Saturday, December 15, 2007
Crow Agency, Montana

Before heading onto the Crow Reservation I had a shower in Hardin at a gas station. If it weren’t for the shower, I’d still be hiding behind my grime, since when I’m dirty, I go introverted. I could write a whole book on showers and how much I love them. The things we take for granted.

I crossed onto the Crow Reservation and immediately felt home, it not being long since I left the Peigan Reservation in Alberta. But I don’t know how things are in the U.S. and I’ve heard horror stories about A.I.M. (American Indian Movement) and tensions between Natives and non-Natives. So I’m also tense, anxious and unsure.

Upon arriving at the Custer Indian Battlefield Café, and being greeted by a set of the warmest eyes I’ve seen in awhile, I quickly learn that most of what I’ve heard are just stories. I don’t know what it is with people and their stories. Fear, be afraid, and watch out! It’s all mostly bullshit, people are beautiful, if you walk with good intentions and treat them beautiful in turn.

Sure bad things happen to people in the wrong place at the wrong time, but most often, commonsense and intuition go a long way.

After an amazing breakfast cooked up by Chester, I get into a conversation with some people passing though the café/store. I tell them about the project and give them some flyers and then go grab a horsehair bracelet for myself. It isn’t long before one of them is standing behind me, “Hey, you should go talk to my granddad. He knows a lot about this stuff, and has some great stories.” I tell him I’d love to, and then chat some more, getting directions and planning for a visit in the a.m.

I spent the afternoon at the Big Horn Indian Battlefield. As I was signing the guest book, it asked for comments, I had none. Now I’m back in my van parked in the darkness outside the café across from the battlefield. I have permission to sleep here, and I’m at ease. But how do I feel about today?

As I walked the battlefield, most other people drove through it. I thought about spending time in a place and how I’d like to be able to sleep up among the graves. I’d like to have more time to feel this place. It’s an amazing place, the graves are where the soldiers were actually killed, and so you can see the battle unfolding before you. The grave markers are mostly in groups, men fighting together, then pairs where two men fought together, then finally, single graves where one can only presume, individuals were run down and killed.

What I find most interesting, is that the graves are almost all of U.S. cavalry and soldiers, with only a few marking First Nations. The story goes that the Native dead were taken away to be put to rest according to their tradition, whereas the non-Native were buried where they had fallen. Either way, the place strikes me as a depiction of a white history, which I guess it is, since I would assume for the Crow and the other tribes who fought here, the history lives on in stories and in the land.

As I walk through this place, I marvel at war, and humanity’s inability to find common ground. I wonder how history would have been different if we (Europeans) would have approached North America without an agenda, open to learning new ways of seeing and being.

"WHAT WEALTH did Berman cry out in anticipation of? Let us be kind, as we hope historians will be kind to us, and say that for him and for many others on those threse small ships perhaps the hummingbird would have been enough. The hummingbird, fresh food after five weeks at sea, and the astonishing lives of the Arawak.

But the record tells us that in the end there was very little imagination here---it was gold, silver, pearls, slaves, and sexual intercourse. It was venal greed, a failure of imagination, the reduction of desire to its most banal elements. True wealth---sanctity, companionship, wisdom, joy, serenity---these things were not to be had without an offer of heart and soul and time. The Spaniards had no time, and we find it easy to say on the evidence that they were heartless and immoral. The only wealth they could imagine was what they took.

The Spanish wanted no communion with America, the place or its people. Residence, except residence construed as land ownership, was not of interest to them. America was not to be a home or what a home implied--- the responsibilities and obligations of adult life. They had left that behind in Europe, had traded it away for lawlessness....

The true wealth that America offered, wealth that could turn exploitation into residency, greed into harmony, was to come from one thing--- the cultivation and achievement of local knowledge. It was in the pursuit of local knowledge alone that one could comprehend the notion of a home and its attendant responsibilities. So the first question at Guanahani might better have been: Who are these people? What is this land?"

-The Rediscovery of North America, Barry Lopez

I wonder if these same processes are not repeating themselves today, and if there isn’t a way that we can move forward without killing each other. For if, as history displays, there is no other way, I have great fear regarding our future on this planet, a future that is now in question.

I guess that’s the beauty of it all. After thousands of years of killing each other, in the end, we are at the mercy of Mother Nature and she may wipe us out in a fashion that makes all of our wars seem so very insignificant.

Peace,
D