The Bobcat Nation

This is completely about me personally, so quit reading if you don't want to enter my little world (all me, all the time).

On my personal website, I maintain a fairly active blog where I write just about anything that enters my silly little head as I ride the train home every night. One evening, I wrote a fairly long entry about a book I was reading by one of my favorite authors, a guy who writes under the name Nasdijj. I was actually fairly critical of his most recent book, but only because it was a memoir that was crushingly depressing (not a good childhood).

This morning, I got a really nice, long, and insightful email from Nasdijj himself! He said that he had been pointed to my website, and addressed a lot of the things that I had discussed on my blog and thanked me for having read his three published books. He also let me know about his upcoming book (he had just left the Blackfeet Reservation where he had been doing research) that he promised would be much more hopeful than his last book.

When I got the email, I was stunned, then honored, then stunned again. This guy is an incredible writer, and someone I really look up to. To receive a personal email from him, especially an unsolicited email, is amazing.

Now I just have to figure out a way to draft a response email that I can feel proud to send him.

Sorry for the excessive "me" talk -- I just had to share this one!

That is pretty cool. Had never heard of him before. Probably stay away from that for now... The short story of yours was depressing enough for me! Well written though.

P.S. Do you know which Blackfoot Indian Reservation he was writing about?

It was the one in Montana. He's doing a book that deals with various reservations across the country. He's half-Navajo himself. It will be titled "Island in the Dream: A Journey Through The Indian Reservations of America."

I really recommend his first book "Blood Runs Like a River Through my Dreams." It's got some pretty dark subject matter, but it is beautifully and poetically written. He pulls a lot of beauty out of otherwise dark topics.

Here's a piece he recently wrote while in Montanan that he just emailed me. It's so cool to get unpublished work sent to you directly be a writer that you really admire.


Upon This Blackfeet Ground

by Nasdijj

The rolling Blackfeet hills seem but somber shadows of the mountains that tower all around me.

The thunder makes my dog hide (shuddering) beside my feet under the picnic table I write upon. Heat lightning in the distance. I can smell the possibility of rain tonight.

If I could only sleep. I am remembering.

I write this by glowing lantern. Bugs zap themselves from time to time. The sun has disappeared. We cooked Brown trout tonight, the dog and I. In olive oil. Fresh sage from sage. The Milk River was filled with Browns. You would have to have been a real dunce not to catch one. There are so many you could catch them with your hands.

The bears do.

There was a Grizzly who walked through here and recently. Poop the size of a house.

The tracks are of one bear so it has to be a male. A female would likely have cubs. Cubs kick up a lot of dirt and dust. A female will skeedaddle away from you, her big rump quivering up the hill. This is the time of year the bears are fat. This is good. They are not all that hungry. The male Grizzly does not run.

From anything. He seems silent, invisible, moving slowly like a glacier, too.

This one was a loner and a big one. Definitely a male. I am reminded in very intense and immediate ways that the land belongs to them like the land belongs to the Blackfeet who live here, too, and that both the bears and the Blackfeet are the land. There is no spiritual distinction made here by anyone who knows this place.

I am not too nervous about the Grizzly. It's too late for that unless I want to walk back to my jeep a mile away (and I do not, it would be silly) and the reality is that no jeep would stop a Grizzly bear. I have seen them rip the tops off cars like the vehicles were soft tin cans. That is how powerful an adult Grizzly is and his claws can cut through solid steel like it was curtain material.

Both the Grizzly and the Blackfeet must be approached with no small amount of what is called respect.

THAT is the only way to deal with a Grizzly bear the size of the Jeep Wrangler I drive. The Blackfeet, too, demand respect. Not because the bear and the Indian have the ability to destroy you (although they do if they wanted to) but because they merit it.

The fire by my sleeping bag (I share with the dog) licks and darts its tongues of flames up toward a sky of a billion stars. Everything out here seems organic and alive. The Blackfeet think so, too. The stars at this high elevation illuminate the night.

When I am done writing this, I will set up the pup tent. I can do it in the dark. One learns. I have learned that getting soaked is a pain in the ass.

Mine has been sleeping on the ground.

I've been traveling for two years, now, from Indian Nation to Indian Nation.

With…

No small amount of hope (that fades from time to time especially when sleeping in the cold with a wet dog). My dog, Navajo. One change of clothes. My jeep (goddamn bald tires and at the moment parked about a mile away). My pup tent. My (highly organized, very anal) tackle box. My fishing rod (actually, it's my brother's, mine broke). My sleeping bag. A couple of cans of dog food. A can opener (actually a Swiss Army knife). A pair of Harley Davidson motorcycle boots. One pair of WalMart sneakers (you can climb mountains or wade into streams with them, they're okay, hardly fancy). A camera. Not the one I want but one that will suffice for the moment. Film. A backpack. A raincoat I never wear even in the rain. A map. A legal pad. A pen. A friend's manuscript I am editing (with the pen). A cell phone that doesn't work too well (too many mountains). My leather cowboy hat. My white pseudonyms. My wallet (currently empty). One semi-functioning ****** computer. And poochie, my fifty-four-year-old stuffed hound dog that I have used as a pillow for fifty-four years.

That's it. It's too much really but I can't seem to pare it down much more than to this almost-bone level.

I don't think I forgot anything.

Oh.

A mess kit to cook with.

Olive oil.

Oh.

Soap. A washcloth. One towel.

No razor. Not up here.

I hate shaving with a rearview mirror.

Oh.

A canteen.

Some Scotch (no glass you drink it from the bottle). Not much left.

Bug repellent. The dog's toothbrush. Dog toothpaste.

Did you know that if you brush your dog's teeth (mine has grown so used to it she always cooperates) you can increase a dog's life by several years?

Mine is ten and she acts like a puppy (she annoys a few people and she's very spoiled).

Oh.

The CD this book is written on.

I don't make printed copies of books anymore. Those were the old days. It's a CD or nothing. When editors tell me (I am remaining firm) that they MUST have a printed copy, I'm dealing with the wrong editor.

Sometimes things are simple. Like respect and avoid male bears. This one who pooped in the path (don't think for a minute he doesn't know we are here) was trying to tell us something.

Like I am out there, too.

Simplicity. Like sleeping on the ground under the illumination of the stars and the dancing of the Northern Lights.

In the distance, the haunting sound of wolves. All men are islands, too.

Oh.

The lantern.

Navajo growls at the sound of wolves. My protector. All twenty-five pounds of cattle dog.

The only thing this place lacks is my wife. Tina likes motels. Last year, Random House sent us all around the country so I could appear in bookstores and we lavishly luxuriated in posh hotels.

Champage. The dog loved the doormen. She'd prance through the Brown Palace in Denver like she owned the place. They had a tiny little doggie bed for her with her name sewn on it.

This is not an author's tour.

No doormen.

******. Fish. Rain. Wolves. Head Start.

Tina did not come. She hates bugs. There aren't too many tonight. There is a nice breeze through here. Like Indian ghosts have arrived to commiserate.

I feel quiet tonight with the remnants of a loneliness difficult to articulate. I don't even feel much like ranting and raving about how publishing sucks. This is my book. Not theirs. They did not support one molecule of it. They tell me Indians don't buy books. Sometimes I wonder why they tell me things I am bound to repeat. In print. "How do you handle the loneliness," I am often asked by New York publishing types who have never laid eyes on an Indian reservation. This is a good loneliness. It is soft like behind the ears of the dog I pet.

Good girl. It's only thunder.

I did not know (although I have been working on it for two years) how to make this book. I had to learn to trust the voices from it that still whisper to me of places. Dreams. Islands.

I did not know for two years what the book would say. I simply went and looked at facts and stories. I took pretty piectures that now almost make me cringe to look at. My attempts to make things prettier than they are is a trait many photographers should learn to lose. However, I followed this book nevertheless and not unlike a wolf would follow a trail of blood throughout the woods. Up one path and down another.

It would have been easy to write ISLANDS IN THE DREAM as if it were simply a list of factual descriptions.

But (finally) ISLANDS IN THE DREAM speaks to me of humanity.

The number of square miles or the number of acres a given reservation has will tell you almost nothing.The dates the Indians were moved here. The battles fought here. The names of the Chiefs who lived here. The average annual income. The current number of Indians who live here. The current number of enrolled members who live elsewhere.

Too many things kept popping up. Not unlike a Jack-in-the-box. Bingo. Most of the good books or the ones worth reading write themselves. The reality is that I am but a typist. I knew the book itself would come to me like some dark animal with its yellow eyes from the forest that surrounds us where my dog and I camp for yet another night.

Stories.

Issues.

Portraits.

Struggles.

Rivers.

Seasons.

Sun.

Snow.

Deserts.

Creation tales.

Vision quests.

This one is mine. ISLANDS IN THE DREAM is more a vision quest than it is a book. Being free of editorial constraint, I can say whatever I want. I know a vision quest when I see one.

There are still tribes that do the vision quest. You take the boy and you lead and leave him in the wilderness.

He will survive or not.

His instructions are to see and dream.

That is why I am here tonight. To see and dream upon this Blackfeet ground.

I have written other books upon other picnic tables. One was a picnic table situated in the pinon pines and the shadows of El Morro Rock in New Mexico. There was an abandoned Anasazi village at the top of the rock. I would climb(it was quite a climb) the rock to sit among the ruins and watch the sunset and have my visions there.

Conversations with bones and ghosts.

Peyote. I'm allowed.

They ask me strange questions about our lives today. At first, I was surprised they did not know. About our contemporary struggles and the challenges faced by humanity attempting to survive.

Surviving mainly itself.

But the Anasazi (being dead and all) did not know because no one comes to them to see them or speak to them about such things. I was it and they were curious.

I often answer questions with another question. This did not concern the Anasazi.

"Why did you leave this place. What caused you to abandon your homes, your village. Why did you disappear."

It was a story of war, famine, enemies, disease, bones ground down by arthritis, a searing sun that year, the corn died, the babies started being born prematurely. It was time to go.

Nothing is stationary I am told. Nothing in this universe. It is all moving. Every constituent part in motion. Even if we cannot see it and mostly we cannot.

Absolute stability is an illusion.

Go. Go. The Blackfeet know.

I have my own metaphor. It works for me. Never give them a stationary target.




After visiting about fifty reservations now I know this:

It is amazing how different they all are. I have always known I was right (my writer's ego enjoys being right 99.9% of the time) to call it ISLANDS IN THE DREAM.

For that is what they are.

The islands are the reservations set aside by the United States government for the defeated Indian tribes where they would either make it or not.

Simple.

The dream is the dream of America.

It is still a dream to most Native Americans.

What you will find abundant in Native America, more abundant than fry bread (I love fry bread), is contradiction.

The Blackfeet are aggressively sueing the federal government. It is one big hell of a bloody fight.

Yet at the same time, the Blackfeet have a military honor guard, all veterans, and they march in every downtown parade. Carrying the American flag almost defiantly for it is their flag, too. Even if the Blackfoot Nation is an island in the dream. A sovereign domestic nation within a nation. The simplicity of the concept is filled with contradiction. Mostly having to do with money and power. Browning, Montana is an unassuming place. Like Mayberry. Downtown beautiful Browning. Or what there is of a downtown. There are the tribal headquarters. There is the Plains Indian Museum. Still, Browning is a quiet place. The Blackfeet who you will pass there while you're walking around will not look you in the eye.

This gives white people the heebeejeebies.

Indians are shy.

Simple.

The Blackfeet are anything but simple. Again, what you will find on any island in the dream is contradiction.

The Blackfoot Nation is seemingly one nation but, in fact, the Blackfeet are four tribes. The Sikisika, the Piikani, the Akainawa (or Bloods), and the Blackfeet. The Siksika, the Akainawa, and the Pikanii are Canadian tribes just across the border (a complete artificiality) and the Blackfeet are American. The Blackfeet get their name from two sources: Other Indians tribes such as the Crow referred to them as "Blackfeet" because their moccasins were black from setting praire fires which was how they managed the land and grasses for the buffalo. They took to dyeing their mocassins black as well and the name stuck. "Blackfeet" (the name) is almost insulting to the Indians who live here as the plural reference is not something incorporated into their language. To them, they're the Blackfoot.

They would like us to get it right. I try. Usually, I fail.

The dream that is America has not moved here even if the flag is hoisted defiantly. That mysterious, ephemeral notion that one can "make it" as an individual in America if only one works hard enough at "Making It."

They used to make pencils here.

The "dream" is rhetoric, of course.

It's not all that removed from telling someone dying from smallpox to just get over it and get back to work at the pencil factory.

There is evidence to indicate (believe it) that white settlers engaged in what is called today "biological warfare." Blankets infected with smallpox were sold to the Blackfeet whose numbers subsequently declined dramatically.

In fact, the average age of death for the Blackfeet declined, too, from age sixty-five to fifty-five where it still remains today. It has not improved since the days of infected blakets. A hundred years ago.

The Indian Health Service is in Browning. About an hour's drive from here. Like most Indian clinics, this one is set up basically to deal with obstetrics and alcohol detox.

First, you have to get there. Often, in the snow.

It's another hour of walking to my jeep. A two hour trip for me. To make a clinic visit (let's say if the bears got me). A much longer trip for many, many Blackfeet. Their reservation is all of 1.5 million acres. This for 16,000 Blackfeet about half of who live on the reservation in this far, northwest corner of Montana.

One clinic.

I am neither drunk nor pregnant. Tonight anyway.

There are only two main roads that go through Glacier County. Highway #2, and Highway #89. A Blackfeet I was talking to yesterday (while fishing) described Highway #2 as Pissass Road.

Most Indians have a sense of humor.

Like the position of the midnight stars, you have to know where to look for it.

Let me tell you why I love the Blackfeet which has nothing to do with their spectacular reservation. I like the Blackfeet because they don't take ****** from anyone and they're sueing the federal government's ass.

They're winning, too. No small feat, that.

The particulars:

The Blackfeet have filed a class-action lawsuit designed to force the federal government to account for billions of dollars belonging to 500,000 American Indians held "in trust."

What is "In Trust."

Trust: an assured trust; akin to faithful; assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something; one in which confidence is based; dependence or something future or contingent; hope; reliance on payment for property delivered; credit; interest held by one person for the benefit of another; a combination of firms or corporations formed by a legal agreement; a duty imposed on faith; something commited or entrusted to one to be cared for in the interest of another; in the possession of a trustee.

The History:

Hunger for land by non-Indians around the turn of the century led to a breakup of most reservations. To bring the Indian into the "Mainstream" (to make him white) thousands of Individual Indians were alloted ownership of parcels of land.

Landowners.

Not quite so fast.

This was a naked land grab. The country needed gas and oil and minerals.

The Indians had all three.

As "trustee" for the Indians, (as we know Indians are too stupid to handle their own affairs) the government took title of the land given to individuals and to tribes (like god they giveth and they taketh away in one fell swoop) and the government assumed responsibility for revenues generated by mining, oil and gas extraction, timber, and grazing.

Essentially very little records were ever kept by the government and the Bureau of Indian Affairs which is supervised by the Department of the Interior. What records were kept are now claimed by the BIA and the DOI to be mysteriously lost.

Imagine that.

The Blackfeet have asked the government to account for the money.

As "trustee" the government has refused. Who do these ****** Indians think they are anyway?

Lawyers?

You bet.

The case has gone all the way to the United States Federal Court of Appeals (the government keeps appealing) in Washington, DC which has time and time again found on the side of the Indians.

It gets better.

The Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of the Treasury (supposedly where all the missing money went) have been held in contempt of court by US District Judge Royce Lamberth who declared from the bench: "This is about fiscal and governmental irresponsibility in its purest form."

More than a few of us journalists who sat in the courtroom that day tried very hard not to smile. So much for objectivity. Why pretend.

The court has ruled that the government has breached its trust, has been fraudulent, has attempted to manipulate the court, has misrepresented the facts, has lied, and has engaged in illegal graft.

The government (horrified it might have to pay back Indians billions of dollars it cannot find) appealed.

During the appeal they filed a motion to dismiss the case.

The appeals court went even further than the district court.

In a three hundred page decision, the US District Federal Appeals Court ruled that the DOI was so utterly even criminally negligent that they were enjoined (prohibited) from managing Indian trusts without DIRECT court supervision. This affects every tribe in America. The court has furthermore sent in US Marshals, and physically disconnected and shut down all of the DOI's 110,000 computers (the court believes that data is hidden here). Essentially, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Bureau of Reclamation will be supervised by the federal court in Washington, DC, and the agencies are being enjoined from computer access. They can't even fire off an email.

Heaven forbid. The affects in the West are awesome.

This does not shut down the government. But it does affect firefighting, safety, law enforcement, and information resources.

White rancher associations (who have effectively put a lid on further expansion of the Yellowstone Wolf Reintroduction Program) are alarmed. There is tension between the ranchers and the Indians. The ranchers cannot easily access the BLM for grazing rights. The government grinds to a slow snail's pace.

While the court decides.

How much the Indians will get. It will be billions.

"The Department of the Interior," Judge Lamberth," declared, "cannot be trusted to not steal and mismanage the Indian's money."

Enter the politicians.

"The submission yesterday," Senator Tom Daschle, minority whip, representing South Dakota said, "of the Interior Department's brief in support of its motion to dismiss this trust case is the latest in a series of unprecedented maneuvers by the DOI to avoid accountability for years of theft and mismanagement of Indian trust assets. The DOI's suggestion that it can continue to manage Indian trusts doesn't even pass the laugh test."

Meanwhile, the Blackfeet wait. It's fundamentally what they do.




The Blackfoot culture is being kept alive for the four-year-olds in Head Start. Where the ancient Algonquin language is being taught as well as the Blackfoot creation story. I sit on the floor (yaa, Indian style) with the four-year-olds and one little boy with long black hair who cannot be kept away (his teachers tell me he doesn't listen) is allowed (by me) to sit on my lap. I am an idiot.

Our words for the day:

Dog is imita.

Hill is nitummo.

Woman is akeks.

His father is unni.

Small is inak.

Small rabbit is inakaatsista.

Good looking is matsiu.

Good looking Woman (this gets a big laugh from the four-year-olds) is matsoake.

Long is ino.

School is sometimes too ino.

He has long arms is inokinistsiu.

There are ABCs on the wall, too.

Blackfoot is characterized by a fundamental dichotomy between animate and inanimate categories. This is a dichotomy confusing to European-speakers as some words (such as tree) are seen by the Blackfeet as animate where others (such as body parts) are mostly inanimate. Nouns have a primary form in ua with obviate in ail.

We didn't get to the word pee.

My lap though got soaked in it.

I am informed (by an exasperated Blackfoot Aide) that the families love spoiling boys. "But when they turn ten everything changes."

This means that they will be trained and tested. By ten, they will be potty trained, too.

They would be warriors. The term warrior is used by the Blackfeet expeditiously and often. They mean it. They will be warriors.

Warriors. Lawyers. State representatives. The Blackfeet are all of this and much more.

We have our underpants changed and now we will learn about Old Man.

Old Man came from the South. He made the mountains, the praires, and forests as he passed by. He made the birds and the animals. He traveled north.

We point our fingers north. We know things (like how not to pee your pants).

Old Man put paint on the ground and made the Milk River which he crossed. He grew very tired and slept in the grass The stones show where his body laid.

Old Man caused berries to grow.

And camas, carrots, turnips, bitterroot, service berries, bullberries, cherries, plums, and rosebuds.

Old Man fell down on his knees (we stand and fall down on our knees, mine hurt). Old Man then made the Sweet Grass Hills.

Old Man made the bighorn sheep, put them on the mountains and said: "This is where you were meant to be."

Old Man made the antelope to see how fast they could go.

Very fast. Not unlike a four-year-old.

Old Man decided to make a woman and a child (like me, yes, like you) and did so. "Get up and walk," he said.

We get up and walk. Not far.

The woman and the child walked to the river with Old Man. "I am Napi, Old Man," Old Man told them. "I made you."

Did he make me? Yes, he made you, too.

That is how the Blackfeet became the People.

Am I a People?

Trust me. You ARE a People.

The People were naked so Old Man clothed them.

We have falling down laughing now.

Not naked! Yes. Naked.

Old Man had clothed them and now he showed them what to eat.

Like lunch?

Well, not quite like Head Start lunch. But close enough.

Napi tied three bird feathers to an arrow.

I have an arrow.

Oh.

Where?

Home.

Napi showed the Blackfeet how to shoot the arrow, how to make fire, how to cook.

I know how to cook.

What do you cook?

Cereal.

Old Man showed them how to make their eating bowls from stone.

Then, he showed them how to get their spirit power.

I have a spirit power.

I'm sure you do.

"The Spirit Power," Napi said, "will be an animal that comes to you in dreams."

I have an animals. In the dreams.

What kind of an animal comes to you in your dreams?

A bear grrrrrrrrrrrrowl.

Oh, my. I'm afraid.

More laughing. More falling down. Not quite chaos. Close.

"Obey your Spirit Power," Napi said. "Be guided by it. Your prayers will be answered. You must learn to listen to the animals."

I listen to the animals.

Good.

Napi made the buffalo. "They will be your food."

Buffalo are my food, too.

Not today.

The Blackfeet made shelter from buffalo hides.

We have a tipi. We painted on it.

He melted back into me. He was getting tired and he was hungry. I know things, too.

Napi was not satisfied. "Now it is time to have some fun!" Napi said. Napi took to sliding down the steep hills the Blackfeet call Old Man's Sliding Ground.

I got climbed on. I got slid down. I was briefly Old Man's Sliding Ground.

"I will always take care of the People," Napi told the Blackfeet.

My mom takes care of me.

She must be a good mom.

She is.

The Blackfeet believe Napi will someday appear to them again.

This time bringing the buffalo the white men have hidden.

It was time for lunch. We ate pizza and milk.

I like milk.

Good. Milk is good for you.

I like beer, too.

My eyes to the sky.

"I TOLD you you were going to be exhausted playing with those four-year-olds," my dog insisted.

******.

I have to put the pup tent up. It has begun to rain.

If I could only sleep.

Hard upon this Blackfeet ground.

I write this by glowing lantern. Bugs zap themselves from time to time. The sun has disappeared. We cooked Brown trout tonight, the dog and I. In olive oil. Fresh sage from sage. The Milk River was filled with Browns. You would have to have been a real dunce not to catch one. There are so many you could catch them with your hands.


This must be fiction as I grew up on the highline and never knew the Milk River had brown trout in it? Lots of suckers/Northern Pike/Walleye though

Cardiac, your final words in this old post are truly prophetic. This article blew me away ... I was communicating with a fraud (a Native American poser/wannabe)! A fraud who is probably more famous now than he was when he was consider legit, most likely.

http://www.laweekly.com/view/Navahoax-2006-01-23/

And just for the record, he never made a pass at me, so his days as a gay porn writer didn't bubble to the surface in any of our conversations.

don't feel bad Brad - even Oprah was duped by a favorite author. The difference is she looks stupid to millions of viewers for praising this man on her show and thanking his parents for raising a wonderful son that has helped so many. Doesn't make you less disappointed but isn't it better to know the truth now, than idolize this man longer and finding out about his fraud 20 years from now?

so sorry you were duped it sucks when you believe in someone and they screw you over - for real

Actually, for me it is cool either way. I got a little spooked by the psycho tone of his emails, so I quit talking to him a long time ago. This story just makes it all make sense.

He is an amazing writer. The only problem is, he chose to live a lie for purposes of marketing. I really hope to find out more so I can figure out how much of what he wrote to me directly was completely fabricated. I also can't figure out his motivation for writing to me in the first place.

How dissapointing! I had just finished A Million Pieces when all the controversy simmered up. I loved reading that "memoir" and just cannot fathom WHY.

So you corresponded with him for awhile after that initial email? As I was reading I was thinking I would recommend his books to my mothers husband, he was sobered up by the Blackfeet years ago, and still spends a lot of time with them. I guess I will not

A fun article to read nontheless. Too bad he was a fraud. Still he is a good writer. Interesting side note, I too thought what Cardiac thought regarding the Milk River having spent 3 years of my life on it ... he he.