The Indian-Hunting Trade
If the game be at all plenty
Boozhoo, indinawemaaganidog! Aaniin! That is to say hello, all of my relatives! Welcome to another edition of An Irritable Métis. We are less than a week away from rolling over into a new year again which seems almost impossible, doesn’t it? I hope you are all surviving the holiday mayhem, however you interact with it. I’m looking at a couple weeks where I really don’t have to go anywhere or do anything but catch up on all the stuff gone undone over these last furious few weeks and months. I began my catching-up first by facing the mass of unread, unresponded-to emails and sorted and deleted anything nonessential. That’s a start! Hopefully I didn’t inadvertently trash anything I shouldn’t have but let me tell you: we really don’t have a feel for just how much unsolicited stuff we get day in, day out, until we step away from it for a few days, do we? What an enormous distraction, even just the management of it all! I think something needs to change, at least in my world. In this season of reflection, etc. I will definitely be considering what I might do differently. Meanwhile here I am, adding to the cacophony of your inbox with another newsletter. I sure appreciate those of you who take the time to read it. Your time, and the attention that accompanies it, is precious, and I deeply appreciate your willingness to divert some of yours my way.
Friday evening, December 22nd, I paused in whatever hellmouth parking lot in Missoula that I found myself in and turned my gaze to the sky. There she was, Nookomis, the Moon, our Grandmother, hanging in the barely-dark just a few days shy of full. My heart swelled. It always does during such appreciations. Then I reflected on how different my situation was in that moment than it had been a mere twenty-four hours earlier, when I was sitting with about ten other relatives (including one dog relative!) around a campfire celebrating two things: the Winter Solstice, of course, and our final night together as participants in a workshop I’d facilitated all week called “Good Ancestors.” Sadly, a couple other folks had already had to leave, but Nookomis was with us, lending her support toward Mishomis, Grandfather, the Sun, on his most retiring night of the year, attended by more star relatives than we have any idea of if we base our perceptions on what we can see from our artificially lit cities and town. What a betrayal we’ve unleashed toward the heavens by our need to always have lights on, and I say this whenever I have the opportunity to: Not so long ago the arrangement of those stars in the sky, and the stories behind them, were as familiar to us as the home screens on our cell phones are now. The difference is breathtaking and I feel the loss of that familiarity deeply. It was just one of the many connections to the world I spent the week vowing to return to, whatever it takes. The world around us, including all of our human and nonhuman relatives, is the greatest gift we have ever received, isn’t it?
This particular(ly) motley bunch of relatives1 and I occupying seats around the fire were off grid at the Lamar Buffalo Ranch, in the heart of the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone is a place of deep power that carries a mighty influence on such interactions as we had engaged in. Our Solstice gathering was the culmination of a profound week of daily outings up and down the valley followed by discussions and writing and more discussions focused on the topic. I could not have imagined a better unfolding of what I envisioned for the workshop. Around those snapping and popping flames we smudged with sage, then shared our intentions – some read pieces they’d written, others simply spoke, and at least one person offered a poem – toward how we will become the ancestors we want to be, toward how we will become good ancestors. Then I passed around a small buckskin pouch of tobacco I carry so that each of us could make an offering, and then we just hung out at the fire like people have been doing for thousands and thousands of years and I loved it.
The next morning it was time to leave. Reentry into the wider world is difficult. North out of Yellowstone through Gardiner at least provides a gentle return. Highway 89 leads to Livingston directly through the Paradise Valley of the Yellowstone River – the Absarokas to the east, the Gallatins to the west – one of the most beautiful landscapes on earth. There wasn’t so much as a wisp of cloud in the sky; it was sunny and utterly beautiful. The lack of snow is troubling but there is no denying the magnificence of this place, this unique ecosystem, on such a day. I wish I could live in the vicinity of it but it is so overpriced now that even generational locals are struggling to remain. This is a continuous story of the last few centuries, as attributed by teepee rings the intrepid saunterer may stumble across in many locations. It’s just hitting many people now who tend to consider themselves above such fray and they don’t really know how to act.
When I turned west onto I-90 and headed for home my knuckles were whitening on the steering wheel. For days the only real traffic I’d had to endure was varying-sized herds of buffalo lingering on the roads but now, roaring at 85mph down the interstate, I was as dangerous a part of traffic as anyone else. Then there was the roadkill. So, so much roadkill. Everything was too fast and too mindless of the world outside the isolation of our individual vehicles and I was getting sucked right into the churn.
I reached Missoula a few hours later but didn’t immediately return home. I had errands to run that I hadn’t gotten to before I left – Christmas was looming, of course – and I thought I’d try and knock a few out to lessen the load the following day. By the time I directed my eyes toward Nookomis in that parking lot I was feeling the stress of being “home” deeply. Stress of so much, so fast, and so desperate. I could feel the waves of disconnection coming off everyone else. Was anyone happy? It didn’t seem like it. How did we allow this to happen?
Today, December 26th, the day after Christmas, so many of us uncomfortable and gassy in the wake of yesterday’s indulgences, marks the 161st anniversary of the culminating event around the Dakota War, or Little Crow’s War. This war was a brief, brutal conflict in the summer of 1862 that erupted when the Dakota, pushed off their land and starving, rose up to take what they needed. By the end of the conflict hundreds of white people had been killed along with an unknown number of Dakota people and their allies. In a series of trials in which none of the defendants had their charges explained to them nor were allowed legal representation, over 300 Dakota taken into custody were sentenced to death. After reviewing the proceedings, President Abraham Lincoln reduced that number to 38. Then Lincoln, just three months after signing the Emancipation Proclamation that “freed the slaves,” presided over what remains the single largest mass execution in American history when all 38 Dakota were hanged at once. You don’t hear much about this whenever Lincoln is discussed. In fact, as the great documentary Lakota Nation vs. United States points out, in the bio pic Lincoln there isn’t so much as a word devoted to it. And yet there his face is carved, along with those of three other genocidal white men, onto a stolen sacred mountain in the Black Hills.
There is another wonderful documentary from a few years ago called Dakota 38. Here is the trailer:
I urge you to watch the full documentary, which you may do for free HERE on YouTube. It is contemporary and powerful and essential.
161 years seems like a long time. It’s not, as the documentary proves. I’m not even sixty2 and I am only a couple generations removed from the time period of the events of the Dakota War. By the 1860s, my great great grandparent Latreilles, Mose and Susie, were already moving with others out of the Red River Valley and onto the Milk River in Montana and Canada chasing buffalo, those herds quickly dwindling. It’s not impossible to imagine that if my dad had been born to one of that couple’s first children (they ultimately had many)(also, Mose died in 1938, two years before Dad was born, Susie having died a few years previous) I could potentially have known them before they died. Or, more importantly, they might have known me. Regardless, I almost certainly had blood relatives in attendance at the Treaty of Old Crossing that took place in Minnesota just ten months after the hanging (a couple short weeks after the above-pictured bounty ad ran in the St. Paul Pioneer).3 I wouldn’t be surprised if blood relatives participated in the uprising in Minnesota as well.
I bring all this up in relation to the Good Ancestors workshop because the two events are connected. Whether it is the Dakota War, or the Hellgate Treaty of 1855, or any other conflict we tend to view as happening in the “olden” days, or as “ancient” history4, they are events that reverberate today, in people living today. We see that clearly in the Dakota 38 documentary. The trauma reverberates. The recognition of what was lost to some people and gained by others, even those – especially those – who did so without direct blood on their hands, reverberates.5 The policies and cold heartedness that creates these conflicts are happening now all over the globe too. It rolls on and on, over and over, until we decide to stop it. Until we, particularly those of us in the US, recognize that with all of our alleged freedom comes responsibilities to others, responsibilities to maybe give up a little of what we have for the greater good. It isn’t all about us as individuals, even if every bright shiny object flashing for our attention wants us to believe that is the case. Are we capable of this kind of awakening? I believe we are. I have to believe we are for my own sanity.
Just one example might be our responsibilities toward the growing crowds of houseless people. Are we good ancestors if we allow for houses to be empty simply because they are “owned” by folks who offer them as short term rentals and it isn’t tourist season, while other relatives shiver on the streets? Think of the starving Dakota people who observed storehouses full of food until they decided not to stand around observing anymore. How is that different from bright grocery stores full of food, or $100+/plate restaurants, a short distance6 from folks digging through garbage cans for scraps just to survive another day? What about people suffering illness, physical or mental or existential, capable of being treated if not for the evil of our for profit healthcare system?
Recognizing this is part of being a good ancestor, to my mind. Especially because my ancestors were, for several generations at least, those very people living and suffering on the fringes. They sacrificed for my future and it is imperative that I now stand up, or “show up,” as I said when pressed at the Buffalo Ranch to share my own thoughts, simply because I can. Because I must. Must tell these stories that generations of people have tried to erase. That’s part of the mission of this newsletter, to show up. Is that grandiose? Probably. But it’s one of the few outlets I really have and I refuse to despair for the world. I remain deeply in love with the world, both inside the boundaries of a protected place like Yellowstone and beyond. Everything precious has the diabolical elements of what our species is capable of looking for cracks to break it all open and I refuse to see that happen. More of us need to step into the breaches. So here I am. And I love having you here too.
Speaking of being here. My pal AHP has an excellent commentary on the nazis-on-substack thing a few scrolls down on THIS NEWSLETTER. I’m in full agreement with her, which is to say I’m not going anywhere soon. You may feel otherwise and that’s fine.
Want to help somewhere in the world with donations? There is an excellent collection of links HERE both in Neko’s newsletter and in the comments. All good stuff.
There were a dozen of us: all women except for me and one other man; all Indigenous people except for three; age ranges from early 20s to, I’m guessing, maybe 60s/70s. It’s also essential to mention there were so many Indigenous folks because Yellowstone Forever, in an act that I believe more large conservation/nonprofit groups should absolutely do, opened up a bunch of seats in this workshop for free to Indigenous students and educators. I can’t thank them enough.
I still have a few years to go to get there, thank you.
I’ve written about the relationship to this treaty and the Little Shell Tribe before. I’ve compiled some of that into a PDF that the interested reader may access HERE.
As a recent email I received describes it.
Generational ownership of a house, for example; or land, or any of the other ramifications that favor settlers over Indigenous people.
So close even I could jog it.
After reading this I can't stop thinking about how choosing to see love and stay in love with this world is truly a radical (rad-, as in 'of the root'), necessary act. There's a line from a Christian Wiman poem I've also been thinking about lately that says: "If I could chance the night's improvidence / and be the being this hard mercy means." It's the being that this hard mercy needs that I feel when it comes to loving this world despite or because of what horrors it inflicts on others, on the land. I've known the history of this day relatively recently in my middle aged life and I repeat it to everyone I now know--and will be sharing the documentary you linked as well--knowing true history and holding it is a hard mercy this world needs, if we're to know anything real about the world we love. And I cannot WAIT to read your new book. 💜
Thank you for mentioning Dakota 38+2 movie, which I watch on this day every year in honor of my adopted family members who ride, who have ridden, some of whose faces appear in the documentary and others whose names scroll by. And this year will watch with a silent moment before and after honoring Jim Miller for its creation - a man whose name is added to that list of those who have ridden to the other side.