On the reservations, most of the drug and alcohol addiction, and the violence and crime, results from futility. And more and more, Ladder is helping us replace that futility with positive action.
Willard Makes-A-Place-For-Them
Testimony before the Senate Committee
on Native American Affairs
Lee couldn't tell if the parking lot was paved or not. Like the roof of the high school and everything else in Lodge Grass, Montana, it was covered with new dry snow, except where the wind had blown it off. Ten or twelve inches had fallen. On a street below the school, a snowplow passed with flashing blue lights and a steady beeping noise.
Lee got out of the pickup and started for the gym's entrance, conducted by Willard Makes-A-Place-For-Them. "Call me Bill," he'd said. She did, but she thought of him as Mr. M.
The line moved steadily through the door. Inside was a hubbub of enthusiastic voices. A gray-haired man with large brown fingers took their money, and a burly youth, perhaps a high school senior, stamped their hands with ink. The stands were already mostly full. Mr. M guided her to a small section of seats reserved for tribal elders and their guests.
The two teams were already warming up. The Lodge Grass Indians wore white warmups with fringes on sleeves and pants, and the team logo on the front: the stylized head of a large-beaked bird that didn't resemble a crow at all. Lee hadn't watched basketball since college, hadn't played it since phys. ed. But the Indians seemed really good, their passing sharp, their dribbling clever, and most of the shots went through the rim.
Except for the visiting team, the Hill City Broncs, Lee saw few Caucasians. There was a small section of seats, with a mixture of Caucasians, which she guessed was for teachers. Another had only Caucasians, and Lee pointed. "Is that the visitors' section?" she asked. "There aren't very many of them."
"It looks like about forty," Mr. M answered. "That's quite a lot, with the driving so bad. Hill City is one hundred and fifteen miles from here, and it's not very big. About the same as Lodge Grassmaybe eight hundred people."
"Is their team good?"
"We beat them sixty-three to forty the last time we played them. We were kind of embarrassed. We don't like to run up the score that much, but they had a bad second half and our reserves played really good. We play a lot of basketball on the reservation. Everybody or their neighbor has a backboard and basket. Our kids start when they're little, and even guys my age play. Even I do." He patted his considerable abdomen.
The officials came onto the court, two of them Caucasians. The teams went to their benches, the starters stripping off their warmups. The Broncs got the tip, but one of the Indians snatched the ball and drove for a layup, to a roar of cheering.
At halftime the score was 38 to 17. Lee hadn't eaten since she'd had a sandwich at the airport in Billings; there hadn't been time. So Mr. M took her down the street to a cafe, almost empty except for the cook and a waitress. Lee, who ordinarily avoided fatty foods, ordered a burger and french fries.
"Do you have chocolate peanut-butter pie?" M asked.
"We have two slices left," the waitress said.
"I'll take one." He looked at Lee. "You better take the other one. Calories don't count when you're traveling."
She laughed. "I can gain weight just looking at chocolate peanut-butter pie, so I might as well eat it."
The cook brought their coffee and left them to themselves. "I don't know much about the reservation," Lee said. "I asked before I left, and they said I'd do better without a lot of preconceived ideas. So I didn't even look it up in the WebWorld. Just the atlas. It's almost as big as Connecticut, the state I lived in a year ago, but obviously it has a lot fewer people."
"Thirteen thousand," said Mr. M.
"They sent me to get a feel for the people, they said, and to learn what effects Iiúoo has had. What effects has it had?"
"The real effect," he said, "is on individuals. The effect on the tribe, the Crow people, grows out of that." He paused, considering. "I suppose you know something about the history of the native people since Anglos came here," he went on. "In the old days the Crow people had no money, no housesnothing like that. But we were rich in horses, and had lodgestepeesthat we took with us when we moved. And we had the use of the land, and the buffalo. We knew how to live with them. No one suffered from hunger very often, but when one did, everyone did. The people felt good about themselves. The downside was, we fought with other tribes a lot."
It struck Lee that when he spoke, he didn't gesture. It gave him a sense of dignity and personal powerpower that went well beyond his big shoulders and thick hands.
"Then white people came. They killed the buffaloall the buffalo around hereand the people were often hungry. Sometimes they starved. The government had drawn lines on a map, and called it the Apsáalooke Country. It was to be ours forever. But prospectors came, and ranchers, and homesteaders, and the government took back more than ninety percent of it and gave it to them. Or just kept it. The people felt robbed, betrayed, bitter, but we had no power to do anything about it. It was a little like Kosovo, not so many years ago, but worse. There was no honor in what was done to the people, but it was inevitable."
His calm amazed Lee. He'd said what he'd said with no evidence of anger or bitterness. At the same time she noticed a long scar above one eye, others on cheekbone and upper lip, and his nose had been broken.
"After they took the land," he continued, "and the people were starving, the government and the churches decided they'd better turn the Crows into white people. But they didn't know how to do it, and neither did we. They tried to shame us into being white. They took our children away and tried to force them to be white. None of it worked. We remained Crows, Crows with broken wings. Some of us became kind of white, but even for them it didn't work very well.
"But we couldn't be like our ancestors again, because the world had changed too much. It was impossible. And we couldn't find a new way that worked. The best we could do was to walk an in-between path, and survive any way we could.
"That's what we were doing when Ngunda Aran came here. At first we didn't trust him. His skin wasn't white, but he was, or that's how it seemed to us. And white people had come here before, wanting to help. Honest people. But they didn't know how. They only thought they did. Mostly they depressed the spirit."
The cook brought their orders, and they began to eat, slowly, Mr. M talking between bites.
"The difference between Ngunda Aran and other people who'd come to help, is that Ngunda knew how to do it. He already knew the Ladder worked for people of other races. For rich people who lived in the suburbs; poor people, black and white, in the citieseven convicts in prison. So he tried it here.
"He didn't try to force anyone to do anything. He didn't try to make anyone ashamed. He helped one person at a time, people who were willing, and when he was done, they were still Crows.
"But they had changed. Some others, when they saw that, thought it looked pretty good. They'd like some of that. And before long quite a few people had climbed the same Ladder, changing in ways that helped everyone. So we adopted him, and call him Akbaalía. Then he sent Crow people, volunteers, to learn to do what he did, so we could continue on our own. When someone felt pretty bad, or was coming off a big drunk, or beat up his wife, someone might say to him, or her, 'You might go and see Dan at the clinic. Or Fawn, or Archy. Maybe they can help you.' "
Mr. M's calm eyes found Lee's, their touch mild. A rush passed over her that she couldn't explain.
"Ten years ago, at basketball games, by half time quite a few people would have left. Someone would have a bottle in their pickup or car, and they'd go out and start to drink. Some would be drunk even before the game.
"Liquor was a curse to us, but in a way it was also a blessing. Believe me, I know. It dulled the feeling of futilitytemporarily. At the same time it made everything more difficult. A child would be smart in school, but when they got old enough to start drinking with their friends, they didn't study anymore. They got in fights. Some got pregnant. Some committed suicide. Most didn't finish high school."
Lee listened soberly. It reminded her of the black ghettos in Connecticut. "What did they do then?"
"Most lived at home with their parents, for a while at least. From time to time they'd workmostly day labor. A few sold drugs.
"Some would get a steady job off the reservation. But lots of times they'd lose it because they got drunk and skipped work. Or got in a fight, and were put in jail. Or because they didn't like the job, or the people they worked with, and quit. There was quite a lot of prejudice, more than now.
"Iiúoo made big changes. It's the ladder people have used to climb into the fresh air and sunshine again. Now most of our children finish high school, mostly with good grades. There's a scholarship fund, and quite a few go to college.
"The reservation doesn't have any more resources than before, but we aren't so poor anymore. There isn't much drunkenness now, especially among young people. There aren't many fist fights. Hardly anyone gets cut with a knife. The tribe has a new industry, up at Crow Agency, that makes components for computers. About two hundred people work there, only part time now because of the Depression. All of them, even the managers, are Apsáalooke, Crows. Tomorrow I'll take you around so you can see, and talk to people.
"On the Ladder, some of the things we experience change what we believe. Some people don't like that, some of the traditionals. The Baptist minister isn't happy with it either, or Father Schweiger. But no one I know wants to go back to the way things were ten years ago. We are still the Children of the Crow. We still have our own ways."
Mr. M looked at his watch. "We should go back to the gym," he said, "so we can watch the end of the game." Then he called something in Crow. A woman came from the kitchen, and Mr. M paid her.
They watched most of the last quarter. For the Indians, only the bench played in the second half. The final score was Lodge Grass, 56; Hill City, 52.