Rez Life: An Indian's Journey Through Reservation Life (23 page)

“What’s this?” I asked.

“It’s your new home. I got you a full ride to the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth. Don’t fuck it up.”

It was a pivotal moment for Dustin. He had no ambition beyond finding some kind of steady job—working at the casino or at the supermarket in Cass Lake. Maybe some day he’d be a manager. That was the start. Like a lot of Indian kids, Dustin had needed help. But he didn’t even know what kind of help or whom to ask. Like Weise, and like a lot of other kids, Dustin was heading in a bad direction. He credits Sean with saving his life. He graduated from Scholastica in 2009 and moved back to Leech Lake, where he teaches Ojibwe language at the tribally run Ojibwe-language immersion school. His life could have turned out very differently. “I found a family, at ceremonies, in the language. I never had that before. I never thought I would. But now I’ve got a ceremonial family. I’ve got a purpose, people who rely on me. It feels good, man. It feels great.”

2

If the Sioux are known for being fierce warriors, the Iroquois for diplomacy, and the Cherokee for being civilized, the Ojibwe are known for being loving. In contrast to Jeffrey Weise’s experience the one thing that every single explorer, missionary, anthropologist, and historian has noticed about Ojibwe culture is the closeness between parents and children.
Frances Densmore, the anthropologist, noted in her book
Chippewa Customs
that Ojibwe parents were extremely permissive. “If a baby was born during the night it was customary to notify the people by firing guns. Immediately the men of the father’s gens and those of one other gens went to the wigwam and attempted to gain possession of the child, the father and those of his gens defending the child against the other party. The child’s relatives threw water, and sometimes a mixture of flour and water, on the attacking party, and the men fought and wrestled. It was said that ‘everybody was wringing wet’ when the struggle was finished. The men who secured the baby took it to the leader of the gens who carried it four times around the fire while the people sang a song with words meaning ‘We have caught the little bird.’ The parents gave presents to the men to secure possession of the baby. It was said, ‘This was done to make the child brave from hearing so much noise as soon as it was born.
’
” Such was the excitement a new baby caused in the village.
Densmore also noted, “Chippewa women never allowed a baby to cry if this could be avoided by any mode of pacification, and for this reason the small children were somewhat ‘spoiled.’ The devotion of a mother to her children was intense, and if necessary to defend them, she fought with ferocity.” Parents rarely yelled at their children and never hit them. Instead, Ojibwe parents used fear as a deterrent. For instance: “An article which may be said to have represented the bear paw was called a ‘ghost leg.’ It consisted of an old moccasin stuffed with straw and fastened at the end of a stick. . . . If a child were persistently naughty the mother would call aloud for the bear paw [ghost leg]. The blanket hung at the end of the stick would be drawn aside and the old moccasin at the end of the stick would be slowly thrust into the wigwam by an older person on the outside.

“When the children were old enough to listen attentively it was still desired to keep them quiet in the evening. For this purpose the older people devised a game called the ‘Game of Silence.’ In this game a song was sung by an older person in which the most novel and interesting events were related. The song suddenly ceased at the most exciting point, and the children tried to avoid making a sound at this surprise. The song was repeated over and over with new words and new pauses, a prize being given to the child who showed the most self-control. It is said that the children were usually asleep when the game ended.”

Collins Oakgrove, an elder from Red Lake, remembers that he always listened to his parents when they told him to behave because if he was naughty they’d summon his uncle. He was very scared of his uncle—whatever the uncle said to do, he’d do it. Eventually, when he was older, he asked his uncle why he’d been so scared.
Oh,
said his uncle.
That’s easy. When you were about two years old, old enough to remember but not old enough to quite remember, I pretended to drown you in the lake. They picked me to be the bad uncle.

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft—an early ethnologist of the Ojibwe who later became an Indian agent in Michigan—wrote, not without disgust, that Ojibwe children were allowed to run wild and do whatever they pleased without incurring the wrath of their parents. Ojibwe parents were, according to him, almost absurdly permissive and loving toward their children. William Warren, half Ojibwe and half white, the author of
The History of the Ojibwe People,
first published in 1885, recounts this episode during a period of intense warfare between the Ojibwe and the Fox:

A few lodges of Ojibway hunters under the guidance of Bi-aus-wah, a leading man of the tribe, claiming the Loon Totem, [were] one spring encamped at Kah-puk-wi-e-kah, a bay on the lake shore situated forty miles west of La Pointe.

Early one morning, the camp was attacked by a large war-party of Foxes, and the men, women, and children all murdered, with the exception of a lad and an old man, who, running into a swamp, and becoming fastened in the bog and mire, were captured and taken in triumph by the Foxes to their village, there to suffer death with all the barbarous tortures which a savage could invent.

Bi-aus-wah, at the time of the attack, was away on a hunt, and he did not return till towards evening. His feelings on finding his wigwams in ashes, and the lifeless scalpless remains of his beloved family and relatives strewed about on the blood-stained ground, can only be imagined. He had lost all that bound him to life, and perfectly reckless he followed the return trail of the Foxes determined to die, if necessary, in revenging the grievous wrong which they had inflicted upon him. He arrived at the village of his enemies, a day after their successful war-party had returned, and he heard men, women, and children screaming and yelling with delight, as they danced around the scalps which their warriors had taken.

Secreting himself on the outskirts of the village, the Ojibway chieftain waited for an opportunity to imbrue his hands in the blood of an enemy who might come within reach of his tomahawk. He had not remained long in his ambush when the Foxes collected a short distance from the village, for the purpose of torturing and burning their two captives. The old man was first produced, and his body being wrapped in folds of the combustible birch bark, the Foxes set fire to it and caused him to run the gauntlet amid their hellish whoops and screams; covered with a perfect blaze of fire, and receiving withal a shower of blows, the old man soon expired.

The young and tender lad was then brought forward, and his doom was to run backwards and forwards on a long pile of burning [logs], till consumed to death. None but a parent can fully imagine the feelings which wrung the heart of the ambushed Ojibway chieftain, as he now recognized his only surviving child in the young captive who was about to undergo these torments. His single arm could not rescue him, but this brave father determined to die for or with his only son, and as the cruel Foxes were on the point of setting fire to the heap of dry [wood] on which the lad had been placed, they were surprised to see the Ojibway chief step proudly and boldly into their midst and address them as follows:—

“My little son, whom you are about to burn with fire, has seen but a few winters; his tender feet have never trodden the war path—he has never injured you! But the hairs of my head are white with many winters, and over the graves of my relatives I have hung many scalps which I have taken from the heads of the Foxes; my death is worth something to you, let me therefore take the place of my child that he may return to his people.”

Taken totally by surprise, the Foxes silently listened to the chief’s proposal, and ever having coveted his death, and now fearing the consequence of his despairing efforts, they accepted his offer, and releasing the son, they bade him to depart, and burnt the brave father in his stead.

George Copway, another earlier chronicler of Indian history, wrote about his own parenting. Copway was Ojibwe, from Mississauga, Ontario. Born in 1818, he grew up in a traditional Ojibwe family but converted later in life to Methodism. He met and married an Englishwoman and the two moved to Minnesota Territory in 1840 to evangelize among the Minnesota Ojibwe. T
hey had children. Eventually, Copway became good friends with the controversial Ojibwe chief Bagone-giizhig. In 1841 Copway left his wife with Bagone-giizhig while he traveled from Rabbit Lake to St. Peters in an effort to gather provisions and support for the Rabbit Lake Mission. While gathering provisions he ventured on a trip to Little Crow’s Dakota village and walked into preparations for a full-scale war expedition against the Ojibwe. Little Crow told Copway, “Tell [Bagone-giizhig] I am coming for his scalp.” Copway, fearing for his wife, children, and friend, ran, swam, and rode the entire distance from Little Crow’s village to Bagone-giizhig’s in three days, a total distance of more than 300 miles. Copway wrote in his journal, “I was so anxious . . . that I had no appetite for eating . . . having walked two hundred and forty miles, forded eight large streams and crossed the broad Mississippi twice. My coat and pantaloons were in strips.”
Copway warned Bagone-giizhig, who moved all of his people from the area and took precautions for the rest of the summer that probably saved hundreds of Ojibwe lives. Copway would later move to New York City after being defrocked by the Methodists for embezzlement. He wrote and published his memoirs in 1847—becoming one of the first Indians to do so.

It seems that Ojibwe parents would do almost anything for their children. John Johnson, a half-Ottawa missionary in Minnesota, panicked when Bagone-giizhig began machinations for war in the 1860s. Bagone-giizhig had threatened Johnson’s life in 1857, and the Ojibwe chief was not to be ignored or dismissed: he usually carried out his threats. Johnson was convinced that his wife and two children were in danger, especially after he was held prisoner by Bagone-giizhig on August 17, 1862. That evening, after his release, Johnson fled from Gull Lake (Bagone-giizhig’s stronghold) with his wife and children. He put his wife and all of his children in a canoe and dragged it by hand all night down the Gull River. He reached Fort Ripley the next day, having dragged his family 100 miles to safety. However, two of his five children died of exposure during their escape.

Indian kids have been drifting away from their families for decades. And for many years, from the late nineteenth century well into the twentieth century (and in Canada as recently as the 1970s), it was federal policy to try to separate Indian children from their parents. Indian kids were not supposed to have strong ties to their families; strong ties were considered
bad
. This was part of a larger effort to civilize the Indian and bring him into the mainstream as a productive member of society. Those who were obsessed with what was often called the “Indian problem” recognized that the bond of family, the connection between parents and their children and, sometimes even more importantly, between grandparents and grandchildren, was the most significant and strongest bond linking a person to his or her identity, tribe, and reservation. If this bond could be broken, Indians would disappear as Indians, and the “Indian problem” would be solved.

It may come as a surprise to many people that there was an “Indian problem”—the concept sounds analogous to a mold problem or an insect problem or some other pernicious infestation—but evidently there was. The term was popularized by the twenty-first president of the United States, Chester A. Arthur. The “Indian problem” was, as Arthur saw it, twofold: it was a problem of inefficient administration on the part of the government, and of failure on the part of Indians to “join the mainstream” and give up our savage ways. Arthur’s efforts—which resulted in policies that were among the most disastrous and destructive to Indian people—were thinly disguised attempts to gain control of trade, minerals, lumber, and land for settlement. Arthur mournfully set out the history and problems in his State of the Union address delivered in January 1882: “For the success of the efforts now making to introduce among the Indians the customs and pursuits of civilized life and gradually to absorb them into the mass of our citizens, sharing their rights and holden to their responsibilities, there is imperative need for legislative action.”

This legislative action had two components: the severing of responsibility of the federal government (as a signatory of treaties) to Indian tribes on reservations, along with an increase of state and territorial control; and the establishment of boarding schools, where Indian children would be stripped of their tribal connections. With his State of the Union address, Chester A. Arthur set the stage for legislation that still haunts many Indians today:

I advise a liberal appropriation for the support of Indian schools, because of my confident belief that such a course is consistent with the wisest economy.

Even among the most uncultivated Indian tribes there is reported to be a general and urgent desire on the part of the chiefs and older members for the education of their children. It is unfortunate, in view of this fact, that during the past year the means which have been at the command of the Interior Department for the purpose of Indian instruction have proved to be utterly inadequate.

The success of the schools which are in operation at Hampton, Carlisle, and Forest Grove should not only encourage a more generous provision for the support of those institutions, but should prompt the establishment of others of a similar character.

They are doubtless much more potent for good than the day schools upon the reservation, as the pupils are altogether separated from the surroundings of savage life and brought into constant contact with civilization.

The institution that acted as the wedge to split Indian families apart was the Indian boarding school. These schools were often run by religious orders, mostly Catholics and evangelicals, but funded by the government. Students were famously made to burn their traditional clothes upon arrival and had their hair cut. They were routinely whipped for speaking their Native languages and just as routinely sexually abused by priests and teachers alike. Boarding schools in Canada, called “residential schools,” were so bad and were in place so long (until the 1970s) that Native people in Canada received an apology from Pope John Paul II for what they endured there and an apology by the Canadian government, accompanied by restitution for suffering—$10,000 for all those abused in former residential schools and an additional $3,000 for every year they spent in these schools beyond the first.