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: 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