I was born under a tin roof, in an ugly bathroom adorned with long outdated seventies d\u00e9cor. If full size toilet covers were manufactured, like those squeaky plastic furniture covers one would see in any old lady’s house, the toilet I was brought into this world on would have had one.\u00a0 I wish I could say I was born on a dark and stormy night, but in reality, I was born in the middle of a typical summer Tuesday, to a half-drunk mother and a essentially non-existent fully-drunk father. The sky was blue, the sun was hot, and the reservation in Oklahoma was my new home, as I had been recently evicted from my cozy warm place inside my mother.<\/p>\n
The mobile home I was born in, festooned with fake wood panelling, lacquered veneers, and ugly formica countertops had the thickest, nastiest orange shag carpeting the world had ever seen.\u00a0 Honestly the whole thing should have been burned down.<\/p>\n
But that could be said about a lot of the homes sitting on the Rez.\u00a0 Each had its own problems, both structurally and socially.\u00a0 Some were falling apart on the outside, some were falling apart on the inside, and most of them had occupants falling apart themselves for different reasons.\u00a0 Divorce, Alcohol abuse, substance abuse, unemployment, and a general malaise infected everything around the Rez… it was inescapable. It stuck to you.\u00a0 The flypaper of the Rez always hung on.<\/p>\n
I was infected myself.\u00a0 All those obligations of culture hung like a necklace that nobody wanted to wear.\u00a0 Heavy, awkward, and only earned you odd stares in the streets offrez.\u00a0\u00a0 It is a stigma.\u00a0 We are a strong people.\u00a0 Deep down, we truly are.\u00a0 But we were broken, and rebroken, for two hundred years, faced extinction and genocide, and something like that sticks with you.\u00a0 It binds us together and makes us slaves to our past.\u00a0 People look at the black slaves out of Africa that were forced onto American shores, forced to work, forced to eat, forced to sleep, raped, beaten, and killed in order to maintain an order of life and civilization in the rural south. But they rarely talk about the entire race of people that lived in those lands before the Europeans ever landed.<\/p>\n
I see the country we live in celebrate black history month and I laugh bitterly.\u00a0 …Not to discount their struggles.\u00a0 But their ‘race’ was never threatened with extinction.\u00a0 Horrible transgressions against their humanity, yes, but not ethnic cleansing levels of transgression.\u00a0 You live here, you get it.\u00a0 You understand it.\u00a0 Conform, forget your past, adhere to the American way of life, and be damn happy about it.<\/p>\n
I am really getting off track.\u00a0 This is not a soapbox.\u00a0 This is a story.\u00a0 But you need to understand where I was born, and where I was raised, in order to understand what happened on the Butte.\u00a0 I can’t go to the mesa and ignore the path up its side.<\/p>\n
My name is Jonathon Tumbling Raven Smith, a Chocktaw by my father’s line, and Cherokee by my mother’s.\u00a0 I probably have a slew of other tribes in my bloodline, that’s how things work out these days.\u00a0 I am probably Chickasaw, Osage, Ponca, Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, Cheyenne, Kaw, Seminole, and every other tribe that was corralled into the borders of the Oklahoma Territory.\u00a0\u00a0 I don’t think anyone could really keep track, given the circumstances, and the life on the Rez.\u00a0 Some really value their family trees.<\/p>\n
Whatever, man.\u00a0 My family tree is a burnt out stump at this point.\u00a0 My family is me, my dog, and his fleas.\u00a0 I left home when I turned 16.\u00a0 Maybe I should start there.\u00a0 That is a good place.\u00a0\u00a0 And every story needs a good place to start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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