Huddling with the Tribal Council

“When an eagle can’t fly, it’s because they’re full of shit—but every politician needs a bird or two to remind them which way the wind blows.” ~ The Clown

“When an eagle can’t fly, it’s because they’re full of shit—but every politician needs a bird or two to remind them which way the wind blows.” ~ The Clown

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The tribal chamber came to life. Councilmen were drawn to the smell of coffee and rolls in the rose light of the subzero North Dakota morning. Jokes and laughter warmed up the day. Warmed up the spirits. The winter Missouri River fog heaved and began to lift as chairman Pete Storm Walker called the meeting to order. “The Council of the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Agency is hereby called to order,” as his gavel hit the table, “All rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.”

The chair began by recognizing Councilman Lou Wolf Spirit from Like-a-Fishhook-Village. “Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I dream about our history all the time. You know, some say this reservation was named for Jesus’s disciple, Bartholomew. It would be great if that was true. He was a true saint, I’ve been told, and he would have understood us as equals. He suffered for us. They took all his hide off him. Must of really hurt. We would be proud to carry that name but, instead, this place got named for a third-rate impersonator, Bartholomew Berthold. He was some kind of an Eye-Talian fur trader man. Made us all into farmers when he and his greedy pals rubbed out all the four-legged critters around these parts. He killed buffalo, beavers, and even skunks. Rumor is that them trappers even ate their burros when all the game ran out! You know, asses eating burros! Like them bureaucrats that work for the Burrow of Indian Affairs! Who wouldn’t want to learn to live on squash and corn after knowing that?” The chairman rolled his eyes and smiled. Wolf Spirit, always the glib one, was just beginning his warm up.

“Lou, what’s this got to do with our business today?” Storm Walker interrupted. He was chosen as chairman because he knew how to play the straight man.

“Nothing, your honor,” Wolf Spirit smiled, “but we really should be eating better food for breakfast, Italian kind of food. I heard them Eye-Tal-Aliens really love to stuff themselves on spaghetti and red wine when they start off their days. Here, all we got was these here stale sweet rolls from the trading post.” Quiet laughter was heard in the chamber. “If old Berthold Bartholomew were still alive, he’d show us breakfast! He’d be chewing on dead beaver tendons for breakfast and pulling fur out of his teeth!”

“You got that right, Lou.” As the laughter began to die, the Chairman plunged ahead. “Let’s get to our work. First up is the appointment of our new tribal attorney. Albert, take it away.”

Judge Antelope Ears had the floor, and he knew he had to run with it. “We discussed hiring an attorney to help us for years now, but we’ve had no luck and very few applicants. The younger generation around here is getting restless, and I can tell you as tribal judge and policeman that they’re getting smarter about their rights. They think we’re all too old to be running the tribe. We also haven’t been doing good in state court. When we file a complaint about local white ranchers letting their cattle graze in our fields all we hear is that we lack jurisdiction over White cows. We need help and this fellow here is a lawyer who came to save us.”

A few giggles were heard in the council chambers. A chant went up, “He’s here to save us! He’s here to save us! He’s here to save us! Save us from ourselves!” Antelope Ears looked over his shoulder and smiled, “Let me introduce Mamzer Hearsay, all the way from Minnesota.”

Mamzer braced himself. It was now or never. Come out with your guns blazing. “Thank you, judge, I am Mamzer Hearsay, a stable genius. Yes, I am here to save you and I want to thank the crowd for noticing my power. Now, to begin, I heard the talk about red wine and spaghetti,” Mamzer’s sweat was beading on his upper lip.

“You know it’s against the law for Indians to drink any kind of alcohol and I think it’s fair to say that when you hire me as tribal attorney, I’ll prosecute any tribal member who even has a dream about drinking.” A hush fell over the room. Mamzer reached in grandma’s pink satchel and pulled out his copy of the Fort Laramie Treaty. “This is the document that put all of you to this godforsaken patch of earth and put you on the path to alcohol. You hate white people and you’re all drunks. I’m going to fix both your problems.” Stone silence. So far, so good.

“It’s always been amusing to we more cultured white people that you Indians don’t work,” Mamzer plunged ahead. “The meaning of life is to have a good job, a good house with a garage, a good car, and a working furnace,” he shuddered involuntarily and pulling a hankie out of his pink satchel wiped his forehead and trembling lips. The icicles on the eves of the chamber room began to refract rainbow light patterns on the chamber walls. The Clown admired his own art.

“Oh, yes, and to support the government of the United States! You don’t do that by comparing the Bureau of Indian Affairs to a group of jackasses with no morality!” He banged his fist on table, took a deep breath, and looked hopefully around.

Mamzer didn’t have to look far. The Chairman’s eyes flashed. Wolf Spirit surveyed the room and returned his glaze with a wink. Was this guy for real? Where did Antelope Ears find this sweaty little mess?

After a brief silence, Wolf Spirit made a motion to go into executive session. The full council approved. The room cleared before he began to speak, “We just heard from the Genghis Khan of white lawyers, the dumbest Khan man around!” he guffawed. “What are your thoughts, councilmen and councilwomen?”

“Albert, what are this gentleman’s qualifications to be our tribal attorney?” Storm Walker turned to the tribal judge. “He seems to have many opinions about Indians, most of them outright lies.”

“He behaves like he has no relatives and no soul,” Wolf Spirit chimed in.

“Good point,” the Chairman agreed. “But who would want to be a relative to that pack of lies? We all have souls. His soul is just nasty and mean.”

“He’s also mouthy,” Antelope Ears began. “And he’s offensive, especially his low opinion about us Indians. But step ahead for a minute. We might be able to use his ignorance to our advantage in state court. He could be our own useful fool. Remember, everything you heard him say right now is what we’ll hear every time we take a White rancher to state court. You all know. How Indians are too lazy to fence their land, too lazy to get out of mud huts and into stick built houses, and too dumb to go to Bismarck and buy new trucks. Mamzer would fit right in and just might be able to get those idiots to listen to our side of things.”

“You know, there’s lots of rumors that the Army will build a big dam downstream and flood us out of here. Moving us to the Top Lands,” Brown Wolf offered. “When that happens, we’ll need all the mean souls on our side we can get.”

“We should hire him, then,” Old Bird giggled. “He’s got the bead on us, if you’ll pardon my pun, and maybe can put the beads back on those fools in White court and in the Army.” This was too much, even for Wolf Spirit.

Not bad. Not bad at all, mused the Clown. Subtle and effective, tying the sale of Manhattan to the Dutch for costume jewelry in 1626 to the present danger facing the tribe. He’d might have to think about recruiting this Wolf Spirit as his chief of staff.

Wolf Spirit winked at Chairman Brown Wolf and laughed out loud. “But we got to help him clean up his act. That pink suitcase is way too much, and he looks like a glass of warm buttermilk could kill him.”

“What do the rest of you think?” Storm Walker asked the council. “Is this something we want to do? I mean, this is taking a big chance.” Murmurs and ear whispering continued for several minutes. Mamzer was asked back into the room.

“Let me help you make your decision,” Mamzer said surveying the blend of hostile and amused faces after taking his chair. “I’m looking for work. I’m not the best lawyer but I’m honest. I can represent the tribe, but I’ve got to have my opinions. They’re who I am, and I can’t change.” There. Was that honest enough? Would that work? He’d practiced that in the men’s room.

“I move that we hire this Mamzer guy,” Wolf Spirit offered. “I don’t think he’s going to last here on the Rez but let’s try him out. I think we give him six months at $25 dollars a month and see what he can do. We’ve been whupped every time we show up at white court and maybe, just maybe, he can turn things around. I don’t like being called a drunk and lazy, mud hut Indian, but this might be worth a shot.”

Storm Walker seconded, and the motion passed by head nods. “Congratulations, Tribal Attorney!” Antelope Ears smiled and looked upward to the heavens. Mamzer winced. $25 dollars was only a sliver of when he might have earned in Minneapolis but then nobody was jumping up and down to hire him back home. It was far better than nothing. His tough talk had worked, and a new chapter was unfolding at last!

“Where will I live?” Mamzer asked.

“We have an earth lodge you can rent,” Antelope Ears responded. “You’d call it a mud hut. We don’t live in those any longer, but it’d be good for you to see how what you call lazy Indians used to live so that you can understand where we came from. Be careful though, the place is damp plus it’s crawling with worms, snakes, and other things that go bump in the night.” So began Mamzer Hearsay’s short but eventful affiliation with the Three Affiliated Tribes.

Odin, antisemitic by nature and warlike in practice, saw Mamzer for the useful fool he was. He doesn’t have a chalice to piss in when it comes to valor, he thought reminding himself of the sacred objects sacked from medieval England’s churches by his Viking hordes.

The lyrics of a timeless Hidatsa song wafted off the council chamber walls.

We see the land. We see the sky.

We know an evil snake lives in the world.

An eagle isn’t the only useful spirit.

Fools have a use. We can help them fly.

Future Enemies

“When the world can’t tell who your father is, or even what you’re made of, just dribble until they tremble—because a bouncing ball tells more truth than a thousand wagging tongues.” ~ The Clown

Johnny Antelope Ears was the odd Indian. He didn’t look quite like his other teammates, but no one really cared. What folks around Elbowoods really valued was his talent on the court. With a lighter complexion, a streak of reddish hair and hazel eyes, he might have passed for white in Bismarck or Minot. Maybe. His mother had never married and there was gossip that a rouge highway patrolman was lurking somewhere near the tribal woodpile. Raised by his grandparents, Judge Albert Antelope Ears and his wife, Johnny grew up loved and happy. 1942 would rock their worlds.

“Johnny, you’re the best grandson one could have,” the judge cooed.

“Thank you, grandpa. I love you, too.”

“Your team is doing pretty good. You’re a star, grandson. Don’t neglect your schoolwork. Your people need you to get a good education.”

“How about joining the service, grandpa? We’re fighting Krauts and Japs. I want to do my part.”

“Indians have always done their part when it comes to fighting for the red, white, and blue. Even when we’re treated poorly by Washington. It’s our way.”

“So, it’s OK if I enlist?”

“I didn’t say that,” sighed the judge. “We don’t know where the war is going. You should start college and see what happens.”

“My father never would have done that! He would have been the first Indian to show up at the recruitment center.”

“Unfortunately, grandson, nobody knows who your father is. Not even your mother. Maybe he wasn’t even an Indian.”

Johnny’s ambiguous lineage wasn’t unusual on or off the reservation. In Lakota, a hamlet two hundred miles to the east, another baller was equally ignorant about his father. Eric Bimdahl and his mother were the talk of the town when things ran to boring which was most of the live long day. Every single day. Monotony. Most of the town hated most of the town. They were sitting ducks for Odin.

Lakota’s Scandinavians loved their gossip Eric thought as he dribbled his basketball down the town’s only sidewalk. It was cold. So were the souls. Growing up here meant growing up strong, dad or no dad. Be strong among the bullies. He’d learned to bully back.

The door to the town’s only bar opened. Sven Moses, town drunk and oracle, stumbled down the stairs. Straightening himself, he spied his next mark. “Hey, Eric! You know what’s black and blue and bleeds on the side of the road?” Sven Moses asked. “The next asshole that asks me whether it’s cold enough for me. Hahaha!”

Ignoring Eric’s irritation Sven asked, “How’s your mom doing?” The Copenhagen drool that had escaped his lips was now en route to his unshaven neck. The Clown had ordered this brown icicle in all its fetid splendor. Sven’s yellow tooth lit up the pale winter light. Sven fancied himself as a direct descendent of Odin but lineage here and throughout North Dakota was mostly unprovable. He shared that fate with Eric and Johnny.

“She makes the best krumkake and lefse in these parts. Tasty. But I hear she’s real lonely and unhappy. How about if I come over tonight for a little snack and warm her up?” Eric tried to move past him, but Sven blocked his path. The odor of expired Old Spice mixed with the freshly freezing snus was nauseous, even to Sven himself.

“Ask her yourself, Sven. She ain’t lonely, though.” Some people were so stupid and thought they knew more than they did Eric thought. It was so hard to escape wagging tongues in Lakota. But there was basketball. There was always basketball. He was the star player for the Lakota High School Ice Holes and there he found solace. They had to respect him when he had the ball in his hands.

“The highway patrol been through today?” Sven asked. “I hear they’ve got them new fast cars. You know. Quick. Like detergent. Act fast. Leave no ring.” He laughed at his own joke, spit on the ground, and went back in the bar. There was a new barrel of lutefisk in the back, and he wanted first dibs. Drooling over the doorstop, the chance to rake that lye-soaked Nordic fish delicacy across his gums warmed his soul. Gelatinous goo always hit the spot.

Eric headed down the street still dribbling the scuffed basketball on the frozen sidewalk, pretending not to remember a lifetime of insults and innuendo. Seething, his dribbles grew more rapid as the ball lost its bounce in the cold air. A daytime high of sixteen degrees took the air right out of the ball. Lakota had no clothes dryers to breathe life back into a flat ball.