs, but we try to bang meaning out of this metal called today in this place called now.

English only. I have learned by their example to make it work for me, but more importantly I developed linguistic dexterity and desire and with this I move forward, replanting the roots we wrapped and stored in paper towels and aluminum foil.

The Advocates recommend spending at least 10 hours a week on language. Deb Morillo recommends 3 hours, a day. Their purpose is to create speakers. You create speakers through immersion. Re-creating a speech community requires the self-discipline and knowledge Vine spoke of. The ancestors knew this. You know this. In its most audible form creating a speech community means speaking, Diné Bizaad, Sahnish, etc., But growing up in a family whose ancestral strength resided in our ability to hide and run I know that additional forms of maintaining a speech community include those cultural practices we can, sometimes, and do, often, practice in the dark.

The punishment for refusing to submit to standardization and translation is powerful. It is applied equally to our finances, our souls and our psyches. The legacy of that punishment is evident in the paper trails we leave behind, in our homes and in our bodies. Standardization is a process of enforcing a certain rule: silence=subjegation.

When I was just learning to teach writing, a more experienced tutor explained to me that problems in grammar were largely problems in thinking, so if you cleared up the thought, the grammar usually worked itself out—provided you were working with a native speaker. I am a native speaker. My problems did not, do not, will not go away. Blame it on my dad, the Coyote Wino, or blame it on my Grandma, too devout Catholic who took me to bed every night, and walked with me, across our headboard into the Pueblo to visit people, knocking on doors and entering when invited.

Listen. Understanding requires that you take a certain approach, develop a method of listening and shared reciprocal experience of connection. The Advocates spoke of listening to the tapes in the archive, spending time with fluent speakers and when there were none to be found, to listen to the voices from the baskets, they will speak if you will listen.

I grew up learning that each person reaches across the space that necessarily exists between people in an attempt to hear to see to feel to touch and to taste. Language is life, it brings us together, in relation.

My intention for this column is to speak explicitly about language and developing a speech community with the goal that we each take, 10 hours a week (at the least), to living immersed in our ancestors' way of speaking, and consequently of living. It takes its title from my experience at the Stonestown Apple Store, with Specialist Billiejoe Jones. We were in the middle of our "personal shopping" appointment, and I was asking which programs and documents I would lose and which I may be able to salvage, after my computer failure last March, and nearly 10 minutes into it he stopped me, placing his hand out, saying "for future reference, no one says, os, it's O. S.." And reminded of Gertrude's experience with the Grafton Press, questioning her knowledge of English, and writing, I should have replied, "I suppose, said she laughing, you were under the impression that I was imperfectly educated." But I did not. And he continued to supply me with inaccurate information. And since white men, in particular, though Billiejoe was at the most 9 years old when Serpent Source purchased the failed computer for me, love to correct my English, usage and pronunciation, I have decided to use his phrase as a title for this column. Ahéhee'.