Walking the Line: Do heroes help us choose the Red Road?

MY MENTORS. Uncle Wesley Clyde Plenty Chief and my grandmother, Philomine Little Sioux, both helped me stay in touch with my culture.

In March 2005, the Red Lake Reservation in Minnesota catapulted into national headlines when Jeffrey Weise shot five students and four adults at the local high school and then turned his weapon on himself. I and reporters from the Grand Forks Herald were some of the first media on the scene. In the same year, it was reported that some 20 young people had committed suicide on the Standing Rock Reservation, Fort Yates, ND.

On each of these large, somewhat isolated reservations — one Ojibwa and the other Lakota — the tribes are finding answers difficult. Those who examine the issues from the outside are exasperated, too, with good reason. It is extremely complicated.

As I spoke with people on these two reservations, I wondered why one young person might choose suicide while his or her friend would never consider it. What happened to Weise that made him turn Red Lake into such a tragedy? What made me, as a youngster, turn toward the Red Road?

Often it is tribal elders who provide us with traditional coping skills or guide us onto the Red Road, the cultural path.

Philomine Little Sioux, my grandmother, was one of those heroes. When I struggle to pronounce a Sahnish (Arikara) word, I remember my grandmother sitting with her friends at her old kitchen table near White Shield, ND. They’d sip coffee and talk — hands and arms in motion — always speaking in the language.

I can still hear them; hearing their conversation in my mind helps me pronounce some of the Sahnish words. At times, when I walk the prairies and reach for an herb or root, I can see my grandmother’s brown hand pulling at the plant, too. She was a healer and bundle keeper. She was who I hope to be.

I married and left the reservation for a career and my own family. I returned after spending years in big cities and was drawn to Wesley Clyde Plenty Chief, my uncle. Before I learned all I needed from him, my uncle passed away. However, he helped me understand the power of Native American healing. Uncle Wesley was my hero, too.

So, as stories about the Red Lake shootings and the Standing Rock suicides made headlines, I wondered who were their heroes? Who had influenced them?

Unfortunately, Jeffery Weise did have heroes. One was Adolph Hitler, the German leader who tried to rid the world of people he thought inferior. Strangely, this madman was able to reach out from the past and put his hands around this young man’s heart. Where were the guardians and heroes for those who were so lost, lonely, and depressed that they couldn’t live in this world anymore?

The communities struggle to find answers. Grief permeates the very air. One of my most difficult conversations at Fort Yates was with the mother of a child who had committed suicide. She carried a burden so heavy she could barely stand. “I will never, ever forget the suicide of my daughter,” she told me. People have told her that she needs to try to get on with her life — live again. She never will, she said.

One of the spiritual leaders on the reservation at Standing Rock told me young people live in a more difficult world than that of their elders. In the past, they knew the enemy, he said.

In the classrooms, he said, they’re taught non-Native ways, but somewhere they hear a whisper that says they are still outsiders. Some rebel and rail against being seen as outsiders; some join in the mainstream; and others shrink into themselves and disappear.

In the media there is a stereotype that young people who kill themselves are involved in drugs, alcohol, and certainly poor students. Not altogether true, I was told.

One young man who committed suicide was well-rounded and forward-looking. He was a young man who seldom came to traditional ceremonies. His cousin who survived him was different. He had problems in school and the community. He struggled with almost everything and rebelled constantly, but he was a regular at ceremonies.

Little by little, he is now doing better. Somewhere he found some good role models. He found some heroes. Maybe he watched them out of the corner of his eye and they wouldn’t even recognize him, but he survived.

Identifying heroes in the past was easier maybe — they won wars, spoke great orations, carried dying soldiers out of harm’s way, but those heroes have limited influence today, it seems.

The heroes we need today may be those who stand beside us when we are the most rebellious — when nobody likes us: those who stand firm in the belief that we, as indigenous people, are special, that we were gifted from the Creator with talents and wisdom. Our heroes can be parents, grandparents, friends, teachers, family members, tribesmen, even those who may not know us personally but who speak to us through written words, recorded voice, and stories of the past.

It is a community responsibility to identify heroes for our young people and for our communities. We must believe strongly that we are all related.

Dorreen Yellow Bird is a Sahnish/Dakota/Lakota Indian. She is a columnist and writer for the Grand Forks Herald. Although she lives in Grand Forks, ND, she calls White Shield, ND, her home. She can be reached at dyellowbird@gfherald.com.