Stealing Indians

by John Smelcer

  Stories such as this can end only one way—by telling how it ended for each of the children, one story at a time—one shattered life at a time.

  DURING HIS LAST YEARS AT WELLINGTON, Elijah learned to stop seeing ghosts. Relentlessly, in every classroom and on every wall, the teachers instructed the children that Indian beliefs and customs, like their primitive languages, are old-fashioned and based on superstition. They said it so often, drummed it into their brains so consistently, that many of the children believed it, saw their own families—without telephones or televisions, without dishwashers or vacuum cleaners—as antiquated and embarrassing.

  Whenever the ghosts came to visit, Elijah learned to close his eyes, telling them to go away, ignoring them. They were part of the past, the way the dead always are. Sometimes he counted to one hundred before opening his eyes, squinting first to see if they were still there. For a long time they kept coming, following him around the school, desperate and pleading, despite the boy’s attempts to ignore them. But eventually they stopped coming altogether, leaving Elijah’s spirit as barren as a ghost.

  A piece of who he was had been removed, a part as essential as his heart.

  When Elijah returned home, the spirits returned, drawn by whatever mysterious force that draws them. Even Elijah didn’t know how to explain it. He had no one to talk to about it. His grandfather, the chief, had died while he was away.

  Full of questions he could not answer, Elijah never forgot his grandfather’s warning that the power to see the dead can use up a weak man.

  “Not every man can carry the gift,” he had said that day while changing the tire.

  In an effort to drown out the images, Elijah began to drown himself. As with so many of the countless children stolen from their homes and families, taken from the soil in their flesh, the bottle gave him temporary respite. Some say alcohol makes you forget. For Elijah, it made him remember. He remembered how things used to be, his place in the world, in life, in nature. And the recollection of something so utterly and completely lost tore a hole in him so great he could put his fist through it.

  Year after year, lonely as an abandoned cemetery, Elijah drowned out everything and everyone, spirit and living alike, until he became a ghost.

  LIKE ELIJAH, NOAH RETURNED TO HIS VILLAGE four years older than when he left, able to multiply and divide; knowledgeable of commas, nouns, adverbs, and prepositional phrases; aware of the capitol of every state and where to find other nations on a map. He even knew what stars are made of and how to tie a Windsor knot and how to read Latin poorly. But Noah no longer felt himself a part of the land.

  No matter how hard he tried, he never fit in.

  “You’re not one of us anymore,” proclaimed the other men, turning their backs on Noah because they felt he had turned his back on them.

  It didn’t occur to them that Noah had no choice, that his folks had no choice. They failed to realize that it could just as easily have been their son or daughter taken away, even themselves, had they been younger.

  Though he was a handsome young man, none of the young women in the village would go out with him. Their parents forbade them from getting involved with the misfit, concerned that Noah’s shame at having been transformed into something foreign would rub off on them like a contagion.

  “He’s more white man than Indian,” mothers and fathers warned their daughters.

  Noah Boyscout was neither here nor there, a disembodied shadow looking for someone to claim it, lonesome as an Arctic tern spanning a tempestuous sea.

  After years of trying to fit in, Noah built a cabin several miles downriver from the small village, not to find his place in nature as he had once done, but to find relief from the contempt of neighbors and relatives. No one came to visit, except for ravens, squirrels, and the occasional bear. He spent his lonely days cutting and hauling firewood, running trap lines far into the hills, hunting moose and caribou, snaring rabbits and shooting ducks, catching enough salmon to feed his sled dogs, only going into the village to trade pelts for the things the land did not provide.

  Whereas Noah had once found solace in the wilderness, now he found mostly loneliness. The land does not provide friendship or love, only hardship.

  The people of his tribe abandoned Noah the way some animals desert their newborn when handled by man.

  THE YEARS AT WELLINGTON passed slowly for Simon, like a desert tortoise struggling to flee a grass fire, the way wind and sand erode stone, the way moving water furrows bedrock. He became like a tumbleweed, a dry husk spinning aimlessly on the wind.

  As magnificently defiant as he had once been, Simon simply gave up, somehow losing the second word in his surname. By the time he left Wellington, there was no fight left in him. He no longer remembered the beautiful language of his grandmother and grandfather. He no longer dreamed in the words of his ancestors, the words for which he had been so eager to be chained and shamed. The legend of his previous courage would survive, as much a part of the institution as the bricks themselves, but the spark of Simon’s resistance was extinguished, the love of running was quieted, as if a heavy rain had drenched his soul until it trembled from cold, turned soggy, and fell apart as if made of cardboard.

  Even the greatest tree one day loses its footing and falls to the forest floor, followed by an awesome, lasting silence.

  Simon returned to Four Corners after his graduation, clutching the diploma that said he was an educated citizen of the world’s greatest nation, a proud nation born from the escape of religious persecution, a nation anchored in individual freedom. He moved into a small, silver trailer on concrete blocks on a barren hill overlooking a valley five miles from his old town, his only neighbors jack rabbits, lizards, snakes, scorpions, and stones. All summer long the hot desert sun baked Simon inside his tinny home like a loaf of bread in a horno.

  Over several years Simon worked a number of odd jobs: the gas station, the bingo parlor, the mini-golf. He even sold insurance door-to-door for a while. He never sold a single policy. Other Indians simply looked at him as he stood in their doorway, wearing a suit and tie with his briefcase and hat in hand. They stared at him, puzzled by his sales pitch, wondering how one is insured against the future.

  Through it all, the Wellington diploma hung from Simon’s refrigerator door like a paper tongue mocking him. The years at Wellington had changed Simon, but it hadn’t changed how America looked at him or at any of the other Indians with similar diplomas.

  One day, Simon built a funeral pyre. He stripped off his suit jacket, white dress shirt and tie, kicked off his trousers and shiny black shoes, and cremated them along with his diploma and the briefcase full of brochures. Simon ran deep into the arroyos, mesas, and canyons, running along red buttes and dry creek beds lined with desert flowers and sage brush, pushed along by the raging storm of an unfulfilled promise.

  Simon ran so far and so fast that he finally lost his exhausted shadow.

  He built a hogan, a sweat lodge, and a corral made from piñon trees and thorn bushes. He grew corn and raised sheep amid the loneliness and the beauty, where antelope sometimes grazed among his sheep. From elders, he slowly relearned everything Wellington had taken from him. There in the wilderness, one stolen piece at a time, Simon reclaimed himself, eventually becoming an Indian activist and a respected tribal leader, a beacon of Indian pride as bright as any bonfire.

  THE YOUNGEST OF THE FOUR, LUCY stayed at Wellington the longest. The extra year she endured allowed the school’s insidious messages to take root more deeply into the shallow soil of her self.

  English Only!

  No Indian Dancing!

  When Lucy returned to her small village, she went to see the small cabin where she and her mother had lived, where they had sung in the sauna, eaten rabbit soup, combed out each other’s long hair before bed. The old cabin, like her mother, was gone, burned to the ground by vandals. Dandelion and firewe
ed grew in the emptiness where the house once stood. A spruce sapling took root where their bed used to be.

  Nothing of Lucy’s past remained. Only the constant stars and the northern lights reminded her of what had been.

  All alone, outcast and confused, with the slogans of Wellington forever rattling in her mind, Lucy embraced the modern world, living in cities, owning televisions and vacuum cleaners, and eventually using cell phones, flying on jet planes, shopping at supermarts and, eventually, at glistening mega-malls, and watching movies at the Cineplex. Little by little, one word at a time, she forgot much of the language in which she and her mother used to tell each other stories.

  Lucy married white men, three times, her five half-breed children marrying whites as well, until she no longer saw herself or her mother in the faces of her grandchildren or great grandchildren, until one day when she was very old, one of her grandsons with light hair and blue eyes—one of the only ones left who could still recite the old myths and speak her old language—would tell her stories. . . .

  Including this one.

  Questions for Discussion

  1.The residential Indian boarding school experiment lasted from 1879 until about 1960, though it was winding down by the mid-1950s. The schools were built to be places that would utterly transform Indian people, obliterating tribal identity, destroying Native languages, and eradicating Native religions, customs, and traditions. The stated idea behind the policy was to “Kill the Indian to save the man.” At its height, there were 153 of these schools in America. Parallel histories exist in Canada’s treatment of First Nations people as well as in Australia’s dealings with Aboriginals. Nowadays, Australia has a national “Sorry Day” to recognize the wrongs committed against aboriginal peoples. What do you think of the policy? Can you think of a better way to bring American Indians into mainstream American culture? Was it even necessary?

  2.It is a sad fact that in the early years, thousands of Indian children died from diseases to which they had no previous immunity, especially from trachoma, influenza, and tuberculosis. The government blamed the epidemic on the Indians’ physical inferiority, insisting they had brought it upon themselves. Do you think that was true? Does anyone deserve to be treated the way these Indian children were treated?

  3.Wellington is not based on a single institution. It is an amalgamation of schools, symbolic of the boarding school experience. Discuss the irony of the school’s name, Wellington, and the students’ nickname for it.

  4.It is a historical fact that handcuffs were used on the children, sometimes as young as six or seven, especially during initial apprehension and transportation to the schools. The practice seems to have ended before the 1950s. Haskell Indian Nations University (formerly Haskell Indian School) in Lawrence, Kansas has a pair of handcuffs used on Indian children on display in their Cultural Center and Museum. You can see them on their website.

  5.Almost immediately, boys received haircuts (girls with excessively long hair also had their hair cut). Why do you think the schools did that first thing?

  6.Which character(s) do you most identify with or sympathize with and why?

  7.In many ways, Miss Creger is the most sympathetic teacher, a voice of conscience. But in the end, she resigns from Wellington. Why did she leave? Could she have made a difference if she stayed?

  8.The author of this novel interviewed over a hundred Indian elders nationwide as part of his research for this book. Indeed, many of his own relatives attended Indian boarding schools. Few elders ever speak of their experiences. In recent decades, stories have surfaced of rampant child abuse and pedophilia at the schools. So far from home, and without family to protect them, Indian children fell victim to predators, and the victims themselves often became victimizers. Discuss why this may be so.

  9.As incredulous as they may seem, all of the events in the novel (Simon’s imprisonment, sexual abuse by teachers, the wolf attack on Noah, Lucy’s abduction, the incident on the bus, ghost stories, Elijah’s shamanistic awakening, etc.) come from actual events and interviews with elders. Does knowing these events were true affect your reaction to the book?

  10.Some readers have suggested that it was good that the government took Lucy away from her mother and their life of poverty, even though there was a lot of love. Is it right for the government to remove children from families simply because they are poor? If your family fell on hard times, would you want to be taken away?

  11.In many ways, boarding schools were the destruction of the Indian family. From years away from family and without love and affection afforded to them, many children grew up unable to show love when they eventually had families of their own. Discuss how our personality is influenced by past experiences, especially during the formative years of childhood and adolescence.

  12.The image of the school gate is a recurring theme. What is the function of the gate in the story?

  13.Why is language so important in this novel? How are language and culture interconnected?

  14.As a class, watch the movie Rabbit Proof Fence. Although set in Australia, there are many parallels.

  15.As a class project, research several Indian reservations or villages. In groups, present your findings, include photographs, video, and socioeconomic statistics as a virtual tour of contemporary reservation life.

  16.The manuscript of this novel languished in a desk drawer for a decade because agents and publishers said the story was too depressing. They wanted a happy ending to ease their conscience. But a happy ending would be a disservice to the generations of Indian children who were stolen from their families and subjected to these institutions. Winston Groom, the author of Forrest Gump, tried to convince the author not to publish it, saying “it would give America a black eye.” But great stories, especially those based on history, can’t always have happy endings. Yet, the stories need to be told nonetheless. We can’t know who we are as a people and as a nation until we know the truth about where we came from. Abraham Lincoln once wrote that “history is not history unless it is the truth.” Do you think this story needed to be told? Do you think it’s important? Has your understanding of American history changed? What do you gain from such awareness?

  The Stealing Indians Oral History Project

  One of the enduring objectives for this book was to create a national archive of narratives from American Indians and Canadian First Nation Natives who attended boarding schools. The stated purpose of the project is to make the narratives available to the public in an effort to document the true history of America and Canada. If you or anyone in your family—a parent or grandparent, aunt or uncle, cousin or second cousin, brother or sister—would like to share their recollections of their experience at boarding school, or if they told them to you in the past or recorded them, please submit the story in any format: as an email, word doc, letter, or even as an audio or video recording that can be transcribed. To learn how to participate, email stealingindiansproject@gmail.com

  The Author

  John Smelcer is the author of fifty books. His books of mythology include Trickster, The Raven and the Totem (introduced by Joseph Campbell), and A Cycle of Myths. In 1994, he co-edited the acclaimed anthology Durable Breath: Contemporary Native American Poetry. His writing has appeared in over 400 magazines and journals worldwide, including in The Atlantic.

  The son of an Alaska Native father, John served as executive director of his tribe’s Heritage Foundation, compiling and editing The Ahtna Noun Dictionary and Pronunciation Guide (forewords by Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker). He is now the last living tribal member who can read, write, and speak Ahtna. For four years he served as the director of Chenega Native Corporation’s Language and Cultural Preservation Project, working with elders to compile The Alutiiq Noun Dictionary and Pronunciation Guide (foreword by H. H. The Dalai Lama) and editing The Day That Cries Forever and We are the Land, We are the Sea. In 1999, Ahtn
a Chief Harry Johns designated John a Traditional Culture Bearer, awarding him the necklaces of the late Chief Jim McKinley. That same year, John was nominated for the Alaska Governor’s Award for his preservation of Alaska Native languages and cultures.

  The Trap, John’s first novel, received the James Jones Prize for the First Novel and was named a Notable Book by the American Library Association and the New York Public Library. The novels The Trap and Edge of Nowhere were both published in the UK and the U.S., and Lone Wolves was included on the American Library Association’s Amelia Bloomer list as one of the best feminist books for young readers in 2013.

  Read more at www.johnsmelcer.com.

  Edge of Nowhere

  John Smelcer

  Sixteen-year-old Seth and his dog fall off his father’s commercial fishing boat in Prince William Sound. They struggle to survive off land and sea as they work their way home from island to island in a three-month journey. The isolation allows Seth to understand his father’s love, accept his Native Alaskan heritage, and accept his grief over his mother’s death.

  “Smelcer’s prose is lyrical, straightforward, and brilliant . . . authentic Native Alaskan storytelling at its best.”

  —School Library Journal, starred review

  “A spare tale of courage, love and terrible obstacles . . . may have special appeal to teens who like to wonder how they would do if they had to survive in the wild.”

  —Wall Street Journal

  “Brief, thoughtful, and often lyrical, this is a quick pick for young teens who have the good sense not to confuse a short book with a shallow book.”

  —Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books