Quest for Dignity:

(From Part 1)

Coyote ran proudly with a deer leg bone in his mouth.  He stopped abruptly, and dropped the bone, because he lost track of what he was doing.   'What the heck was I going to do?'  He sat pondering his situation.  'How long has this been going on?  Was there someone I am to talk to?  Am I doing something of grand importance?  It seems so!  I think maybe I'm a person who is really important.  Some days my thoughts are almost clear, they almost make sense . . .  I think I've been confused for a long time.'

Coyote got this tremendous itch, and he scratched, only to realize his once beautiful coat was mangy.  There were faint wisps of memory, of livelier times, when he was more impressively clad.   He looked at the leg bone he was dragging around, and it occurred to him, 'Hey this is carrion!' - It seems like I was a hunter at one time!  If I were a hunter, did I hunt deer?'  A dog appeared in the distance, and saw him, and started running directly at him, yelling crazily, 'Get out of here, you chicken thief!'  An unreasonable terror gripped Coyote and he ran for his life.

After a while he rested.  'Why do I run from him? I could easily cripple or kill him.'  

Coyote realized he was having one of those days.  His memories kept on the periphery of his consciousness, maddening, and tantalizing his awareness. Remembrances drifted close, but without substance or clarity. 'This is bad as the itch,' he moped as he sat again to ponder.  'That dog was not from the forest!  . . . What is a chicken? . . . What is a thief?  . . . It seems like I'm supposed to be doing something.  I just can't focus or concentrate  . . .. '  He was assaulted by a tremendous melancholy he could no longer stand. He just flopped down in the brush.  The pain of it made him pant, as he lay eye-ball to a blade of grass. 'Why am I so depressed?  What is this terror that grips me? There is something important to me that is missing!  Oh if only I could . . .. '

Then he remembered the chickens.  There was a place where strangers to the land and forest lived.  They kept chickens there, and when Coyote got hungry all he had to do was take one.  He no longer had to hunt, for he just took a dumb chicken.  The pain eased a bit and he was able to sit up, Coyote made a joke to himself, 'I'm no chicken thief, I'm a great chicken hunter!'

In another moment of realization Coyote knew that insights didn't come as often as they used to.  Those memories that almost appeared in his mind triggered a powerful sadness in him.  Before this period of almost clear thought fades away, Coyote wonders to himself, 'Should I hunt that dog, or should I hunt the chicken?'  He has a good belly laugh at the haunting irony of it all.   

Now however, he felt compelled to sing, and he lifted his nose to the sky.  Through the sounds produced, he expressed what was in the Coyote heart and soul.

He had one of the most beautiful songs in the world, but part of it he lost.  Everybody had a song to sing, but part of his was missing.  Now he sang every time the spirit moved him.  He sang with all his heart.  He sang to the sage brush, he sang to the sky and sun, he sang to the trees, and he sang to that thief Raven, who might be listening.    He knew if he sang diligently, he wouldn't lose any more of his song, and that part missing might return.

The beauty of what remained was a haunting reminder of what he had lost. It created the painful emptiness in his gut.  Like hunger pangs he longed for that part missing.  He knew singing would bring the beauty of the missing part back, he knew he would become complete again. But it was in desperation that he sang.

Wy'! 'Hello! or Greetings!'

Ste mas Spoos!?  'What is in your heart?' When our people met each other once upon a time, this was the way they used to greet each other.  One rarely hears people say these things to each other anymore.  It is mostly because we are less open and trusting of each other.  The latter was also a form of greeting on meeting someone.  

'What do you think?'  or  'What is on your mind?', which are similar, are found in the way the average American initiates conversations.  These seem to be questions between familiars or intimates.  

So what is in your heart?  What is there, that you would be curious about what I would have to say?  I am hopeful it would to be something that touches my heart these last few years.  

I am much concerned about our people.  By our people I mean the Native Americans on this continent.  I am told that I am an Indian.  I have come to believe that I am an Indian, because, my parents and grandparent told me to be proud that I am such.  

Also because there have been too many non-Indians that have used the color of my skin to justify treating me with a lack of respect.  So in defiance I choose to use this fact as a badge of honor.  This sort of defiance is as much a part of my makeup as is a painful self-consciousness about being Indian.  This same feeling has come about because my color will invariably lead to some negative outcomes, of some sort or the other, for my life.

I value the good American life.  The culture of mainstream America is also who I am.  There is not a part of the culture that I don't understand or in which I do not participate, or perhaps even appreciate. But there is not a day that goes by that I do not feel like a visitor or guest in my own home.

I have been informed that people who will find themselves reading this material, will want to know something about the writer.  The most succinct statement I can make about myself, is that, I am an Indian in White America.  Much of my education, religious and civic development, assimilation into the American culture, has been directed towards helping me forget or ignore the best of what I am.

(170 pages)