Anishinaabe Syndicated : A View from the Rez

13. Brown-Bellied Sapsucker - 2001

213 13. Brown-Bellied Sapsucker 8 2001 Fond du Lac Follies has been motoring a lot lately. Once again, I met myself on the freeway near Hinckley. I waved. We were both late. There was a highway patrolman, but that comes later in the story. I was invited to the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse to tell stories because it was Native American Heritage Month. I actually think all months are Native American heritage months. I drove through Red Wing, Minnesota, on my way. Just seeing the name on the road signs reminded me of the time in the 1950s when I was last in Red Wing. As I drove by the huge administration building of the state reform school, I took a memory trip back to when I was a resident of Jefferson Cottage. Reform school wasn’t too bad; it was just a bit stricter than the boarding schools I had attended. I spent nine months of my teenage years in that place. I was found guilty of aggravated buffoonery with intent to mope. While I was there I met a lot of guys I had known in boarding school. There were a lot of Indians from the other reservations there also. It took about nine months to get my attitude adjusted. After I got out my probation officer told me if I didn’t stay in school, I would go back to Red Wing. I didn’t want that, so I stayed in school and graduated in 1961 from Carlton High School. They told me I was one of the few Indians in the state who had graduated from high school. At the time, it seemed like there were only two choices. One was the boarding school/reform school/state prison trail and the other was the boarding school/reform school/military trail. I am glad I chose the military trail after high school. As I was remembering my time in Red Wing, a siren came on 214 Anishinaabe Syndicated and red lights began flashing in my mirrors. A highway patrolman stopped me and asked me why I was speeding. I told him my story about being locked up there and how I wasn’t paying attention to my driving. He listened and gave me a warning ticket. At that point, I learned something new. The trooper told me it was illegal to have my eagle feather (or anything) hanging from my rearview mirror. I thanked the trooper for the warning and continued motoring. Question: What did your uncle Wayne E. BuShoe say about wearing long underwear? Answer: Yellow in the front, brown in the back. Birchbark Books was another place I motored to last month. Louise Erdrich owns the bookstore that is located near the west end of Franklin Avenue. She asked if I would come down and help her celebrate the opening of the bookstore by reading from my works. She has been my inspiration ever since I started writing, so it was an easy decision to make. I was honored to be asked. The audience was small but enthusiastic. I noticed that most of the audience members bought books, so it was a good one. Louise and I used our limited Ojibwe vocabulary to have a limited conversation in the language. Fond du Lac Follies motored to a rez in southern Minnesota to attend a ceremony, a ceremony that was being used long before there was an America. I would say that the ceremony is proof that assimilation didn’t work with all of us. The ceremony was done by a medicine man. He had a helper who brought a hand drum and his voice to the place. The ceremony was used to end a period of mourning. I watched the doings closely because I had never seen it done before. I had heard about this particular ceremony and I was glad to be taking part in it. A family from Canada drove eleven hours to attend the ceremony. During one song, the helper was singing and I heard a woman’s voice behind me singing along. We are used to hearing male voices, and the feminine voice added to the beauty of the song. I could smell burning sage and tobacco. There was a strong feeling 215 Brown-Bellied Sapsucker that we were all gathered for one purpose in the crowd of two hundred who came to the doings. The giveaway...