Little Blue Hawk

When I was seventeen, I left the Rosebud Reservation of my birth and had nothing left to lose but my life. Like most Lakota in the twentieth century, I'd lost my father to shame and the drink that made him forget it. When I was you,g I often wondered if he was still alive. Now that I am wiser, I understand that he had been born robbed of life. But life will come again, beyond these imaginary gates. So says the Father. A'te he'ye lo.

If I had not been born an Indian, perhaps, I would know how to dream. Perhaps I would dream of owning the White Man's holy collection of refrigerators and barbed wire fences, and flushing toilets so that I would qualify to keep my children and so that the Great Father's Social Services do not deem me the dog they've made of me. But I would rather spit into the wind and give my shit to a hold in the earth, as it should be, than dream the White Man's dream. Ya'nipikta' e'ya u'-we lo. "You shall live," he says as he comes. Ya'nipikta. A'te-ye he'ye lo. The father says so.

When I took my first step onto the soil of the United States of America, in the state of South Dakota, I sought to save myself from the spiral of disgrace that the White Man's wheel had wrought upon us. I sought to shed my name in this White Man's world that had laid waste to the holy Badlands and Black Hills by covering them over with ribbons of cement, immigrants' toil, and Indian blood. So many trails of tears flow freely here, those trails have turned to rivers. I spoke the White Man's tongue and knew his god better than I knew my own. But like I cannot shed my red skin or my slanted eyes, I cannot remove the Indian from myself. To become the redemption for my own people, I set out upon the father's road, to learn the White Man so well that I should become him, in order to defeat him. Give me my arrows so that I may carve a grave out of my heart. Wanhi'nkpe mi'chuye.

I see a child walking towards me. It is my child. YOu will live, he says as he comes. E'ya ye'ye. Michi'nkshi mita'waye. Ya'nipi-kta e'ya u'-we lo.

In the plains country, where the buffalo roamed free so thick you couldn't see the ground for miles, I met my destiny. Sometimes, the father makes the wind blow in strange directions. I stood upon the White Man's highway, sticking out my thumb. Crazy for an Indian girl from Sioux country to trust in the good faith of the White Man of the United States. But not all preconceptions ring true across a population. Tell my grandfather that some White men have Indian souls and he would ring a string of turtles for protection around my neck to ward off evil spirits. I would set the turtles free. My heart was sent into the Badlands, running after my feet, and the Silvers stopped their bus for me and I denied them my voice for one whole moon before I finally gave it.