Forward:
In the mid 1970’s, a friend of mine named Joseph was walking out of a restaurant in Albuquerque, New Mexico and ran into a casual acquaintance who mentioned to him that there was a job available at the Albuquerque Indian School and he thought Joseph should apply. It was that serendipitous moment that would come to me in or around 1990 and change my life forever and for the better. Exactly how that moment came to change my life, I will get to later.
American Indians: What do I and American Indians have in common? The experiences we shared even though we lived in two different worlds and in completely different cultures have great parallels. I am not an American Indian, I am of Italian and Irish descent, but for the last twenty-five years I have traveled to more than three hundred Indian reservations and Alaska Native Villages in the United States and Canada. Today, American Indian people are as much a part of me as are the cultures and histories of the white man. I do not pretend to be Indian nor do I partake in pseudo American-Indian rituals run by white guys in New Mexico or California; my experiences with Indian people have been so much greater and a thousand times more meaningful than that. I have been welcomed in their homes; I have had countless meals with so many; I have listened to their stories and I have laughed and cried with them. Yes, many are my clients, but they are my friends as well. We have a deep and lasting connection that time and cultural differences do not diminish.
Most American Indians I know grew up on reservations and in poverty. I grew up in poverty in the Fort Green Housing Projects in Brooklyn, New York. They were treated shabbily by the powers that be just as we were in Fort Green. The police in and around Indian Country were corrupt and wouldn’t think twice about cracking some Indian over the head for no reason at all. And the same applied in Fort Green. So when I first started working with tribal people, there was an instant and deep spiritual connection. We had been screwed many times over and we were working hard to pull ourselves out of the shit that had been thrown at us.
This is a story about my life and my adventures. And it is about my travels and experiences in Indian Country in the United States, Canada and other travels around the world. The coming introduction to my life has significance to my work and travels in Indian country, it is the basis for who I am today and why Indian people matter so much to me.
So I want to make it clear right from the beginning that I do not for one second consider myself an expert on American Indian culture nor do I have solutions on how to fix many of the problems that still exist on reservations. I have read too many books by white men about how we can fix and save American Indians. And for me and for many Indian people I know, that is the core of the problem; white men trying to “save” or “fix” American Indians. If anything, the great American Indian peoples of America have saved and fixed me and I am grateful to all of them for giving me a life full of the greatest riches anyone can ever have; friendship, beautiful experiences and vivid lasting memories. So this book is dedicated to all of my friends in Indian Country. They are the inspiration for this writing. Without them, there would be no book.
I have flown more than three million miles since the start of this career. Over the last twenty-six years, I estimate that I have spent more than fourteen of those years in hotel rooms. I have rented thousands of cars and driven at least a million miles; some reservations are far away from airports.
In all that time, I have had three aborted take-offs, three aborted landings and on engine on a DC 10 that exploded about 7 minutes after takeoff out of Seattle. That flight had an emergency landing shortly after. Two hours later I was on another plane headed to the east coast. What choice did I have?
The Native Village of Noatak
Recently, while sitting at the bar at Orso’s restaurant in Anchorage, I was pondering the previous few days I had just spent in the Alaskan bush. Merle, the young and very pleasant bartender whom I have chatted with many times while being or passing through Anchorage, was serving up a glass of delicious Syrah-Cabernet while I waited for my dish of seafood Gemelli pasta. I wouldn't say I was depressed, but I was reflective, and sometimes the line between the two can be thin. I had a great meal and counted my blessings, but the last few days I had spent in the village of Noatak were somehow weighing heavily on me. I have been to scores of native villages throughout the state of Alaska over the last twenty-five years. And each time I come away with a similar sense of confusion and conflict. I am forever trying to understand how the people in the village get along with so little and why they would want to live in a place where life is difficult at best.
Just three days earlier on Sunday morning I awoke at 4:30 and headed to the Anchorage airport to catch my 6 AM flight to Kotzebue. I was looking at a five hour layover in Kotzebue before I would board my flight to Noatak. Getting up at that hour in the morning after two long flights from New York the day before was difficult, but it was my only option; I was scheduled to start work on the tribal constitution and the tribal enrollment ordinance for the village first thing Monday morning. Once in Kotzebue I sat, read, paced, walked, ate and mostly waited for my flight to Noatak. Time does pass no matter how far away it seems from the front end and I finally boarded my flight shortly after the scheduled departure time. Not too bad for an Alaskan bush flight. Sara, the pilot, was recently showcased on a reality TV show about Alaskan Bush Pilots and a reporter from the Washington Post was flying with her for the day. I guess her 15 minutes of fame was being extended. The reporter got the co-pilot’s seat; something I usually covet and get on most Alaskan bush flights, but not today. Still, from my second row seat the flight was picturesque as we were in the middle of a beautiful Alaskan autumn day and flying at an altitude of about 1,000 feet.
The next morning I awoke at 6 am, not bad considering the four hour time difference from New York. I stayed up until about 10:30 the night before chatting with Bernice and Eugene, the elderly couple who own the house I was staying in. There are three young people living here with Bernice and Eugene; two adopted daughters and an adopted son. There are three bedrooms besides the one I am in and so the five of them share those rooms. My bedroom was a bit messy but since I watched Bernice change my sheets shortly after I arrived, that brought a little comfort. It was livable at least, and it was not too uncomfortable. Although I did wake up the next morning with a sore this and a sore that.
Two of their adopted children work at Red Dog Mine; a zinc and lead mine a 30 minute flight from the village. There is a landing strip in Noatak about half a mile from the center of town, which is common in just about every Native Village throughout the state. The two young people who work at the mine get two weeks there and a week at home, so I guess the house population diminishes every so often, only Bernice, Eugene and the one unemployed son remain.
I estimated that Bernice and Eugene were in their 70's. I thought they probably adopted their kids while they were already in their fifties. I found out before I left the village that Bernice is 59 years old and Eugene is 74. Life is hard in these villages and it shows on both of them, especially Bernice. They have five biological children; three live in this village in their own houses, one lives in Kotzebue, Alaska and one was accidentally shot in the back by a friend with a shotgun while hunting. He died from his wounds at the tender age of 18 about 20 years ago.
It is sometimes difficult to understand the attachment these kind and humble folk have to a place like this. It is bleak, the temperature reaches 40 to 60 below zero in the winter (Not the wind chill, the actual temperature) and all of the food here, other than what they hunt or fish, is processed and god-awful. In all my travels around the globe, I am often in awe of the beautiful cities, towns and villages I see and I stare in wonder at the great places, amazing architecture, and beautiful vistas our world has to offer. I love good food and good wine and never for a moment do I think anything other than how fascinating this planet of ours is. Then you come to a place like this, and you have to ask yourself, why would anyone want to live here? And that is what was haunting me while I sat at the bar in Anchorage. But, the people I have met throughout my last twenty-five years traveling around the state of Alaska have been remarkable. They have left an indelible impression on me as fighters and survivors. The state of Alaska, run by conservative Republicans for too many years, is no friend to the native people in Alaska. Yet they have managed to hold on to their homeland and to many of their traditions and much of their culture. It is that spirit that brings me back again and again no matter the temporary hardships I may have to endure for a mere few days.
I went to the Tribal Office at about 9 AM that Monday to begin my work on their governing documents. Before I met with the Tribal Council, I met Robin, the Tribal Administrator. At the time, Robin was a pretty, smart, educated and lively 25 year old with three children of her own. She just came back to the Village to work as the administrator after being gone for several years. I asked her if she was happy to be back. She smiled and said emphatically, oh yes, I am so happy to be back; which I found surprising. Why would this pretty, smart lady want to be here when she could be anywhere else? Which reminded me of a story I once relayed to a colleague and friend of mine, Nancy Garcia. Nancy is a member of the Tohono O’odham Nation in Arizona, and while we were working on an assignment together for the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe in Michigan, I told her about a trip I had taken to Cold Bay, Alaska. About this young, beautiful and articulate woman I met who was working at the coffee shop in Cold Bay. I said I could not imagine why this beautiful, and apparently very smart young lady would be in a god-forsaken place like Cold Bay. Nancy turned to me and said, “So, if she was ugly and stupid it would have been OK?” Lesson learned.
In Noatak, there are no restaurants, no theaters, no pubs, nothing; just tundra, lots and lots of tundra, and lousy weather. This house I am staying in is pretty much the only place to stay when you visit here. Bernice told me that no one else in the village wanted to open a "Bed and Breakfast" because they are afraid of white people. Bernice said she told them, White people don't bite. So as tempted as I was to bite Bernice, I resisted.
Back at the bar I came to the only sensible conclusion I could come to; that I did not grow up there; I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. There is no way that I could honestly relate to or understand what the people of the village feel about their home. Some of them would love to visit New York just as I visit these villages, but they would be as uncomfortable living in New York as I would be living in their village. They would long to go home and be in their familiar settings as I would long to be in mine. And I realized, as I have done so many times in my twenty-five years in Indian Country that it is not my job to come to terms with what these humble and gracious folks feel and think. It is my job to simply respect their way of life and never to try in any way, shape or form to impose my way of life on them. That has been the problem with our planet from the beginning of humanity; imposing one way of life on someone else’s.
So to Bernice, Eugene and to all of the people in Noatak, I simply say, thank you for your gracious and welcoming hospitality. Live on.
Never use kerosene to burn a dog.
In April of 1998 I flew to the Village of False Pass, Alaska. False Pass got its name from American sailing ship Captains who believed that their deep vessels could not pass through the northern end. And because it looked like a pass, but wasn’t, thus the name. When I was there in the late 90’s, the population was all of 35. Many people think of False Pass as the gateway to the Aleutian Islands because it is often the stop you make before proceeding further west. You can only get there by sea or air. I flew in from the Town of Cold bay. I’ll get to the Cold Bay story a little later.
I was contracted to facilitate two workshops in False Pass; a Robert’s Rules of Order workshop and a Bookkeeping for Grants and Contract workshop. The woman who contracted me was the Native Village president. Let’s call her Lorna. I was informed early on that there was no lodging in the village so I would have to stay at her house. Not unusual in the Alaskan Bush; I have stayed in many native homes throughout the years. Lorna lived in a small three bedroom house that was occupied by herself, two of her brothers, her daughter, and her granddaughter. They all slept in two bedrooms and the third bedroom was used as a storage room and a “guest” room. Upon arrival I was shown the “guest: room. It was seriously cluttered with all manner of boxes, crates and bullet bandoleers with the bullets still in them. Not being one who fancies guns or bullets in any way, the thought crossed my mind that where there are bullets, there are guns. My second thought was how I would climb over the small mountain of things in the way of the path to the bed. My third thought was, do I really want to sleep in that bed? Seeing as my only choices were the bed, and nowhere else, I opted for the bed. The best approach for me was to spend the night on top of the blankets fully clothed and with one eye half open. I ended up sleeping quite soundly after all.
The next morning I sat with the family and had breakfast. I don’t eat meat and at the time I didn’t eat fish either so in an Alaskan village my options for food were seriously limited. For the next few days it was cereal and frozen pizza General Stores in Alaskan Native villages are often not equipped with the kind of food and fresh produce that we take for granted. And if they do have some of the items we want - False Pass did not - then the prices are astronomical. Again, the only way in or out is by boat or plane and that makes everything expensive.
Lorna was a humble hostess and did her best to make me feel welcome in her home. After breakfast she took the time to show me many pictures of bears walking right up to her front door and of her close encounters with them. One of her pictures was of a bear looking right at the camera and it was shot from not more than a few feet from where she stood. I asked her if she was scared at that moment, she said no and I am sure she wasn’t. Bears are a way of life in False Pass.
Back in 1998 I had already been to Alaska more than 40 times. I had been all over the state, from the southeast to the northwest. But my only sighting of the great Alaskan brown bears was in 1996 when I took my then 8 year old son to Denali National Park. We got to see quite a few in their natural habitat but the thought of seeing one stroll through town intrigued me and the notion of them somehow coexisting with their human neighbors fascinated me.
Lorna’s daughter Beth was in her mid to late twenties and on that first morning before I had to go to work, she invited me to take a ride to the garbage dump to see bears. She claimed that bears would gather at the dump this time of year; it was spring and after their long sleep they were hungry and a free meal was a grand bargain for them.
Around the same time I was doing work for the Saginaw Chippewa tribe in Michigan with a few native folks who were on my team. There was a woman named Kay Davis who worked for the BIA and her mission in life was to be as Indian as possible. She told me she knocked out one of the taillights on her car so it would fit in on the reservation she lived on. She claimed it made it a “Res Car”. The native folks who were with me rolled their eyes in disbelief and my dear friend Tina from Gila River looked at me and stuck her finger down her throat to feign vomiting and to show her disgust. A “Res Car”, was not something one created intentionally.
So by Kay’s definition I think it is fair to say that Beth’s car eminently qualified as a Res Car. It had no front windshield; you had to enter from the passenger side because the driver’s door was badly damaged and taped, and you started the car with a screwdriver; the ignition switch didn’t exist. This car was so old the odometer measured in years, not miles. At least it should have.
So we hopped into her car and made our way to the dump. And no bears. Not one. Still we shuffled out of the car and stood around waiting for one or more to appear. And then out of the blue she said,
“Never use kerosene to burn a dog”
“Excuse me?” I responded.
“My dog snapped at a guest who came to my house recently so I took it here, shot it, and poured kerosene over it and lit it on fire. And it just didn’t burn right. I had to do it several times”.
I am not sure what my first reaction was, but to say I was a bit shocked is a serious understatement. I try hard to remember that the things I experience in Indian Country are different from what I was exposed to growing up. That their view of life and animals can be and is different than mine. Still a part of me thought, holy shit, this woman is crackers. And then it occurred to me that I was out there alone with her. So I scanned my memory to make sure I hadn’t snapped ay anyone back at the house. I hadn’t. I hoped.
I promised her on the spot that I would never use kerosene to burn a dog. She had my word on it.
After three nights in False Pass it was time to go home. That was easier said than done. I was told that the winds were coming and my flight scheduled for the next morning was in serious danger of being cancelled. I was also told that when the winds come, they can stay for days, so I could be stranded there until the winds calmed down. The thought made me uneasy and so I opted to charter a flight that night and get myself to Cold Bay, Alaska. From there, I could take a larger plane that could handle some winds. So, off I went to spend the night in Cold Bay. Just the pilot and I flew to Cold Bay. There is something magnificent about sitting in the co-pilot’s seat and seeing Alaska from only a thousand feet up. Once while flying over the Brooks Range, the pilot spotted a herd of caribou and asked me if I wanted to go lower to see them close up. Again only the two of us were in the plane. I jumped at the chance and we descended down to a hundred feet, maybe more. I am not sure, but it was low. My excitement kept any fears I had in check. There were literally thousands of caribou spread throughout the tundra; it was a sight to behold. I had only witnessed sights like this on television, but seeing it in person was a dramatic experience.
There was an inn in Cold Bay - maybe it is still there - that also had a restaurant and bar. A lot of the Alaskan bush pilots would stay there for the night when their travels took them to Cold Bay. To check in, you had to go to the bar and talk to the bartender to rent a room. And so I did and I got a room for the night. When I walked into the room, there were two single beds perpendicular to each other. I got myself undressed and got under the covers, set my travel alarm clock to get up so as not to miss my morning flight.
At about 2 in the morning, the room light switched on and there was a man standing above me. He looked as surprised to see me as I was shocked to see him. When you are in the kind of stupor from being awakened unexpectedly, your senses are not quite where they should be. My heart was racing and I imagined all sorts of things. Finally, he said, “Oh, I’m sorry, I booked a room here and the bartender gave me a key to this room.” He said he would go talk to the bartender and see if he could get another room. I finally fell back to sleep and in the morning I asked the bartender what happened. It seems they did not actually rent rooms at this Inn, they rented beds. What was so strange is that there were plenty of other empty rooms. The bartender told me it was easier to clean one room rather than two.
MORE TO COME...