Fall 2007 TCJ STUDENT EDITION
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STUDENT EDITION
Walking Among Wisdom By Kyle Tsosie
Boys Will Be Boys By Dan Hawk
In Their Shoes By Samantha Falcon
Tribal Seduction By Jimmy Beason
Life and Times of Indian Jim By James Edmond Jackson, Sr.
The Execution By Willard Freemont, Jr.
What I Call A Nightmare By Samantha Longie
Walking Among Wisdom
By Kyle Tsosie
Four boulders over from the old airport,
I come clean and certain like an elder.
I walk parallel on a plane gathering wisdom.
I tear side to side as
piercing winds deliver into my ears
whistling blows
of needle-like dust.
Magpies pull out and wallow in the wind
as broken-down cars pass by.
Suddenly, a thick, grey-yellow dust whirls and satisfies the air,
pushing my body upright,
leaving me still.
I have my prayer bundles cuffed,
beneath my arms, streaming
in white, yellow, and red.
Legs bolt, in milky sands,
I stand facing East to pray
as the sun bleeds from under
the horizon and the morning light
pours over a new day.
 Kyle Tsosie |
Kyle Tsosie (Dine) is originally from Tuba, AZ, but his family now resides in Westminster, CO. His clans are Bitter Water and Folded Arms People. He is in his fourth semester at Haskell Indian Nations University studying Business with an emphasis in Entrepreneurial Studies.
Tsosie recognizes Trish Reeves and Lorene Williams, faculty, who mentored him and critiqued his writings. He says they challenged him and encouraged him to improve his work and to strive for better.
He also credits the places he has lived in, worlds apart, for creating joy in his heart which helps with his creativity. He is content with the imagery he creates in his art and writing, which is about the mystery in his traditional values and culture.
Tsosie says art has always been a part of his life and he is influenced by his mother who paints in oils and watercolors. He believes he’ll never be bored by art since it is constantly evolving. He aspires to develop a business, perhaps a gallery/frame shop which will promote Native artists.
Boys Will Be Boys
 Dan Hawk |
By Dan Hawk
He broke out in laughter, his eyes wide open, with a look I have seldom seen in my lifetime. He said, “That was a true story… that is a true story.” This tale took place a couple of years and a half a century ago, on the Dawes-checked Oneida Indian Reservation.
The Jordan allotment housed a small Indian farm on a narrow stone’s throw of land that ran from First Ridge down the eastern valley to Duck Creek. During spring thaw, it was a torrent covering much of the creek basin. Upon receding, it left behind glacial ponds of life.
Grandpa was a remnant of a mysterious Iroquois secret society known as False Face. He always seemed to know when something wasn’t right or when us kids had messed up. One late spring day, Grandpa sent Ted (who was twelve) and Albert (who was eight) to fetch a pail of milk from Old Bessie, who was near the creek bottom on the neighboring property.
As boys would have it, they played all the way down the tractor lane, swinging the empty pail and throwing sticks and stones. At the end of the lane they crossed the Peterson barbed-wire fence. They walked on the cow path along the bank like railroad men, one leg longer than the other to keep from falling in.
Old Bessie, like a Red Cross volunteer, was glad to give that day. With a full pail of milk Ted and Albert started back up the valley. As boys would have it, they found some baby toads.
Ted started to gather them up and soon had a wiggly handful. Somehow, one jumped out of his hand … right into the pail! Pretty soon all of the baby toads were getting spa treatment in Bessie’s warm milk.
Ted and Albert realized Grandpa was gonna’ be mad and they were gonna’ catch hell! So they scooped up the baby toads and let them go.
Fifty years later, my Uncles Ted and Albert still blame each other and laugh about getting away with it. They got one over on my Grandpa, and then I told my mom, who had lived with Grandpa, that she ate toad soup!
And, as boys would have it, I broke out in laughter.
Dan Hawk ( Oneida) is enrolled at the College of the Menominee Nation at the Green Bay campus in Wisconsin. His goal in life is to find a solution for the diabetes epidemic. He plans to attend medical school to become an endocrinologist specializing in diabetes.
He was in the military most of his life stationed on board attack submarines on the east coast as a nuclear reactor operator. Hawks writes the experience changed his life. “Now it is time to give back to Creator what he has provided for me, in honor of my grandmother, Priscilla Manders.”
In Their Shoes
By Samantha Falcon
|
In the past it was very uncommon for teens to have children; today there are more teens than adults having children. Personally, I was shocked when I found out that one of my classmates, my fourteen-year-old cousin, was pregnant. Times have changed, but not for the better. Teen pregnancy has spread across our reservation like an epidemic.
The younger generation has become more sexually active, causing an increase in the number of teen pregnancies. Since we all take health classes, everyone should be aware of the consequences of teen pregnancy. Having a child turns your entire world upside down. Because raising a child requires so much energy, time, and money, the plans you once had are put on hold. Kids should not be having kids. They are too young, immature, and unable to provide for a child.
Thankfully, my friends and I made it through high school without catching the epidemic. Most of our classmates thought we would be the first to get pregnant. By the time graduation came, more than half of our class had kids. Don’t get me wrong, I love children -- when they are somebody else’s. Kids were just not a part of my future plans. Then again, I never liked to make plans.
Therefore, becoming a new mom shouldn’t have been such a shock for me. Although I was aware of all the risks, I continued to be sexually active without taking the proper precautions. I convinced myself that I could never have kids because it hadn’t happened yet. Now, at the age of twenty, I am somebody’s mother.
I gave birth to my son Ryland on June 28, 2006. Post-partum depression set in during the first month of his life. During that time it was emotionally impossible for me to feel love for him. Before having a child, I would preach against women who abandoned, disowned, or abused their children in any way. I always said, “There are so many people who want children and can’t have them, so why are people who don’t want children able to have them?” After I became a version of the person I’d always hated, I realized that I shouldn’t put others down until I’ve been in their shoes.
Samantha Falcon ( Turtle Mountain Chippewa) attends Turtle Mountain Community College by taking classes online. She resides in Fargo, ND with her son. She plans to pursue a bachelor’s degree at a university but remains undecided about a major while she explores available options.
Tribal Seduction
 Jimmy Beason |
By Jimmy Beason
Thirty miles beyond the outskirts of town, bright purple and red neon lights capture the attention of any lonely traveler in a hypnotic seduction of the visual senses, seducing drivers and gambling junkies to a tribal burial ground of money where sanctified cash spending frenzies solidify our sovereignty of currency. Where a war party is waged upon the pockets of the American citizens to destroy their homes and red-headed children’s college funds using sacred slots and holy black jack tables to advance our revolution against poverty.
Pulling up to the front door in the circle drive, the 17-year-old valet with delinquent tendencies takes the keys to your black SUV. The gamblers’ eyes fixate on a giant water fountain arrogantly greeting all saps who enter. It shoots streams of water from the top of a huge 10 foot dollar sign superimposed over a magnificent 40 feet tall eagle feather welded together from steel and spare parts from broke-down Indian cars hastily abandoned on the side of a dirt road once news of the 20,000 dollar casino checks got around.
The constant bleeping sound of cash machines is followed by a scream from the sixty-year-old white lady with a beehive hairdo trapped in the 1950’s, after she spent fifteen hours straight sitting on a wooden stool pumping her retirement check into the slot of Indigenous persuasion. A procession of coins flows from the spout like a raiding party. In moments the cashier will come along and verify the win, and hopefully a picture will be taken in order to document the pay-off.
In the middle of addicted 20-something yuppies and old people is a platform where a white woman with blonde hair sports a buckskin thong and giant white headdress dancing to electric-pop-tribal-drum music, with the back ground chorus singing “hey-ya-hey-yaheeeyyyy”.
For one hundred dollars you can go with her to the VIP lounge to get a private dance inside a replica plaster tee-pee on a buffalo skin, viewed by Indian mannequins in 1800’s dress. For two hundred dollars it’s anything goes for 45 minutes. All you do is walk up to her and say the password. It’s “frybread”.
At the edge of the casino is an island bar with drink specials. A young white kid with “Native features” and a spray-on-tan will serve your favorite liquid of sedation to help you forget. The fact is the money that was to be used for food, junior’s braces, car payment and house rent will go to the tribe that your great-great-grandfather helped massacre at the same site where the casino is built, when he rode with the U.S. Calvary in 1800-something.
Modern Indians in braids walk around giving money and taking money, checking ID’s to make sure you are old enough to be gullible and to ensure that the term "saving money" is not in your vocabulary.
This is sacred ground.
Jimmy Beason is also known as Pahuska among the Osage tribe. He is a student at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, KS, majoring in indigenous studies.
“Twenty-Twenty Vision,” another Beason poem, was published in the Tribal College Journal, Vol. 18,N.1.
Life and Times of Indian Jim
 James Edmond Jackson Sr. |
By James Edmond Jackson, Sr.
The Great Creator God Almighty our Heavenly Father told me I am Shoshone Native American and I believe him because the Bible says he does not lie. Sacagawea, the Indian maiden who scouted for the Lewis and Clark expedition, is also a Shoshone Indian and we may be related. I tell everybody who asks about my nationality that I am Shoshone and related to Sacagawea. I read her life story, and she helped lead the expedition by getting passage through various Indian territories across the United States. She was taken slave in an Indian raid and was property of an Indian chief. Her husband won her in a stickgame (hand game) and they had a child. He was a Frenchman, and he and their baby, Pomp, went on the expedition too. I carry a gold dollar around with her picture on it to show people a picture of my supposed grandma. The Lone Ranger and Tonto carried around silver bullets to give people to remember them. I give out gold dollars for people to remember Indian Jim.
I joined the long house when I was around 15 years old and helped out by setting up for the feasts like the root feast, salmon feast, and huckleberry feast. I got the name Indian Jim from Joe Redthunder, an elder. He was looked up to as one of the chiefs on the Colville reservation, which consists of many different tribes confederated to form one tribe. Joe Redthunder was kin to Chief Joseph (Thunder Rolling in the Mountains). I became good friends with the Redthunders by playing on the same sports team with them. They had me drumming at powwows.
One of the Redthunders was my catcher while I pitched on a Nespelem baseball team. He would tell the batter what I was throwing: a fast ball or a curve. I played a trick on him one time. He told the batter I was throwing a fast ball, so I threw a curve at him and he jumped out of the box and the ball curved over the plate as a strike. I got the last laugh after that pitch.
Later he went to Viet Nam and fought in the war. I visited him one time in the hospital when he was sick. He was wearing one of those robes where you could see his bare backside, and I saw some bullet wounds and asked him what happened. He was shot in Viet Nam and they took him to a hospital in Tokyo. Bob Hope, the comedian, went there to visit him, and he said that was a highlight of his life. He has since died and gone up to be with Jesus and his grandpa Chief Joseph in the happy hunting grounds in Heaven. All the Redthunders were good basketball players. There were three of them on the varsity high school basketball team at one time.
My neighbor liked to play, and so we played a lot of stickgames and followed the powwow trail competing in stickgame contests. He is on the tribal council now and has been for years. A few of the people I grew up with are on the tribal council now. They run the reservation. There are four districts on the 1.2 million acre reservation with council members representing each district.
I have been married a few times and divorced a few times. I believe the divorces were due to my alcoholism. I went to alcohol treatment in 1981 and turned my will and life over to the Great Creator. I prayed to God, the Great Creator, for a wife that I would be faithful to, and he brought the woman that I am now married to. She is the granddaughter of Chief Jim James, one of the last chiefs of the Colville Tribes. We have been together for over 21 years and have four children ages 20, 18, 16, and 15. I thank God for bringing her into my life. I have 9 children and 11 grandchildren, and 18 of them are tribal members.
The two highlights of my life are when Billy Mills (the 1964 Olympic gold medal winner) came to the reservation to speak to the youth and when I won a stickgame tournament. Winning the stickgame tournament was the hardest work I ever did. I lost my voice singing, wore out both arms pounding the drum, and wore a hole in my new blue jeans from kneeling in the dirt. It took a lot of endurance to win that stickgame tournament. One game lasted eight hours and we could have given up, but we didn’t.
I am fortunate to not have died in a car wreck. I have been in many car wrecks. In one I broke my back when my rig went over a forty-foot cliff. I broke my right leg and hip in another wreck when my rig rolled over onto me after I was thrown out. In one wreck I smashed my face into the dash and my top teeth got embedded there. A friend of mine freed me by prying my face out of the dash with a lug wrench. I thank God I didn’t get killed in a wreck.
There was a family on the reservation that had about ten horses, and I would go up to their horse ranch and help them break their wild horses for fun. I broke horses and got into rodeos for fun. I have been bucked off about ten different horses. Once I got bucked off and fell face first into a pile of horse manure. One of the Redthunders and I were helping break a horse to ride when he got bucked off face first into a pile of horse manure and got up smiling.
Stay tuned for part 2.
James Edmond Jackson Sr. was born to Jess Jackson and Nell (Harrison) Jackson at Wilbur, Washington. He has lived on the Colville Indian Reservation all 59 years of his life. He attends Northwest Indian College at the Colville Indian Agency, two miles south of the town of Nespelem, Washington. He graduated from Nespelem School in 1962 and Coulee Dam High School in 1966; both are located on the Colville Indian Reservation.
Jackson, Sr. has attended college “off and on for 40 years” but does not have a degree yet. He hopes to earn his first degree at Northwest Indian College. He is majoring in math, would like to get a degree in business management, start a business, and “put my Colville Indian children to work running it.”
The Execution
 Willard Freemont Jr. |
By Willard Freemont, Jr.
Six months, fourteen days, twelve hours -- the exact time Jacob Walter Matthews had been in solitary confinement. A tiny, eight-by-ten cell was the living space for this convicted man. Sergeant Eric Jerold, a twenty-three-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, walked slowly though the damp corridor that led to Mr. Matthews’ cell. For almost a year, Jerold had tracked Matthews throughout three states, following his trail of death, right up to his capture in the Mojave Desert just outside Las Vegas. Sgt. Jerold would forever remember that moment because of the knife Matthews had driven into his kneecap, leaving permanent damage.
A man dressed in a white uniform escorted Sgt. Jerold down the corridor. The slowly dimming lights gave the hallway a forsaken appearance, fitting for the man residing at its end.
“Here we are, sir.” The voice of the man echoed down the hall. The man took a key from his pocket. It was solid iron and covered in rust. It looked antique. The facility was terribly under-funded and on the brink of shutdown.
“Thanks,” grunted Jerold.
The door slowly opened with a moaning screech. Jerold stepped into the domain of his prisoner. The room was lit with a 40-watt light bulb. In the shadows of the corner was some basic furniture. The figure sitting at the back of the room caught Jerold’s attention.
It was a barefoot, shirtless man. His only coverings were a torn pair of white pants. His brown hair was shaggy and uncut; he had deep scars all over his back and shoulders. Some kind of self-inflicted wounds, or so said the psychologist.
“Mr. Matthews, it’s time.”
The figure slowly stood up, placing his hands behind his back. He knew the procedure for transport. Jerold was thankful that he was cooperating with him today, unlike three days ago, when he’d attempted to bite Jerold’s left ear off.
Once he was satisfied that Matthews was calm, Jerold waved in the guard. The guard rushed to Matthews and abusively snapped on a pair of handcuffs. Once restrained, Jerold led Matthews down the hallway to the execution chamber.
Sgt. Jerold stood in the viewing room as three men strapped Matthews into a chair. While doing this, they had to remove his handcuffs. Believing he was sedated, they were neglectful as they placed him on the gurney. One of the men was ready to strap him down.
As if driven by some unseen force, Matthews exploded in a panicked rage. He reached up and jabbed his fingers into the nearest guard’s mouth, anchoring his thumb under the shocked man’s jaw. The guard panicked and tried to pull away from Matthews, but this caused Matthews to pull down even harder, tearing the guard’s jaw from his face. The man stumbled away before falling over a tray. Without a lower jaw, the man just lay there, choking on blood.
The other two men lunged for Matthews. Matthews plunged the hinges of the ripped jaw into the eyes of one of them. Then he turned as the other threw his arms around Matthew’s neck, putting him in a chokehold. Matthews countered this move by reaching up and grabbing his attacker’s chin. With one strong thrust of his hand, Matthews snapped his attacker’s neck.
By the time Matthews had killed the second man, Sgt. Jerold was already opening the door to the execution chamber. As the door swung open, he threw all his weight into a tackle. The attack was successful, causing Matthews to lose balance and fall. But before Jerold could completely pin him, Matthews reached up and grabbed Jerold by the throat. Jerold struggled to free himself, but Matthews’ monstrous grip was too strong.
Driven by adrenaline, Matthews rolled Jerold to the side, lifted him from the floor and slammed him into the viewing glass, causing it to crack. He put both hands around Jerold’s neck and began to squeeze. Jerold could feel his neck pop and creak under the pressure. Just seconds before the force would break his neck, three officers charged into the room and emptied their 9mm pistols into Matthews’ back.
Matthews’ grip fell limp and he slumped over Jerold’s body. Taking a deep gasp of air, Jerold rolled Matthews off of him. He stared as the life fled from Matthews’ eyes. The sentence had been carried out.
Willard Val-Patrick Freemont, Jr. (Rosebud Sioux) is a freshman at Little Priest Tribal College (LPTC, Winnebago, NE) where he is a liberal arts major with interests in computer technology and science.
Freemont, Jr.’s goals include continuing to write and to publish in the field of science fiction and fantasy. “The Execution” is a fictional view of the madness of humanity, a break-away from what he usually writes about.
What I Call a Nightmare
 Samantha Longie |
By Samantha Longie
It all happened when I was five years old, in October of 1993. I was spending the night at my Grandma Melinda’s house along with four of my cousins: Brittany, three; Brandy, two; Jordan, one; and E.J., one. This night seemed to be just like any other night, or that was how it started anyway. Soon, it would change all of our lives forever. That night, we lost our Grandma Melinda, our Aunt Angela, and our friend Louie, to a man who must have had some kind of undiagnosed mental disorder to be able to do what he did.
Brittany and I were watching a movie on television. Sometime during the movie, we fell asleep. I woke up to Emil, my Aunt Kelly’s former husband, busting through the door, screaming for Kelly. Brittany and I were scared, so we ran into the first bedroom. My Grandma ran to the back of the trailer to call the police. Emil shot my Papa Bill in the leg and then ran after my grandma.
When I finally gathered the courage to go to the door, I looked down the hallway, toward my Aunt Angie’s room and saw Emil standing in the hall with his gun. He was pointing it at my Aunt Angie, and before he became aware of me, he shot her. I saw her for only a second, lying on the floor, only her legs in the hallway. Then three-year-old Brittany walked out to see what was happening. We stood there for a moment trying to gather what we had witnessed. Then Emil moved, so we turned around, ran, and jumped on the bed.
Hearing all the commotion, Brandy and E.J. woke up. Within seconds, Emil was standing by the bed telling me to grab Brandy, who was crying and backing away, and to give her to him. Meanwhile E.J. ran and jumped into his arms. I picked up Brandy and handed her to Emil. Then he told me to stop crying or he would kill me, so I stopped -- and didn’t cry until months later.
We went to the doorway where Papa Bill was on the floor slipping in and out of consciousness. Brittany tried to talk to him while I hollered for little Jordan who was in the room with Aunt Angie. He crawled toward us. His tiny hands were covered in blood from trying to wake up his mom. Once we three were together, I looked out the window and saw headlights coming toward the house.
We sat back down and waited. Within a couple of minutes, my mom came running in the door, knowing something horrible had happened. She knew this for two reasons: My Aunt Kelly had run to get help, and Emil had killed Louie while he was on his way to his truck. Aunt Kelly came in right behind my mom. They were both frantic.
They ran down the hallway and saw Aunt Angie, and then they went to my grandma’s room. When they got to her room, they saw that she was lying half off the bed, face down. They hollered at her and then Kelly grabbed her by the shoulder to flip her over, and they realized she was murdered too. They ran back to the front of the house and saw that Papa Bill was still alive.
They gathered us three and brought us out to Louie’s truck. By this time, my dad had found Brandy and E.J. outside by the swing set, so he put them into the truck, too. Emil must have noticed the headlights and put the children down so that he could run faster.
After the police got there and everything settled down, we went to the hospital and sat there until the ambulance brought the bodies, so that my mom and some others could identify them.
After that, we had to leave town because Emil was still on the run. They sent us to Bismarck to meet with my Aunt Lisa and her family. Once we were all together, a woman brought us to a hotel. That same night, criminal investigators questioned us about what we had seen.
They wanted to put me into the witness protection program by myself, because if Emil was caught and went to trial, I would be their main witness. Fortunately, that did not have to happen.
By the time of the funerals, the police still had not found Emil, so the children were not allowed to go. Instead, we went to a place in Minnesota to stay with a family friend. While we were there, the police found Emil in Oklahoma. When they found him, he had already killed himself.
That night I found out what kind of damage one person can cause for so many people and the real devastation that people go through when the lives of their loved ones are taken away. Seeing such things at a young age, I imagine it changed my life forever in ways I may not ever know. This may be why I have so much compassion for others or why I am still afraid of the dark.
Samantha Longie ( Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa) is the daughter of Duane M. Longie and Michelle Longie. She lives in Belcourt, North Dakota where she also attends Turtle Mountain Community College (TMCC). Longie plans to earn an associate of arts degree at TMCC before transferring to the University of North Dakota to pursue a double major in business and accounting. One day she would like to own a business, so learning accounting skills is important to her.