During the two years we lived in Hays, I had many serious conversations with Ray. None of them was more important than the conversation we had about my fieldwork research and alcoholism on the reservation. It would be impossible to overstate the significance of alcoholism among the A’aniiih and all the people who live on Fort Belknap. So many people are impacted. Even for those who have managed to avoid alcoholism themselves, they’ve suffered with all the horrible consequences from family and friends who have succumbed to this scourge. Alcohol has pretty much bled into everyone’s life on the reservation. It has destroyed so many people’s lives and it has damaged so many families. The entire situation is beyond sad. And it is important to keep in mind that we were the ones who gave it to them very early on in our relationships with these people. It was for nefarious purposes, and not to celebrate weddings and bar mitzvahs.
I’m going to paraphrase what Ray said to me. Alcoholism has been discussed by so many anthropologists and historians who have written about Native Americans. The story of alcoholism among our people has been told over and over and over again. What new story is there to be told? What new information can you put out there that people haven’t heard before? There is so much good about the A’aniiih people. We are a good people. We are a proud people. We are so much more than alcoholism. When you do your research and writing, you will make decisions about what you include and what you leave out. There are so many other and better things you can write about my people.
From my love, respect, care and admiration, I responded to Ray that I would take his words to heart.
My dissertation had almost nothing to do with alcoholism. When I wrote the ethnography of the contemporary Gros Ventre in the 1970s, I noted that alcoholism was a problem. I didn’t dwell on the issue. I think Ray would have been satisfied with my approach.
From my continued love and respect for Ray … and to honor his memory, I am going to approach alcoholism in my blogs in the same manner I employed in my dissertation. I'm going to discuss it in this blog, and then, for the most part, put it to rest.
I’ve had almost fifty years to think about this issue. So many of the people that Susie and I truly loved suffered with alcohol. So, my feelings go beyond my conversation with Ray … the issue became very personal for me.
Before I tell a few stories, which reflect the alcohol problem, I would like to present some context about the practice of self-medicating on the reservation.
I am really finding it difficult to convey the magnitude and depth of suffering and trauma the A’aniiih have been through since contact with whites. As I’ve noted previously, not only was their entire culture and language ripped out from under them, but it was also done so purposely in a brutally rapid manner. And the methods used for destroying their way of life were incredibly cruel, i.e., stealing their children from them, killing off their food supply, forcing them to live on reservations much smaller than their traditional territories. These circumstances continued for generations as the people had to deal with a church that had no respect for their traditional beliefs and rituals and had the authority of the government behind them to force the people to abandon their religions (at least superficially). The ways people had to develop self-worth and self-esteem were also destroyed with their way of life. Being a good provider went out the window when these people were left dependent and in destitute poverty. The history of this communal tribal society involved their being forced into adopting the values of independence and self-reliance without being given the tools and training and experience to become so. The government established goals for the tribe and then through incompetence, negligence and corruption rendered those goals entirely unattainable. The government has failed to accept their honest role and responsibility for all these failures.
Another factor contributing to the disruption and destruction of a society was the horrible decimation of the population. As I previously noted, because of their way of life, and the absence of modern medical intervention (which allows deleterious genes to survive in a gene pool), this was, like most hunting and gathering societies, a very healthy population. What the people lacked, however, was immunity to communicable diseases that showed up in their neighborhoods with the arrival of marauding hordes of white people. Their societies were decimated by smallpox and tuberculosis. By some estimates, the A’aniiih at various times lost more than half of their population.
Further exacerbating this population decline was the increase in warfare caused by the killing off of buffalo. As the government program to destroy the Native American food supply was underway, the final herds of buffalo were in the A’aniiih territory. Tribes from across the plains were moving into this area to hunt the remaining buffalo. As more and more tribes competed for the last of this food supply, warfare between the tribes increased. The result was further loss of their population through this fighting.
An entire way of life was rapidly destroyed, and the people were not given a satisfying replacement. All the meaning and purpose that a person had as a member of this traditional society was stolen. Added to this mayhem was the rapid and devastating loss of large numbers of their community to disease and warfare. The result of this trauma and abuse has been multigenerational hopelessness and depression.
And no one that I know of is doing much to fix the problem. To begin with, the personal emotional and psychological repair requires a healthy economy. People need the opportunity to work and to earn a decent standard of living. Without an economy that pulls everyone out of poverty, none of the rest of the issues on the reservation will improve. I don’t know what is happening today on Fort Belknap. In the mid-1970s, the economy on the reservation was horrible. There weren’t enough jobs and there wasn’t enough steady, year-round employment. The unemployment rate for men on the reservation during the winter months was around 90 percent. If we had 90 percent unemployment in Columbus, people would be rioting in the streets … daily.
No one has inherited enough land to make a decent living at ranching and farming. Many of the white ranchers growing wheat in Montana are on thousands and thousands of acres. In the Midwestern states, we talk about cows per acre. In the semi-arid climate of Montana, they talk about acres per cow. The carrying capacity needed for farming and ranching on the reservation isn’t going to be enough to support the people who live on Fort Belknap. And there weren’t jobs that allowed people a decent standard of living and a means to get out of poverty. A healthy economy is the beginning of a healthy way of life on the reservation. Without that … all the problems that attend poverty, dependence, hopelessness, helplessness, demoralization and depression will remain.
Today, half of the people I know in my life are on anti-depressants. The other half probably ought to be. I’m not going to get into a whole megillah about the mental health issues we have in American society. Suffice it to say, they are monumental, and we have billion-dollar industries involved in helping us with our mindfulness, our anxiety, our moods and our well-being. From watches that tell you that you aren’t getting enough sleep to supplements of all varieties focused on helping us remember what we ate for breakfast this morning, Houston, we have a problem. Our pharmaceutical companies can’t make all these drugs fast enough. There are shortages of psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and psychiatric social workers. And millions and millions of us have taken to self-medicating with alcohol and a wide variety of both legal and illegal drugs. When people have untreated stress, depression, anxiety, hopelessness and helplessness, self-medicating is going to happen. Ohio legalized recreational marijuana. During the first month, there were $78 million in sales - that does not include the medical marijuana that was already legal. How many people in Ohio are recreating … how many are self-medicating? This isn’t an Indian phenomenon … it is a human one.
If you take all the stuff I chose not to get into in the previous paragraph from our society and add all the challenges I have described from the history and contemporary conditions on the reservation, you can begin to appreciate the endemic problems that have created an environment for self-medicating. Honestly, it is difficult to fathom the magnitude of crap we have caused these people. And to reiterate Ray’s admonition … they aren’t looking for pity … they are looking for understanding. And I would add, enough understanding to be willing to do something about it. Their numbers are not large enough and they do not have the resources or power to force the government to do the right thing. They need the support of the greater society to help make a difference.
I can’t speak to the situation today … up until the time I was living in Hays, and I am certain afterward, there was a horrible shortage of psychological care on the reservation. Access to these services was inconsistent at best and often was absent. I was close with people who had some serious mental health issues, so I was very much aware of their struggles to find effective treatments. Getting good physicians on the reservation is so difficult. If you think finding a good doctor in your city is a crap shoot, you can’t begin to imagine what it is like on the reservation. Often doctors do a year or two in the Indian Health Service hospital to have some of their loans forgiven. The government offers this loan relief by virtue of them serving an underserved community. None of them stay. If you have ever had psychiatric care, you understand the difficulties involved in regularly having to change doctors. There are similar challenges involved in finding effective medications. Every doctor is going to have a different approach for treatment. For a person who is suffering from serious mental health issues, they just aren’t going to have the psychic energy to navigate all these changes. It is a morass … a truly horrible, demoralizing morass.
There should be absolutely no confusion as to why people who have been through the experiences these folks have lived with for generations have found their way into self-medicating. Alcohol or drugs are much easier to find than consistent psychiatric care, or an Apple watch or a hatha yoga class, and they take you to oblivion much more efficiently and rapidly. I had a close friend in graduate school who was both a PhD in nursing and physical anthropologist. She was doing some research on whether Native Americans had a genetic predisposition to alcoholism based on the ways their bodies metabolized alcohol. I don’t know where her work took her, but her hypotheses sure sounded plausible to me. It would mean a double whammy for these folks – a physical predisposition to an alcohol problem in combination with all the economic, social, and mental health issues that they live with endemically. As noted, none of the causes are a mystery.
When I was there in the 1970s, alcohol was the issue. When I went back to visit in the past decade or so, methamphetamines had also become a serious problem.
I can only hope that things are getting better.
I was talking to a middle-aged gentleman who was a good friend. His children were students in the mission school. He told me that he was an alcoholic. He voluntarily went to de-tox places in Wyoming and South Dakota each for 30 days, but he couldn’t stop. Once a priest came to the mission and asked if anyone had a problem, and that he would pray for them. He then prayed for this man. He hasn’t had a drinking problem since then. Now he prays all the time and reads the bible every night. He goes to church every Sunday, and he goes to prayer meetings every Wednesday. (This person has worked so hard to overcome his alcoholism. He wants so badly to live his life without it. During the two years we lived in Hays, it was a constant battle for both him and his wife).
One of the sisters told me that the mission has a pledge for people to stop drinking. They sign it and promise to stop for a certain number of days. They keep the pledge, and she said that ‘they must be afraid that they will be struck down if they don’t.’ But the day the pledge is over they go on a binge.
Susie and I were at the Milk River Shopping Center and saw a good friend of ours from Hays sitting on a curb. He was very drunk. I asked him if he needed a ride back to Hays and he said yes. He said that his birthday was the day before and that he was still celebrating. He talked all the way home. When he is sober, he is usually very quiet. He said that the de-tox center on the reservation is a joke. They do not help anyone. He said that he doesn’t want to drink, and he knows what a disappointment he is to his parents. He does not know if it is worth it to go for help elsewhere because he has to come back to the same temptations and he doesn’t know if he can handle them. He will have the same friends who go out drinking and then he will have the same problems. He said that people think that there are gangs in cities, but the gang situation here is worse. Susie said that if they were really friends that they wouldn’t make him drink with them. He answered that they want to pull you down with them. That’s the only friends that you get around here. If you are not in a gang, you have to fight your way through every day. I’m big and strong but I don’t like to fight. Fighting doesn’t solve any problems; it just creates more problems. He told us that he’s had lots of trouble finding work. He said that he knows that he is an alcoholic, and he is ashamed of himself and does not like it. He said that Hays is getting worse for kids and is creating many alcoholics.
In a conversation I had with one of the sisters, she recounted for me about ten people who had recently died in car accidents that all involved alcohol.
I was driving the bus route in the afternoon when school was over. I was coming around the turn just before the Mounts and I saw two guys on the road, and they were trying to flag me down. I thought that they needed help, so I stopped the bus. One of the guys was a friend of mine and he was with his cousin. They asked if they could have a ride, and I told them to get in. Then I noticed that they were carrying open bottles of beer. I told them that they could not get onto the bus with that, because I had a whole busload of kids. He said alright and he and his cousin proceeded to drink it up on the stairwell of the bus and I realized that both were really drunk. I told them to get off because I couldn’t let them on that way. His cousin was mad and was going to jump at me, but my friend stopped him and said thanks and pushed his cousin off. They both got off.
I had absolutely no experience with alcoholism before I arrived in Hays. I didn’t have any family or friends with this issue. We had all sorts of other issues – alcoholism was not one of them. I was surrounded by people that I really came to love and care about who suffered with it mightily. I learned quickly that I had no control over what was happening to them. They got heaping loads of empathy from me and an ear whenever they needed to talk about it. Most of the time, it just seriously broke my heart.
There was one gentleman who would periodically go on a binge and then he would be too embarrassed to be around me. We were very close, and I knew that he was concerned that I would judge him. If I went a while without seeing him, I would seek him out, and I always tried to make it clear to him that I was not going to be making any judgements about his struggle. It was a horrible struggle, and I just felt so badly for him. That’s about all I was able to do … just feel like crap about all of it.
Government and politics on the reservation are so incredibly difficult and complicated. The reservation was established for both the Gros Ventre and the Assiniboine. Each of the tribes negotiated separate treaties with the government, so each has a separate treaty committee to handle all these issues. The tribal government is operated by both Gros Ventre and Assiniboine representatives. The Chippewa Cree are, of course, Indians with all the rights the federal government has given to Native Americans. They are not, however, formal members of the Fort Belknap community. What reservation rights these people have, for instance with housing, comes from intermarriage that has taken place over generations while the Chippewa Cree have lived in Hays. A Chippewa Cree individual, however, did not have the right to housing, and some of the other rights that applied to the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine. That was never a comfortable situation for all involved.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs has a representative assigned to Fort Belknap and there are BIA employees who all work up at the Agency. The BIA is a federal office in the Department of the Interior. The Gros Ventre and Assiniboine have trust status after the treaty period ended in 1871, and the BIA has responsibility for watching over the welfare of the tribes.
Given the many decades of incompetence, negligence and corruption that has permeated the relationship between the federal government and the tribes, people are incredibly cynical and distrustful. These negative attitudes surround their perceptions of all government – the federal government, the BIA, the tribal government and even the state government which has a more remote relationship with the reservation. As federal trust lands, the state has no jurisdiction over the tribes. And this becomes complicated also, because the people on the reservation vote for national offices.
I was speaking to a very highly respected elder from the community. He said that there are problems between the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine tribes. He said that the two tribes would never unite, regardless of how much time they were together on the reservation. The Fort Belknap Reservation was established for these two tribes and the tribal government operates with equal participation of both tribes. He said that he did not understand exactly why it was this way, but they will never be united. Each tribe has their own treaty committee. The Assiniboine are afraid that the Gros Ventre are trying to take over political power on the reservation. The BIA superintendent, who is an Indian (1/2 Gros Ventre and ½ Blackfoot), is against the separate treaty committees because he doesn’t want any side groups involved in reservation politics. There was supposed to be a bid on an office building that would be used by the BIA and would bring in $68,000 a year as long as the BIA were on the reservation, but he did away with the plans because he did not want the treaty committees involved in the planning and organizing. He wants only the tribal council involved in these matters. The man I was speaking with referred to himself as a $200 Gros Ventre, because he is ½ Gros Ventre and ½ Assiniboine, but when the Gros Ventre treaty committee was passing out $200 for each enrolled member, he went in that direction. As regards the treaties, even if you have both Gros Ventre and Assiniboine blood, you can only be formally enrolled in one of the tribes.
Another person told me that people are very bitter about the BIA because it will not help them. He said that the BIA perceives of the Indians as incompetent. He said that the BIA is afraid to do anything good for the Indians because then they are going to be out of a job. That is a very popular belief on the reservation.
Susie and I attended a tribal council meeting on a Saturday morning in mid-September. It was held in the BIA offices at the Agency. It was a quarterly council meeting and is open to the public to report on what the council is doing. The tribal council is composed of 12 members, 6 Gros Ventre and 6 Assiniboine. There were only 7 councilmen present. The chairman is Jack Plumage, and he is also one of the 6 Gros Ventre. Each of the councilmen represents a specific district on the reservation.
The meeting was run very formally (Roberts Rules). The council has two attorneys. These two men give legal advice to the tribal council and take care of any lawsuits and legal matters involving the council. They do not vote on tribal matters. One of the lawyers is a Blackfoot and represents other reservations. The lawyers are paid by the BIA office in Billings. There were complaints at the meeting that they are not paid on time and that they have trouble getting their money. The other lawyer is a full blood Gros Ventre.
The meeting was open to the public but only two people attended from the community besides Susie and me. The councilmen complained about public interest in reservation politics and some suggested that they end these Saturday public meetings. This was voted down, however, because it was felt the public meetings kept criticism against the council to a minimum and provided a sounding board for anyone who wanted to use it. These public council meetings protect the tribal council from too much criticism, even though the people do not come to these meetings.
There were discussions regarding water rights and mineral rights on the reservation.
Next, a letter from the state and county (Blaine) was read at the meeting. It concerned the tax on reservation motor vehicles. The council felt that they should not have to pay taxes on these vehicles because of a Supreme Court decision regarding tax exemptions for Indians. The letter said that if they cut out the tax, it would create a serious problem for the schools since revenue would be reduced to $76,775 after removing this tax money.
One of the lawyers said that this personal property tax on the Indian was illegal – on motor vehicles and trailers. The Supreme Court said that they didn’t have to pay this tax, and it is not associated with the schools anyway. He said that they should get this straightened out with the state and county. They have no authority to collect this tax from the reservation people. The letter was meant to scare us. These state and county people will be forced to comply with the Supreme Court ruling.
A person from the reservation began a petition which was signed by people to have the tribal books audited to see if the money was being mismanaged. He also filed other charges such as favoritism in hiring practices. The person was not at the meeting. The council voted to do the audit, and they were going to invite this person to the next meeting to offer specific cases of mismanagement that concerned him.
A letter was sent to the council by the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) because they wanted the Ft. Belknap Reservation to join the organization. The fee to join is based on the population of the reservation and it would cost about $100 to join. One of the lawyers suggested that they join all these organizations because they have a voice and are strong in the protection of Indian water rights. The BIA does not recognize the NCAI. They also talked about how the southern tribes were more powerful in this organization. Most of the meetings are held in the southwest. They wanted the tribes in Montana to join so that they could become more powerful. The council decided to join the organization.
One of the issues discussed at the meeting was the population and demographics on Fort Belknap. There are about 2,000 people who live on the reservation. About 900 of them are younger than the age of 15. A significant number of the rest are older people. Many of working age leave the reservation to find employment. The reservation is mostly the young and the old. That demographic exacerbates economic issues on the reservation as most of these people are not working.
Ray attended a tribal council and tribal planners meeting. They are going to apply for funds that have been made available by the government under the department of labor. There is 1.2 billion dollars to be split up nationally. The projects discussed at the meeting were the creation of a recreation center at the Agency and near Hays at the Kirkaldie’s warm spring. This warm spring is used by the kids now as a swimming hole and they want to clean it up and make it part of a larger recreation center. They are also planning a senior citizen building and a nursing home for the aged.
Ray said that they also discussed the youth program on the reservation that puts young people to work during the summer months and they get paid by the government. Usually there is little planning, and the kids end up cutting weeds and painting the BIA buildings. Ray said that this goes on every summer. This year they want to give the kids something meaningful to do where they can begin to develop a skill and do something worthwhile. They are talking about having them plant trees on the mountains where they were burned in the 1935 fire.
Ray was telling me about Bill 638 which was passed by Congress. The act specifies that any money now allocated to departments in the BIA that are not relevant on the reservation, or are not doing a good job for the people can now be used for programs designed by the Indians themselves. The decisions are made by the Indians and the money would go to the tribal councils. The act calls for Indian self-determination. Many people are afraid of this bill as a prelude to termination. He had ideas about how this money could be used to set up Indian-run businesses, and to make the reservation more self-sufficient. He would use the money to establish training for people in managing different kinds of stores and then to help them open these places on the reservation.
Ray said that the BIA has never done a good job to help the people. This is the first time that the Indian could go ahead and make plans and design programs without the necessary approval of the Secretary of the Interior.
Ray expressed a concern to me that he believes the Ford administration is advocating for the termination of reservation status for all Indians. Ray is very much against termination, because he says the Indian has not yet learned the skills to compete with the white man in the white man’s world. He said that if they ever terminated the Gros Ventre that he would ask the government for all the money they owed the Indians for their land and then go to live in Paris. He said that the termination of the Menominee and Klamath was a total failure and that these tribes are begging to return to their reservation and ward status.
I was speaking to a woman who has a job working for the tribal council. The salary for this job is controlled by the tribe, but the funding is federal, as are many of the jobs associated with the tribe. She runs the sewing center in the old gym at the mission.
I was speaking to a middle-aged couple who told me that the tribal council practices favoritism. The members of the council are in it for themselves and do not work for the people. They give themselves loans and they do very well. They are not in it to help the people of the reservation. They said that it would be better to get a non-Indian to run the council and the reservation. Someone who did not have a stake in the reservation. He should be a good administrator. They could even get an Indian from another reservation. They could pay him a large salary to make it an attractive position. Then they should elect people from each community to sit on the council who really care about the community. It does not matter that there are 6 Gros Ventre and 6 Assiniboine. In the council now, they are not paid, and they take their benefits in other ways.
The tribal council is currently involved in a Constitutional Convention. The constitution is undergoing change, and the chairman of this convention has the responsibility to go into the different communities to explain the changes to the people and the reasons for the changes. The constitution has remained about the same since 1935, and much of it is antiquated. The changes will be voted on by the people.
It is a common sentiment in the community that the tribal council is crooked. That they work for themselves instead of for the people. They give their families jobs and give themselves loans. After being elected to the tribal council, they suddenly start to do very well economically.
August was a very dry month, and a fire broke out in the Missouri Breaks. About 700 acres had burned. The fire is being fought by the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) and Indians from the reservation are participating. BLM is paying the crew chiefs $5.20 / hour, and the crews are getting $3.20 / hour.
Another grass fire was reported about 5 miles north of Hays between Hays and Three Buttes. It destroyed about 200 acres. There was a tank truck from Harlem and a crew of about 30 from the reservation fighting the fire. They fought it with back tanks and ‘slappers’ – a rubber matt on a pole.
The Indians on the reservation jump at the opportunity to fight fires because it is good money.
Charlie and Roseann Doney came up to our trailer for a visit. They told us that the tribal council is working on a law that would bring a seasonal hunting schedule to the reservation. Presently, any enrolled member can hunt any time he or she wishes. Most of the women hunt along with the men and own their own rifles. The hunting season on the reservation would be to allow the animals to grow back in some numbers. Game is scarce right now on the reservation. They were concerned that a hunting season could be a problem because many people are dependent on deer meat.
Roseann told us that her mother still dries meat the way they used to do it in traditional times. She gets the deer meat from Charlie and from other relatives that hunt. Roseann said that she can also still tan hides and she makes pemmican. Roseann laughed and said, yeah, my mom is a real Indian.
Roseann told us that she was going to have a feast in honor of her aunt. She warned us that everyone has to eat what they are given, and that they would be having puppy. Puppy is a feast food for the A’aniiih. It is not eaten regularly but is saved for special occasions. It has to be a very young puppy or else the meat is too tough. The feast goes on until all the food that has been prepared is finished. The hosts put the food on your plate. Susie and I did not attend the event Roseann was describing for us, but we were invited and participated in a puppy dinner during the second year we were on the reservation.
If I live long enough to make it to the second year, I’ll discuss more about this issue at that time. But I do want to address the ethnocentric attitudes people have about what other cultures consider food or delicacies. Food is often central to these ethnocentric beliefs. I’m really not certain as to why people’s judgements about what other societies consider food is such an intensely emotional subject. But people’s feelings about food can be magnified in comparison to other cultural elements.
Going back to the beginnings of time, the differences between cultures and societies are considered threatening. Different is unnatural and wrong. What other societies consider food is often thought of as disgusting or repulsive. A utilitarian element like an improved technology would be readily borrowed from a different culture. When rifles were introduced to the tribes, even though they were entirely new and different from their traditional culture, their value was immediately recognized. Killing a buffalo with a rifle is so much more effective than a bow and arrow.
The Athabascan peoples of Canada and northern Alaska refer to their neighbors as Eskimo, which in their language means the raw meat eaters. It is a derogatory reference that describes what they observe – that their neighbors eat raw meat – and they think it is disgusting. The people call themselves Inuits, which in their language means the real people. And they mean what it says – that they are the real people, and that all other peoples are not quite human. I’ve described this phenomenon of ethnocentrism in my earlier blogs. It worked fine so long as we lived in caves and had nothing to do with each other. As most of the world population is shoehorned into large urban areas where many different cultures are represented, ethnocentrism is a real problem. And as the world has become so much smaller from advancements in technology and increasingly more economic interdependence, ethnocentrism could be the end of us.
If it isn’t poison, and it has nutritional value, some group of people are eating it. Any kind of plant, any kind of animal (including insects) and any part of said animal is going to be food for some group. There is no right or wrong food. If it keeps you alive and sustains you, it is good.
The whole dog thing is loaded in our society because we keep these pets as members of our family. That is not the case in every society or culture. In Hinduism, the cow is a sacred symbol of life, wealth, strength, and abundance. It is unholy to eat beef. In the general American culture, beef is a staple until you are diagnosed with coronary artery disease. Then you have to periodically sneak it after you’ve taken your statin of choice.
My people eat all sorts of things that the greater society might find repulsive; gefilte fish and kishka come readily to mind. Before said coronary artery disease raised its ugly head in my family, my mother used to make chicken soup for Shabbos dinner. The butcher would harvest eggs from the ovaries of the chicken and give those to my mom to add to the soup. They were small and only the yokes. We called them eggies. I know … novel. Another favorite in our household was grievens – this is deep fried chicken skin. When making schmaltz (which is used for all manner of cooking, including chopped liver), grievens are a delicious by product. I love the food of my people and the more you eat of it, the more likelihood that you are taking a statin.
My Lebanese wife loved kibbeh nayyeh. On our first date, Pauline ordered fried oysters. This was one of her favorite foods. I remember asking her while she was eating her dinner whether she just ate a head? My people are forbidden from eating creatures that obtain their food from the crap that floats to the bottom of the sea floor.
What does it matter to you what I eat? I know you have better things to worry about.
I guarantee you that there is food that you enjoy that many other societies would find disgusting. I have a proposition for you …we won’t judge you, if you don’t judge us.
Later, Roseann and her mother made us pemmican and her granddaughter brought some over for us.
On October 1 and 2 there is going to be a powwow at the community center at the Agency. The powwow is called the Chief Joseph Memorial. Russel Means from AIM (American Indian Movement) was invited to speak. A few people I have spoken to about AIM had very mixed opinions. Ray has told me that he thinks that Russell Means and his people are courageous because they stand up to the government, but he doesn’t like their approach. There are not enough Indians to fight the government. Any kind of violence is not the right approach.
For the first time, I heard someone referred to as an apple – red on the outside but white on the inside.
At night (Thursday) during the second week of September, the gas was siphoned out of my tank and my gas cap was stolen. I park our truck right in front of the trailer. The kids are experts at siphoning gas, and everyone around here has a different method for protecting their gas supply. The kids are bored and drive around a lot to pass the time. Gas is not easy to get because the mission does not sell it, and the Hays store is always out of gas. The next closest place to get gas is about 30 miles away. The kids use rubber hoses. People park their cars and trucks very close to their homes so that they can hear the kids coming or they park their cars close together so they cannot get into the gas tank. Or they rely on their dogs to warn them if anyone is coming. If you put a lock on the cap, the kids will pry it off and ruin the whole tank.
I told Mary about what happened at school the next day. She said the kids know that it is wrong, but they do it anyway.
Shortly after our gas was stolen, a young man came up to our trailer in the evening. He asked how we were doing up here because he overheard a conversation with Father Retzel and learned about our gas being stolen. He asked me if we were scared, and I told him that we weren’t. I told him that people were very nice to us and that this was only a minor incident. He said that he doesn’t like it when people come into the community and are mistreated like that. He offered to sit out on our porch one night. He would hide, wait until the kids come, and then he would fill his shot gun with pepper and let them have it. I thanked him and said that I thought we would be left alone now. I thanked him profusely for his concern and his offer.
The weekend after the gas incident, at about 10:00 at night, two trucks and a car pulled up to the drive in front of our trailer. They were drinking and getting pretty loud. One of the trucks was trying to drive up a steep hill next to our trailer and was spitting out dirt and making a lot of noise. Father Retzel heard the commotion at the mission and tried to notify the police but there was no one on duty since one of the policemen had the night off.
The kids (about high school age) usually come to the canyon to drink and smoke dope on the weekend evenings and there is a lot of traffic up this road. There are a few who also go up there during the week. The canyon is filled with beer cans. Our driveway is also a favorite spot for drinking because it is isolated and away from the main community of Hays. The kids are bored. There is very little in the way of recreation. The only movies are in Harlem and that is about 30 miles from Hays. The gym is only open three nights a week and closes at 9:30. A lot of the trouble created by kids results from boredom.
An older couple heard about what was going on with us and asked us how we were doing. We reassured them that we were fine. He said that there is almost nothing for the kids to do besides hunt, play basketball and drink.
One Friday evening, a young couple came up to the mission to organize a volleyball game. There were about 10 high school boys, Charlie and Roseann, Mike, Susie and me. We played for a couple of hours.
One of the ranchers in Hays bid on the mission fields to lease the land to grow wheat. He had a really bad harvest because there was a very dry season and the horses got in and ruined the crop. One of the volunteers said that he didn’t think that Father Retzel was going to ask him to pay all that he bid for the land, because there just wasn’t any wheat grown.
There’s a family in Hays that has horses but doesn’t have the land for them to graze on. It is very easy for these horses to get onto the mission fields. They come up to our trailer to graze. The reservation has a system whereby if a horse is caught in someone’s fields they are taken to the Agency and the owner has to come to pick them up. They have to pay $25 for each horse to get them back and then have to prove that they have the land to support the horses. If the owner cannot prove this, the horses are auctioned off. This volunteer told us that these horses once got into Johnny’s fields, and he called the inspector to come get the horses. That night, the kids who owned these horses broke down the corral and got the horses out.
Johnny’s grandfather came from Ireland. He took trains as far west as he could go, and the line ended at Wolf Point. He got off there. He bought a few head of cattle and started ranching. Johnny’s father was white, and his mother is Assiniboine.
There is a white man who is married to an Inuit woman who owns the store in Hays. They have a son, and she is expecting another child. He bought the store from a man who was known as Red. They met in Bethel, Alaska. He worked in a store up there. He knew Red from making deliveries. People owe him a lot of money from buying things in the store on credit. Many people run up very large bills. He has high prices, but it is a very small store. He does not allow anyone to charge cigarettes. There are many stories, mostly among the kids, that he waters down the gasoline that he sells in front of the store. He also owns the land behind the store and rents out the shacks that people live in on this land.
One of the people who lives in one of these shacks is a 25-year-old who has multiple sclerosis. These shacks are tar paper homes and are small and dilapidated. He lives alone there. This is way before the time when there were any kinds of treatments for MS, and he had deteriorated significantly. He could barely get around and had lost most function below his waist. He uses a walker. Mike took an interest in him and has done more than anyone to care for him. He tries to get him out of the house as much as possible, bringing him to prayer meetings and to bingo. And he tries to visit him as much as possible. Through my relationship with Mike, I got to know this young man. I learned that this man was moved into a nursing home off the reservation some years after Susie and I left Hays. Mike remained in Montana after Susie, and I left, and he stayed in touch with this man. MS is a recurrent disorder, and he continued to worsen. Mike told us that he did well after he started to receive regular nursing care.
The people in the community were uncomfortable around him.
There was a couple who had a child with down syndrome, and the parents just didn’t know how to handle the situation and hid him in the house for a long time.
There is a stigma about people who have various disabilities or mental health issues. People just don’t know how to handle these situations. It was the 1970s, and this issue wasn’t exclusive by any means to the reservation. This was a major societal issue. It is 2024. I can say with certainty from my 30 years of experience with the Siegel Rare Neuroimmune Association, that while the situation has improved, we still have a long way to go.
Gordon works for the forestry department on the reservation. They maintain the forest in the mountains and fight fire. They have been putting in roads through the forest. BLM maintains the rest of the Little Rockies.
Gordon told me that he uses three kinds of fuel to heat his home in order to keep the costs down from any one source. He has propane gas heat, electric heaters, and a wood burning stove. While working for the forest department, he cuts some of this wood to use for his own home. I have hauled some of this wood for him in my truck. Propane is delivered by a company that will not accept credit. They have to be paid before they will fill the tanks. This is a serious issue for people in the wintertime when it can be brutally cold in northern Montana.
I had a conversation with one of the volunteers who had been at the mission and on the reservation for a couple of years. He shared the following observations.
There is a lot of jealousy between people on the reservation. No one wants anyone to better themselves. They do not want anyone to get ahead or do better than they are doing themselves. People who are in leadership positions and are trying to do something to better the lives of people in the community are constantly criticized.
Susie and I went to the Hays Clinic, and we met the new dentist on the reservation. He got his degree from OSU and his parents live in Worthington. He will be here for two years. He lives next to the PHS hospital at the Agency. He is in Hays on Tuesdays and Thursdays and at the Agency on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. His service is also used by students who are taken out of school to go to him. His assistant sometimes picks up the kids at school. Susie’s best friend’s mother works for this person’s father at a senior living facility in Worthington.
When people are speaking, they often end a sentence with the expression init. The meaning is isn’t that right? or really. Susie asked me about this after we were listening to people talk for almost two months. I hadn’t yet heard it, and when I say that it is used by almost everyone, I mean everyone. After Susie mentioned it to me and I started to listen more closely, I couldn’t believe that I had been missing it. Good thing I’m not a linguist.
Clarence Cuts the Rope is building a beautiful log home on the southwest part of the reservation. Clarence is an excellent western artist and is nationally known for his work. (His brother, Frank, is also an artist). His wife, Margaret, is a teacher. The house is very isolated. On a clear day, you can see five different mountain ranges. He said that his father had always wanted to build a home there, so he decided to do it. I am guessing that this land was a part of his father’s allotment.
Irma told us that when she was a little girl, some of the kids would call her Cree Bacon. It was meant as a derogatory term. She said that she would get into a lot of fights. I wouldn’t want to be in a fight with Irma.
Ray and Irma came over for a visit on a Friday evening. Susie lit the Shabbos candles and said the prayers. They were very interested in our Judaism and asked us a lot of questions. From their perspective and also the perspective of many in the community, Susie and I were in a very unique situation. We lived at the mission, we worked for the mission and the mission school, and yet, it was clear that we were sort of outside of the mission. It is a Catholic Mission, we served in the Jesuit Volunteer Corp and yet, we weren’t Christian and had no interest in converting. If we went to mass, everyone could see that we didn’t kneel on the hard wooden planks in front of us, we never made the sign of the cross and we never went up for communion. So, when talking about the traditional A’aniiih religion and the ways that the mission was involved in, at times, literally beating it the hell out of people, they could speak to us in a way that perhaps they might not with one of the fathers or sisters or Catholic volunteers.
It was also clear that I was more than open to participating in and attending any of the more traditional religious rituals that were held on the reservation. Ray and Irma and Gordon and Edith observed that in me very early on and were incredibly gracious about inviting me to everything traditional … the sweat lodge, the spirit lodge, the Native American Church (peyote meetings), the hand games. They held leadership positions as the Dance Committee and Hays Singers, and Susie and I were introduced to so much about these activities from them. They quickly understood that we never made judgments about their traditions, and recognized that our own religion was different from one of the greatest acculturative forces in their history of culture change … The Church. What they got from Susie and I was respect and they knew and felt that from us very early on.
Father Retzel never said anything to me about my interest or participation, because it was his nature to avoid conflict, and he knew that I was being an anthropologist. I heard about his annoyance from others. I also knew that it annoyed Nade even more so. She had the most intense religious responsibilities of all the volunteers, next to Mike. Interestingly, Mike was open to the Native American traditions. He never felt threatened by these differences even though he had his own very strong convictions about Christianity. It was more difficult for Nade and Father, and I think their annoyance with me fed each other’s feelings. I fully understood and appreciated their concerns. We represented the Church and the Mission in the community, and we were clearly off the rails on a regular basis. Neither one of them ever said anything to me about their thoughts and feelings. But I always heard about it. There were few secrets in Hays.
I don’t have any photographs from this specific period of time. I’m going to include a few images that I took during a visit to Hays in 2014. I made this trip without Pauline. I spent a couple of weeks visiting Mike and Ligia in the Bear Paw Mountains, and I made a trip down to Hays and stayed with Cyndee, Ray and Irma’s daughter, and Cyndee’s grandson, Stephon. It was the first time I had spent the night in the home that Ray and Irma once lived in and raised their family. It was mind blowing for me in every direction. It was beyond wonderful spending the time with Cyndee.
While in Hays, I wanted to visit the graves of the people I so loved. Almost all of them are gone. I did my best to visit as many as I could find. I put on my yarmulke and said my personal version of the El Maleh Rahamim (G-d full of compassion) and the mourner’s Kaddish for each of them … and I said it for them, even if I was unable to find their graves. Cyndee joined me in prayers in her way … as her mom and dad used to say … in the Indian Way. I have lost so many dear friends.
Mission Cemetery
Ray died shortly after Susie and I left the reservation. Ray had a virulent case of diabetes. If you went into a grocery store in the 1950s, 60s or 70s and looked for foods that didn't contain sugar or carbohydrates, you wouldn't find a thing. There weren't low fat foods either. None of these healthy dietary options were available. Cars also didn't have seat belts, and you could smoke on an airplane or in a restaurant.
Many of the people on Fort Belknap were only buying items here or there in a grocery store - it requires money to buy things. And even if they had the money, these healthy options did not exist. Most people on the reservation depended on the department of agriculture commodity food program. Susie and I knew the program well because that was a significant portion of our diet for the two years we lived in Hays. The mission picked up its share of these commodity items along with everyone else. And we never missed our block of cheese. This diet is extremely high in carbohydrates, sugars, and fats. If you had a health issue and depended on this diet, you were just screwed.
I was able to visit with Cyndee in 2014 and 2017. My sweet sister recently passed away. So much time in the sadness machine.
May her memory be a blessing.
Cyndee and Stephon at Ray's Grave
One of the most vivid memories I have of Montana is all the rocks and boulders on the ground covered by the most beautifully colored lichen. There was something entirely cosmic about seeing these lichen on Ray's gravestone.
May their memories be a blessing.
I am going to have knee replacement surgery at the end of October. I had my other knee done last year, so I am fully aware of the recovery I am facing. Seriously dreading the entire experience, but it has to be done because I have so much pain. There’s likely going to be some time before I publish the next blog. Hopefully, you are subscribed to my blogs and will be notified when the next one is published.
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