August 1977 Community
- Sandy Siegel
- 2 hours ago
- 24 min read
8-1-77 Harlem
Susie went to see Rocky at the Harlem Theatre with Gordon and Edith. There were a lot of people from Hays there. People cheered during the boxing scenes. Edith said that people around here are really into boxing. Glen and Dory boxed for a while. Edith said that she was a nervous wreck when they fought.
Harlem
8-1-77 Jim and Beatrice’s
Beatrice said that when old man Al First Sound came around to choose the dancers he sure scared some of the young kids. He had his whole outfit on when he went around the camp and Linelle saw him and she said ‘coo coo’ and she ran into the tent and stayed there. She was scared of him. Beatrice asked me if I took pictures of the Fool’s Dance and she asked me if she and Jim could get some pictures of it from me. I told her that I would get some copies made for them.
There were two boys and a girl in the house and Beatrice introduced them to us as her nieces and nephews. They were in their late teens and early 20s. They are my brother, Ted Lamebull’s, kids. They live in Yakima, Washington.
My father and mother moved to Washington, and they lived there for 16 years. They went on a fruit pickers truck and started picking fruit and then they got a house there and just stayed there in Washington. All my brothers and sisters were raised in Washington and all the boys, all of my brothers, stayed there. I have six brothers and three sisters. I have an older sister that stayed in Washington with all my brothers. Monica (Lamebull) Werk, my younger sister, lives in Hays. All the kids, my brothers and sisters grew up there. My mother and father moved to Washington when the youngest of my brothers, the youngest child, was three or four years old. My mother and father moved back to Hays in 1961, but my brothers stayed in Washington.
I stayed in Hays, though. I never moved with my parents. I never lived with them. I lived with my grandmother and grandfather, my father’s parents. I’ve lived on the reservation my whole life. They adopted me when I was about his age (she pointed to Casey – Joey’s baby, who was 10 months old). I don’t know why they adopted me. It wasn’t because I was the oldest because I have an older sister. My mother’s father was Bob Tail Bear – that was his whole name. He didn’t have a first or last name. And his wife was called Mrs. Bob Tail Bear. That was my grandmother. He was really my step grandfather because my grandfather died. I lived with my grandparents. That’s why I only knew Gros Ventre. That’s all my grandparents spoke in the house. I was a real Indian. Beatrice laughed. I don’t know my grandmother’s real name. I don’t think she had an English name. Only Indian. My mothers died. My grandfather was old Davey Hawley Sr, and my grandmother was Mary Hawley – her maiden name was Matt. Davey is my mother’s brother. He’s my uncle.
8-1-77 trailer
Frosty came in to visit before his baseball game. He said he was tired from work.
We cut a lot of timber today. We were understaffed today, too. Two guys didn’t show up to work. I hope they hire someone else pretty soon. I’ve lost ten pounds since I’ve been working at the sawmill. Everyone who works there is in good shape. We’ve cut a lot, but the tribe hasn’t sold any yet. It takes six weeks for the lumber to cure. So, they can’t sell any yet, but they’re advertising. We start work an hour early every day and then only work half a day on Fridays. I like it that way. It gets too hard to work in the afternoons because it is so hot. We had the whole day off on Friday. It was a tribal holiday because of the pow wow and we got paid for a whole day of work. I got home from the pow wow at 3:00 last night and I had to get up to work at 6:00. We camped out there the whole weekend in our tent. My wife had to work at the hospital all weekend.
Frosty said that a guy from Canada won the men’s fancy dancing contest. A girl from New Mexico won the woman’s traditional dancing. She was really beautiful and her outfit was too – it was white buck skin.
8-4-77 trailer
Edith said that she had an Uncle Shorty and he lived at our house with us for years.
He used to meet us kids after school and walk home with us. He would stop sometimes by bushes that were covered with inch worms. He would sing Indian and the worms would move back and forth in time with the music. We really had fun watching that and listening to him. I didn’t know his real name. I don’t even know how he was related to us. But he did live with us for years.
Edith said that Clarence donated an ink drawing to the Christian Mothers. “It’s at my house. It’s two deer and it’s real nice. It was nice of him to give it to us. We’re going to raffle it off.”
8-6-77 Hays
We noticed yesterday that someone had moved into Joe Crazy’s log house off the highway. It was his granddaughter, Rena Azure, Lee Gone’s daughter. People also moved into Wilma’s and Beverly’s old tar paper homes. They moved up to Whitecow Canyon. They both got homes earlier this year. If homes are in any kind of decent condition at all, they don’t remain vacant for long, and that includes log homes and tar paper homes. They are rented out quickly. There is an acute housing shortage in Hays, and I’m pretty certain that this is the case in the other reservation districts. The waiting list for low rent housing is long. There are a lot of older single men and women who live at home with parents and younger brothers and sisters who probably wouldn’t if they could find a place of their own to live. It is also difficult for young people who are married and just starting a family. It is difficult for everyone to find housing but most difficult for young people. The situation has improved in the past few years with all the new homes that HUD has put up in recent years.
8-6-77 Urban Rural
Irma said that she must take after her grandmother.
She was a holy woman. Her name was Holy Tree. She had the special powers to heal people who were sick. I know she had a large beaded hand bag, a black rock that grew, and a red bell, like a cow bell. I never did see the bell, but I saw the rock. When she died, she was living in Brockton with her husband. My mother didn’t even know she had died until he came back around. He gave her things to Irma’s mother’s brother, John McConnel and he didn’t want to give them to my sister Matty, but she was the oldest and she should have gotten them. She said herself that she didn’t really want them, but they are supposed to be handed down on the woman’s side, but instead he gave it to close relatives on the Crow Reservation. It was passed down to other people when they died. I said, I hope you burn all that stuff. I think the reason they died was because they had these things. It was wrong to pass it to the man’s side and I knew something was going to happen.
Irma said that she believed these things even though she was a Catholic.
Irma said that her great grandmother’s name was White Fawn. Marilyn got her name from Irma’s mom. Marilyn has two names. She also got Pretty Woman from Ray’s grandmother.
8-15-77 Gordon and Edith’s
Gordon said that he lived with this grandfather (Fred Lodge).
My grandfather was a Catholic and he was a strong one. He was up at the mission all the time. He prayed all the time, and he prayed in Gros Ventre. I would watch him pray all the time. I enjoyed watching him pray. He prayed every morning when the sun was coming up and he prayed at night. He also prayed when he went into the creek and he did this about twice a week. He would cut a hole in the ice and he’d go into the water. He prayed when he did this. Not many people prayed in Gros Ventre. He used Gros Ventre words, and he said his own prayers. He didn’t say the Catholic prayers like the Our Father. I used to go to the church with him all the time. He started to take me with him to church when I was about his age (he pointed to Dion), about four years old. But we never prayed to any son, we just prayed to one. The Indian people didn’t pray to a son (Jesus) or to Mary and Joseph. We just prayed to one, ‘Gib Nihat.” The One Above – Gordon pointed up to the sky. There was only one we prayed to, the Great One, the Creator.
8-18-77 mission canyon
Susie, Sharon and her parents were in the canyon and they ran into Ray Williams. He said that he was rounding up his cattle that were running on the canyon (on reservation land). Ray and Lou were talking about Ray’s ranch just south of the reservation. Ray said that he bought most of the land between 1937 and 1939 for 80 cents an acre. This land is now worth about $100 an acre. He said that his grandparents were from the old country and they homesteaded on this land.
The Little Rockies and Ruby Gulch Mine
8-20-77 Billings
Susie and her parents and sister and I had breakfast at a restaurant with Chuck and his family.
We were talking about his contract research with the BIA on law and order and the jurisdictional problem on the reservations in Montana. Chuck said that when he compared Ft. Belknap to some of the other reservations, this reservation looked pretty good. Compared to Lame Deer (Northern Cheyenne) and Poplar, Ft. Peck, this reservation looks good especially as far as law and order and government is concerned.
Hays is about the toughest place on the reservation, and it looks like it is in the worst shape, but the whole reservation isn’t so bad compared to the others. Last year (1976) there were 66 arrests on Ft. Belknap and it was about triple that amount on Ft. Peck. The tribal police force on Ft. Belknap is really pretty well off too. Their chief is from Havre, and he is pretty good. All of the tribal police have had some kind of training, and their police force is better than most. Some of them have had FBI training and some of them have had training in Havre. Most of the tribal police on other reservations don’t have this kind of training.
I stopped in Harlem, Malta and Roundup and went in to look at their police stations in those towns. I found that these small white towns have the same problems in a lot of cases as the tribal police on the reservations. They are understaffed and they have trouble with keeping the guys working a normal day. I think a lot of the problems are just characteristic of a rural, western town as it is with the reservation tribal police.
I believe that Ft. Belknap really owes a lot of stability to the Judge there (Cranston Hawley). He has really done so much for the reservation and for law and order there. He can take a lot of credit for the stability they do have. It’s hard to get these guys to stay on the reservation, too. The good judges don’t stay, but he has been there for years, and the reservation has really benefited from his experience. There’s not much to attract these good people and to get them to stay on the reservation.
Rusty Farmer is one of the best, if not the best, superintendents in the area. He makes a good living, but there isn’t anywhere for him to spend his money. What’s on the reservation for him. He lives in a BIA home which is low rent. It would be the same with doctors. The reservation needs good, full-time doctors, but there’s nothing on the reservation to attract them and keep them there.
8-23-77 Zortman Bar
We drove over the mountains this afternoon to Landusky and Zortman. While we were at the mines on the BLM side of the mountains, we saw that there were people doing mining up there. We stopped and asked one of the miners where they were from and he said that they were from Canada. They were mining for gold in two places, above Landusky and also at the Ruby Gulch mine. They had large equipment all over the mountain. CATS, large trucks, compressors and they had done work on the roads, preparing chuck holes and smoothing it out. They had dumped a layer of gravel and dirt over the road and did improve it. The trucks said Zortman Mining Inc on the side. When we got up to the Ruby Gulch mine, I noticed that they had electricity up there. There were new poles and lines running into the area in the mountains above Zortman. The mining effort began this summer, and the miners were living in Zortman.
Susie, her parents, Sharon, Bob Hogan and I had dinner at the Zortman café this evening. We noticed pictures around the café that were drawn by Frank and Clarence. They were pencil drawings of mostly animal scenes and some with Indians.
While we were in the bar in Zortman, Susie’s dad was talking to the bartender and owner of the bar and café. He said that he was glad that they were mining in the mountains, and he hoped that they flattened the mountains before they gave them back to the Indians. He said that they get all kinds of opportunities from the government and never did anything about it. They had all those government programs, money and land but didn’t do anything to improve their condition. The government has taken care of them, and they don’t do anything to care for themselves.
Bob said that it was no surprise that this guy and his wife hate Indians. They didn’t want Indians in their bar. In 1974 a person from Hays was in the bar making trouble and the bartender shot him. It wasn’t a bad wound, but he wasn’t treated right away and he died. The bartender claimed self-defense and he wasn’t convicted.
8-24-77 Ray William’s Ranch
Lou went out to talk to Ray at his ranch. The land that Ray owns, at least a part of it, was originally land he received from his father and his grandmother had homesteaded it. She came from Germany. He bought other land from homesteaders, and he also bought land from his brothers. In 1939 he bought 5,000 acres at 80 cents an acre and 2% interest. He has 20,000 acres that he farms and ranches. He owns 16,000 acres and he leases 4,000 acres from the Jesuit Order in Spokane (the old mission sheep ranch). He and his sons operate the business on their own. They have no other help. They farm 1,000 acres and they leave land fallow for one year. He has 600 brood cows. His father was a mining engineer and when Ray was 17 years old, he worked in the mines in the Little Rockies. He has some land in the mountains, but he hasn’t mined any of it. A Canadian mining company went into the mountains to mine. They bought 400 acres in the mountains and they’re mining this land. The company hasn’t paid any US taxes. It is an open gold market and they’re sending the gold to Canada. The guy who owns the company is bragging that he hasn’t paid any US taxes and he won’t. He’s been to court over it a couple of times. They’re picking up loads of gumbo off of Ray’s land. They use it in the mining process. They use leaching and it is a cyanide process. They have a layer of gumbo, and they put the ore on top and pour the cyanide over it. The cyanide washes through the rock and the gold comes down with it. The process takes 14 days. They get $30-50 of gold from one pound of rock ore. Ray bought nine miles of thick cable from the mining company and he’s going to use it to make corrals. He said that the mining company is responsible for reclamation, for smoothing over the land in the mountains.
Ray figures that his land is now worth $100 an acre. He decided on that figure because his brother just sold his ranch. He sold a 9,000 acre ranch including all his cattle and equipment for one million dollars. And he thought the guy he sold it to got a bargain. He sold it because he didn’t have anyone who would inherit the ranch and take it over and operate it. Ray said that it was well worth one million dollars. The land is adjacent to Ray’s land.
Ray is putting in some new irrigation, and he just drilled a well. It was electric drilling. He’s getting 300 gallons a minute and he found the water himself. He had to file for water rights. Before he filed for it, it is government water. You have to file for water rights on any new water source.
Susie’s dad asked Ray about the land just off the southern part of the reservation, the chunk taken out of the mountains that cuts across mission peak, dissecting it in half. Ray said that he thought that they paid for that land, it is BLM land now. Ray’s son said that the reservation originally ran north and south from the Milk River to the Missouri River. “But we beat them (Indians), it should be our land.” Ray said that the Indians have not taken advantage of all the opportunities that the government has made available to them with education and all the programs. The government has taken care of them too much, and they haven’t taken care enough for themselves. Ray said that we took the land from them and now it is ours. That’s the way it is in war. You don’t give the land back after you win it in war.
8-24-77 trailer
I was talking to Bob Hogan about the housing situation in Hays. He said that Bruce and his whole family used to live in tar paper homes behind the trading post. They rented from the owner. This was around 1974. Chinky and his whole family lived back there too. George LaRoque also lives back there. The owner now is Alan. It used to be Red Zitleberger.
8-25-77 new mission gym
At the wake for Ginn Stiffarm, Susie and I sat with Vernie in the stands. We arrived at 9:30 pm and we sat with her until 11:00. She was getting tired and I brought her a chair to sit on instead of sitting on the hard wooden stands. Vernie had a plate next to her from the feed at the wake. She had a full plate, but she wasn’t eating. “I wasn’t hungry but I took the plate when they gave it to me. It’s the Indian way that you have to take the food and eat. You have to eat as much as you can. I’ll take it home and eat it for breakfast or I’ll give it to Albert for breakfast.” She laughed.
There were a few young boys who were walking around the gym and serving coffee and cigarettes all night. They didn’t have anything cold to drink, so Susie went to the trailer and brought some kool aid over and gave it to the women in the kitchen to serve. As with most wakes, people came and brought food. Some of it was prepared and some had to be prepared by the women in the kitchen. They went to the kitchen first before coming to the wake. Then they went to the family members and shook hands. A few hugged and kissed the family members. Then they sat down and were fed. The rest of the night they visited and talked with the people around them.
Wakes are one of the few occasions where a large portion of the community comes together to visit and most people enjoy themselves. Also, it is a time when families come together from all over the country. Off reservation people come back to the reservation and families reunite.
Some of the people coming to the wake, go up to the coffin. Ginn’s coffin was open from the chest upward and the face was covered with an opaque veil. Also, people coming to the wake go up to the table in the front of the room and sign the guest register. There was a table next to the coffin covered with about ten flower arraignments and there was a Pendleton blanket on the table. Pendletons are considered special blankets and are usually used at funerals to cover the table where the flowers are or to cover the coffin until it is buried in the ground. Then the blanket is removed and given to a close family member.
Vernie said that the old timers in Lodge Pole used to eat prairie dog. They’d go out and get a few and then they’d bring them home to fix them to eat. She asked us if we’d ever had sage hen and I told her we didn’t. She said that it was really good. It tastes just like antelope, because they eat the sage too. I don’t like prairie chicken. There’s not much taste to it.
I asked Vernie if kids were allowed to go to the handgame in the old days. She said that the kids went to the handgame and that they played, too. The kids could play. The kids went and had a good time.
Vernie said that Ginn’s father (Jim, John and Paul’s) used to teach Catholicism. “He was a strong Catholic. He used to teach the prayers in Gros Ventre. He taught in Gros Ventre. He taught the Our Father, the Hail Mary and other prayers. He taught them to the older people in Hays. He’d go around to people’s homes to teach. His wife, Isabelle, never did learn English.”
Vernie said that Albert likes sweets but she doesn’t. I like salt. I eat a lot of potato chips.
Vernie said that she goes to bed every night at midnight and gets up at 6 or 7 every morning. I’m used to it. I’ve been doing it all my life. Albert wakes up in the morning, and he gets the kids ready for school. I watch Johnny Carson every night and that’s how I go to bed every night. Vernie really laughed when she told us that. I really enjoy watching him on tv.
Vernie said that she used to have a lot of real nice Indian things.
I still have a lot of things, but I gave a lot away. I should have kept my things. But no one knew that the old Indian things were going to disappear like that and become so valuable. I gave a lot of things away because of the Indian custom. I had a real nice pair of high top, beaded moccasins. They were sure nice. They were from Rocky Boy. When I was down at Crow once I gave them to one of my friends. Then another time I was at Crow, and I had a buckskin dress. Gee, it was sure beautiful, with beaded flowers across the front. A man gave me a compliment on the dress, so I gave it to him. That’s what you do in the Indian way. When they compliment you on something, you give it to them. Then another time I had a buckskin jacket, and this woman came up to me and she said, boy that jacket sure is nice. I’d sure like to have it. You know, they’ll hint like that. So, I had to give it to her. That’s the Indian custom. I was in Lodge Pole and I saw Sister Kathleen. I was wearing a necklace and Kathleen told me it was real pretty. Then after I was home I remembered that in the Indian way, when someone compliments you on something, you give it to them. So the next time I saw her, I gave her the necklace. I just put it around her neck. Then I told her not to tell me that she liked the dress I was wearing, I’ll have to take it off and give it to you. Vernie laughed really hard, enjoying her own joke!
Vernie said that Albert didn’t come to the wake tonight because he was too tired. “He drove me here and he’s going to pick me up at 11:45. He’ll go to the funeral tomorrow morning. He was branding calves tonight and he played himself out. We had six late calves that he had to brand. They were born in June.”
Ginn’s father cured and doctored a lot of people. He was a medicine man. Stiffarm cured me when I was real sick once. I don’t remember what kind of sickness I had. I was real young when it happened. But he did cure me. Stiffarm’s wife was Isabelle. That’s just how she was known. That’s what everyone called her. When one of these men did doctoring or curing you had to pay them. You’d give them a horse or blankets or anything. There was no special thing that you gave them, but you had to pay them something. This one time I got real sick and my parents went up and down the valley and got these different ones to come and try to cure me. But none of them could cure me. I was still sick and my father went to talk to Stiffarm. And my father asked him to come to our lodge and to doctor me. So, after he called on Stiffarm he came to our lodge to doctor me. These medicine men would come to a person’s lodge to do their doctoring. I don’t remember what he did, but he did cure me. After he doctored me, I got better.
Vernie said that she knew Ginn real well. “I knew him when he lived here on the reservation. He went to Butte during the depression. He went there to work in the mines. I knew all his brothers real well, too.” I asked Vernie if she knew what Ginn died from. She said that he had heart trouble. “I know that when you have heart trouble you have to be real careful because some medications are no good for you. You shouldn’t take aspirin and a person with heart trouble shouldn’t even take Alka seltzer because there’s aspirin in it. That may be what happened to Ginn.”
I asked Vernie if she remembered and if she knew about what burials were like in the old Indian way. Vernie said that they didn’t used to bury people in the ground in the old way.
They were not in the ground. You know what I believe, I believe that they put people in the ground and now the spirit couldn’t get out so easily, out of the ground. But in the old way, they didn’t bury people in the ground. They used to lay them on rocks or they’d wrap them in blankets and lay them on the ground, or put them up in a tree and they’d put them up there so they wouldn’t fall down. You don’t see those now. You can’t see the bones on the ground, not from the ones buried on the ground or from the bones that fell down from the trees. Those bones must be covered with dirt now. The first burials in the ground were in the mission cemetery. The mission started this, started to bury people in the ground. When a person died in the old times, there was sure a lot of crying. They would mourn for a long time, and when they mourn, they don’t go anywhere. They don’t go to any dances, and they just stayed at home until they were done mourning.
Vernie said that there have been a lot of changes on the reservation that happened to her parents and a lot of changes that have happened even since she was a child.
There sure have been a lot of changes, and a lot of people don’t know much about the old ways. And a lot of people don’t know anything about the traditions. They (Vernie’s parents and people of that generation) taught us English, and we learned English in the schools. We didn’t know nothing about the traditions. Our parents didn’t tell us nothing. I don’t know hardly anything about the ceremonies and most of the people don’t. We didn’t see these ceremonies, and they didn’t tell us about them. It was sure hard on our parents. It was tough on those people. The hardest changes happened to them.
Vernie said that Jessie Ironman was her grandmother – Jessie’s husband’s brother was married to my grandmother.
Ironman II’s brother was married to my grandmother. When my grandmother died, Jessie came up to me and said, I’ll take her place, you call me grandma now. So, Jessie’s my grandmother. Ironman II’s brother’s name was Round Head. They said it in Gros Ventre though. They didn’t use our English names. It really meant something like, ‘bump on the head.’
I told Vernie that I saw Jessie this past week. She was visiting over at Roseann’s. Vernie said, I thought she was living at Rocky Boy now and that she was going to stay there. “I went to the pow wow at Rocky Boy this summer and saw her. We like to tease each other. We do it all the time. I asked her how she was doing. She said that she was doing fine down there. She said that she has a boyfriend down there.” Vernie laughed. “We sure do like to tease each other.”
Vernie asked us how we liked the Crow Fair and rodeo and we told her that we really enjoyed it. She said that they would call these rodeos, the Indian derby.
The Crow fair has an all-Indian rodeo and it’s a good one. I think it’s about the best rodeo in this part of the country. They have some pretty good cowboys there. I’ve been going to the Crow Fair for years, since I was a young girl. I would go down to Crow with my parents, and we’d go down in a wagon. It took us about five days to get down there. We’d cross the Missouri River by ferry. We’d drive right onto the ferry, and they had some cables and pulleys and they’d pull you across the river on this ferry. We’d go down to Crow, and we’d spend a few weeks there. We have relations down on Crow, and we’d stay down there for a few weeks and visit with them. And then it would take five more days to get home.
I asked Vernie what Billings looked like in those days. She said that she never did see Billings.
We never went down there or stopped there. We always went on the road that went east of Billings down to Crow. Me and Albert aren’t going to Crow this year. We’re going to rest. It’s just too far and it is too dusty down there. I’ll just see your pictures of the Crow parade and rodeo. And there’s all those tipis down there. They call it the tipi capital of the world.
Vernie said that there was a store in Hardin (the town just west of the Crow Reservation) that was an Indian store.
It’s called the Lamer Store and it’s right on the main street in Hardin. They sell everything there. The Crow Indians make everything. They have buckskin dresses, beaded purses, leggings, moccasins and a lot of other beaded things. They even sell tipis there. They get a lot of their things from Indians who pawn different things at the store. Sometimes Indians need money real quick and they’ll pawn something at the store to get this money. When they pawn, they’ll say something like, I’ll get it back in a month, but if I’m not back for it in a month, you can sell it. They have good prices on a lot of things and that’s why.
Vernie said that she had an operation about seven years ago to have her cataracts removed.
I had the operation in Billings. And then a little while ago I had another operation again for the cataracts in Billings. I went down there for a check up about a week ago. They took me down in the ambulance, the IHS. After the operation, they gave me these dark glasses to wear, and they gave me an eye wash to use for my eyes. I can see a lot better now.
Vernie said that she wanted to pick some choke cherries and she wanted to make some syrup before they become overripe or before they dry up. Susie and Vernie made arrangements to go out together to pick choke cherries and they decided to go out on Saturday, September 3rd. Vernie said that she would pick us up at the trailer. She said she knew a place where the choke cherries were as big as grapes.
8-30-77 trailer
Bertha and Edith came over at 7:00 this evening to visit. Bertha said that she hadn’t seen us for a while and she didn’t see our truck around, so I got worried and thought that you left. Then I saw the church bulletin that there are two new volunteers, so I thought for sure that you left. I went to Edith’s and she said you were here, so I had her bring me over to check on you two. I wanted to see how you were doing.
Bertha said that the mission used to be almost completely self-sufficient and self-supporting.
This was in the old days. They had their own laundry and bakery. It was near the old mission. The church was in front and the sisters lived in the back. The bakery was behind this building, but it’s gone now. Brother Fox had milking cows and pigs, and he had a real big garden. They used to grow a lot of grain, and he would take this in and trade it for cereals. They’re sitting on a gold mine up there, and they’re not using it. They always taught us at the mission that it is a sin to waste food and time. Well, he’s committing the biggest sin of all, by not using the land. He should get out a long-term lease so that someone could use that land. The church holds out their hands every Sunday, but the people here can’t give much. Besides, they shouldn’t have to. The mission would have all that it needed if the place was run right. No one here likes what Father is doing with this land. When I was going to school here, the mission had lots of food, but it wasn’t fancy. They gave us potatoes and meats and gravy. The nuns and priests didn’t eat like this though. They had real good food and it was real fancy. They had cloth napkins with a silver ring around them, and they ate on fancy china and used real silverware. They didn’t have stainless steel in those days. Those sisters are always asking for thanks and they want gratitude. They want the people down here to get down on their knees and thank them for giving up their lives here. Well, they chose to be here. This is home to them. They tried to run them off a couple times. They tried to take them away from here. But they didn’t want to leave. It’s against their beliefs. It’s against being a nun. They’re not allowed to get attached to a place like they’ve done. It’s their choice to be here. They’re supposed to go where God calls them. Don’t let me ever hear them ask for gratitude or thanks.
I said to Bertha that the mission has done a lot of good things for the people here. She responded, and it’s done a lot of bad things, too.
I told Bertha that on the Colville Reservation the people have taken over their own school. They operate their own schools and they do their own hiring. Bertha said, that wouldn’t happen here.
It better not happen here. The Indian people are their own worst enemy for their own people. Somehow whenever they move up a notch, they forget why they’re there and how they got there. I don’t understand it. The people here better not take over the schools. Too many people are related here. Once people get into office here, they forget why they’re there. What becomes important is are you my uncle or my cousin. We vote in people and then they forget who voted them in. The tribal police can’t do anything here for a lot of these reasons. It doesn’t matter whether they would be people from here or from the outside. The police here can’t do anything. Some people will be driving around here and drinking and shooting up the place and the people who do this kind of thing are related to the councilmen. If the police pick them up, they go to one of the councilmen who they’re related to, and they tell them that they were just driving around. Then they call it harassment. They say that the police have been harassing them. The police can’t do anything. The councilmen just get them off. They give the police a gun but they don’t give them bullets. They give them handcuffs but they’re already locked.
Bertha said that she lived in the city for five years, in California. “I felt isolated there. I only talked to my neighbor once and that was to ball him out for all the noise they were making.”
I asked Bertha if she’s heard anything about moving into their new house near 3 buttes. “We’re going to have a house warming as soon as we move in. It will be a singing party, and you will be there.”
Snake Butte
