Confessions of a blogger

Ok when I decided to do this on confessions, it is because I want to cleanse my soul. I decided to go back to the first thing I wanted to confess. I realized I have alot to confess. The roots of evil were planted long ago.

*Anyway I will start at the age of 5 and this confession goes to my brother. When I told you to swing from that vine and yell like Tarzan...I knew it was a stereo....a big stereo from the 70's and I knew the vine was the cord. Hey you turned out ok and have an amazing tolerance for pain to your head, right?
*To the little boy in 1st grade, Greg. When we moved to the city and you told everyone I was a "dirty indian." I wrote your name all over everyone's desk with the crayons you stole from me. I stole them back and walked by after school to watch you scrub your name off the desks. I smiled when you cleaned after this "dirty indian."

*To another boy in 1st grade...Mark. When you kissed me on the playground and said you liked me. I am sorry I screamed, cried, and ran. I really did like you and your blue eyes and I think our children would have been beautiful.

*In second grade, to my grandma...I took your poodle...Mr. Bo Jangles or was it Jingles to school and he danced for everyone and then molested my friend's cat.

*In 4th grade to my teacher Mr. Collins. Everytime you turned your back I sent you death rays and death thoughts but my super powers were not fully developed...I heard you later passed and I am sorry if the powers wore you down.

*In 5th grade.....to our dearly departed neighbors. Your dog Puppy Joe did NOT crap that much in your yard. Me and my brother had to pick up the crap in our yard with one of those long handled pooper scoopers and we par-red up into your yard. Your roof was hole in one.

*In 6th grade, this confession is to the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. I only went to church because I had a crush on the Pastor's son. Forgive me.

*In 7th grade, to my friend Missy....every time I had a crush on someone you and your Daryl Hannah looks made a play for them. So when I said I liked that butt ugly guy at camp with the same name as me...I only did it to make you go out with him while I crushed on the pastor's son. I thought it was funny to see you hold that ugly guys hand though.

*To all the girls at Bible Camp in the "Big Girls" dorm. It was me who put the frogs in your beds, purses, showers, and toilets. God wasn't dammning you and I was surprised to see that none of you noticed my bed and purse untouched and unfrogged.

*To my brother Trav again...when you gave me the Wrist Rocket sling shot to defend us against those "bad guys." You should have taught me how to aim. That dirt clod that blasted your head was me. But hey, it sent you into a rampage that scared them away.

*To one of my best tippers when I bartended...Tony the Butcher. I never went on that second date with you because everytime I said something you said "riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!" Like the Fonz said "Heeeeeey." You even said it when I purposely said something wrong. Hey thanks for all the meat, steaks and other stuff....me and my kids enjoyed.

*To my kids, sorry I make you get me the remote even when I am closer. My mom did it to me, it is a vicious circle.

*To my mom and step dad.....the red paint on the front of the van....that was me. I know you argued over it and blamed each other, but you made me take my brother dinner and yeah, that is all I will say.

*To my brother Trav....I know you ain't with this chick anymore but when she asked who Susan was because you said it in your sleep...I didn't mean to tell her it was your ex...you guys should have told me you was all lying about it and in on it. I am not a narc.

* And last but not least, to my brother Jesse....that one time...I was the one who wrote "Wash Me Bitch" in the dust on the hood of your car....but it gave it some charm. Oh yeah...and sorry to all the siblings that got blamed.

Ok I have to end there........I will not confess up anymore details to anything for fear of prosecution. I plan to take the 5th if there are any further questions. Oh I am free...the burden is off of me.

busy and blocked

I am busy. I have so much beadwork to do and so little time. Not only that I have nothing to write about. I sat here to write yesterday and all I could do was look at the blank post.
i have until tomorrow to write something for the Journal and am still blocked. We'll see.
Ugh...writers block sucks!

Writing Challenge

pic from yahoo image search for the movie Skins.

I miss alot of the people on 360 and lately I reposted some of my stuff there that I wrote here. There are some awesome writers out there who put up terrific challenges and I decided to still participate in the challenges on 360 with that blog. One of my favorite challenges is Carol's Random Writing Challenge which gives you a choice 5 or 6 lines that you must write a story from. So the first line of my story is from one of her choices.
The rest of it is from me. Actually based a little bit on what my grandma went through here and things I seen. My grandma had a happier ending. She beat her cancer and she is still in remission. She sued the Indian Health Service and took them for about a quarter of a million.
The more I sit and talk with my husband the more and more i get into the injustice of our people. I truly think we was meant to hook up at this point on our lives. Here is my entry in Carol's challenge.

He scuffed his toe into the dirt and absent-mindedly kicked a cigarette butt.

“Yup” he said to himself. “These Black Hills were ours. At one time.”

He continued walking up the mountain. He was burnt. Old even. At age 45, he didn’t have much longer to live. The doctor at the IHS clinic told him so. Oh well. It’s not like they were really doctors anyway. The Indian Health Srvice paid big scholarship money out to people from all over the country for med school only to hire them in their tight budget hospitals. So each hospital on any reservation that was lucky enough to have a hospital mostly only had interns. Interns that didn’t really care about the people they served and made well. All they cared about was working off their student loans just to move away when they got done “serving their time.” Then they moved to towns by the name of Duluth and Woonsocket and such. Marry a nice girl their, join country clubs and put in long hours at their practice so they can play golf on Saturdays while drinking high balls. They had babies, grew bellies and built their 401k’s. Soon the time they did at the reservation hospital became a memory, only to be brought up again when people talked of charity and giving to the poor.

“Oh yeah” the fat cigar smoking doctor once said “back in the day I worked on a reservation at a hospital. “

And he would beam and his wife will pat his belly, proud her husband had them a step closer to heaven and the pearly gates. Nodding and thinking her man could fly with his cholesterol level as it was.

He would never tell of the time he seen the woman. The old woman. He seen her X-rays. He knew, but he was tired and didn’t want to do the paperwork. He seen the spot on her lung, over the months as she came in complaining of a chest cold.

“No.” he shook his head at her “It’s ok. You are ok. Just a slight infection.” He prescribed her antibiotics and motrin and sent her home. Only to see her again in a month.

After a few months of this routine, something kicked him in the ass. "What am I doing?'He thought but how could he bring himself to tell the woman now. So he kept it up for a full 18 months. Soon I will be done here on this god forsaken, diabetic land. I can get away with it…after all I am an intern….on a reservation.

Then one day the old woman’s family took her to a ceremony. There they told her she was leaving them. They cried. They took her to a city.

They got a “second opinion?”

He panicked, he only had a week or two left here.

They saw the tumor, it had spread and grown over 7 ribs.

The doctors in the city tried. They removed it and some of her lung and ribs. Years of smoking he told them. You know these people smoke the peace pipe all the time. trying to justify why it was so bad when she kept going to the doctor.

They looked at him knowingly, but not saying anything.

The woman passed away after her other lung collapsed. The night she left this world he seen her. In his dream.

She was walking down a long hallway towards him but she never got closer.

She pointed her finger at him.

“You and your people have done enough. You must stop. We were here. We cooperated with you. We only fought for what was promised us the first time. You have done enough. My people suffer. Do you know that? My people suffer!”

He woke up in a cold sweat feeling guilty and went to her funeral. He saw the people crying. Her 40 something children throwing themselves on her dead body and crying. Her grandchildren crying. Her grandsons singing with the drum through tears. He left before anyone seen him.

The next day he caught a flight out to Woonsocket where his college sweetie was waiting to make him fat, married and a father.

One boy saw him standing there. One boy.

The boy was 15 at the time. As he grew up and saw various relatives killed off by diabetes, a stand off with the evil government in 72, and by drunken driving.

He saw it all. He heard stories of how Sitting Bull was killed on government orders.

He was told of Crazy Horse and his pride. How he never gave up his fight for the Black Hills. How he always told people to remember him when they seen the Black Hills.

He remembered growing up hungry, waiting for rations. For government issued commodities. He heard stories around the inipi ceremony fire. Elders saying that each Indian was promised land to farm. Then the land was not suitable for farming. How the Black hills were promised then taken away. How, if we sold them we would bankrupt the U.S. government.

But the pride of the people would not ever sell out.

He finished his climb on the top of the mountain and he went to work. As he worked he thought lastly of his grandmother, lying in her casket. Not able to be buried like hers that went before her because it was illegal. He thought of how the doctors in the city advised his mother to take legal action against the Indian Health Service for letting the cancer spread in her lungs for almost two years. He remembered the young doctor standing there at the funeral, looking at his watch and rolling his eyes.

He finished what he was doing. He finished it.

He stood up and began to sing.

He pushed the button to detonate.

He died at age 42. He didn’t blow all of Mount Rushmore up but he put an good dent in the head of George Washington.

He did it for his people.

And for Paha Sapa. The Black Hills.

For Carols' Random Writing Challenge Number 7

I did it

I woke up this morning got myself a gun....
i held it to his head and said
BLOG MOTHAFUKKA BLOG!
And he did.





Ok, it wasn't like that but i made him write...the love of my lifetime....the man who put the muthafukkin stars in my eyes and hung my moon...he blogged!
YAY!
Check it out! Click it!
This is for Wounded Knee

This is me

This is who I am.
Some people know who I am.
“Oh, I can’t believe Bob and Jeaneen’s daughter grew up and writes now. Keep it up.”
Some people are just plain nice. Stop me in the casino even.
“Hey you! I like your writing!”
Some people are just plain rude.
“Hey, you should write something about me! Let people know who I am.”
Um ok, do something then. Roll over.
Some people got jokes.
“Put that in your book!”
Says someone related to me after he farted.
Or some people have the generic question.
“Who the hell are you?”

First off, I don’t really, really know that answer myself.
I am a great speller but bad typist, sometimes conformist sometimes not, sometimes I am a little to the right, but dance in the left New York Yankee fan and San Antonio Spurs hater.
I am a tough chick who cries during sad movies.
I care about politics and sometimes I hate it.
I watch the news, only to forget it.
I am a mother of 4, wife of one, who would only be thought of as that if she didn’t write something. Anything.
I am a child of the Wounded Knee Standoff, not a result of it, but born during it.
I am the grand-daughter of a GOON and AIM. Don’t blame me. Blame my parents.
I am still learning to understand that turmoil, along with trying to learn the rest of the history of our people.
The more I learn, the more radical I see myself growing. The more I feel the blood pumping.
The more I am around tradition, even though I was raised amongst it, the more I appreciate it.
The traditional side of my family recognizes, hugs and holds all. Including beliefs, cultures and my children & I.
Our people hang onto our traditions. We remember the past. We have it like that.
We will never forget Wounded Knee, Little Big Horn, or The Black Hills.
We will never forget who we are, what was once ours and still ours.

So if you want to know who I am just keep reading.
Really, I am just a rez chick with an opinion, that you just read.

Oglala Lakota, baby.

Explained Absence

I haven't been blogging much lately. You all know I blog alot.
I think I am fading out. I don't have very much readers. I know one person cannot comment out of fear of the fact that her family will find her and read her inner most private thoughts and be offended. I know another person that told me she misses me in an email. And then I got an email from this guy who just now found me and used to read me on 360. That was cool.
Anyway, let me explain what I have been up to.
My dad is having a ceremony on Sunday. Tomorrow already. My dad is a heyoka, or as he called it a "contrary" in the white language. He has been this way for all his life. Having dreams of thunder beings and lightning. The spirits talk to him. This is his second year having a Kettle Dance Ceremony.
I can't explain it much, because I am not sure what it is. Except that it is a healing ceremony.
So, anyway for the past week, my brother and husband and I having been going to see him and help him with whatever he needs.
Tomorrow is the big day. I have to get up early and make bread.
Yesterday evening, we sat in a tipi and talked to my dad for over 3 hours as the sunset. He seemed so happy to have us there, he was joking and saying "Are you guys really here?"
One of the last things he said to us before we left was about Chief Crazy Horse. He told us of an old song that translated to "When you see the Black Hills think of me." He told us about how sad this song is. The Black Hills were taken from us for gold and here we sit on this reservation with nothing. We are a suffering people because they illegally took our land. We are the ones that should be benefitting off the Black Hills. Living up there and having riches. But we sit on this reservation, with nothing. That is why Chief Crazy Horse said "When you see the Black Hills think of me." After his death, we were forced on this reservation and today the people suffer.
I couldn't get that out of my head. I watched almost all of Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee. HBO is showing it all month, if you haven't seen it I recommend it. That is my people.
I don't know when I will post again, but it will be soon.
Ake (again)
Dana

Condemned on Potter Street (360 repost)

(pic from Yahoo Search not related to the story. the story is a repost from an assortment of creepy stories I wrote.)



When I was 24, Carter and I broke up for the first time. (Not the last.)

I had spent years working while he was supposed to be going to college and he dropped out and screwed around. We had 2 sons at the time, Ty and Jalen. They were 2 and 3. We shared custody of them at first, but he was not responsible enough. (He still isn't, sad.)

I decided to go to college then and enrolled at the local community college. I was able to get a 2 bedroom apartment on the second floor of an old house in the older part of the factory town that i lived in. I remember freaking out one day when we was walking back from the store because the hosue had a third floor and no way to get to the 3rd floor. I finally noticed one day that the entrance was in the closet of the boys' room. That scared me because the boys would not sleep in there. Instead they always slept with me in the living room on the futon and would cry when I put their toys back in the closet in their room. They would always point and say "chee chee." Which is slang from the reservation for ghost. So I always avoided their room.

People would spend the night and see things in my apartment. I never did. One time my friend Tessa seen a little girl standing by the front door and looking at her so she closed her eyes and went back to sleep. My brother Jesse seen a woman standing by the doorway between my room and the living room and made my mom come after him at 3 in the morning. My brother's friend Nate seen a woman there too in my kitchen.

I felt creepy there. I did, I won't deny that I stayed up all the time until my eyes absolutely closed on their own. I did not sleep good. From the previous blog you all know what a chicken I am. So even though I never seen anything I was scared.

The best thing about the apartment is that it was 2 blocks from the grocery store, and a drugstore. One of those cool drug stores that sold everything from make up, to candles, to toys, to home repair supplies. I loved that store. In the winter time I used to put the boys in a sled and pull them to the store and we would throw it behind a hedge. I didn't care, you do what you gotta do. Before the snow hit, I would pull them in a wagon. This is when I saw what creeped me out about living there.

We was going to the store to get some snacks for the Yankee game. The year was 1996 and it was the year I absolutely fell in love with their new shortstop. I loved his eyes and they way he played with so much heart. So I was pulling the boys to the store and the next house after our garage was a duplex. It had 3 seperate porches...I never notcied it before, other than the fact that it was rundown.

Well that day I noticed it because a little old lady was out front. She was on the last porch going towards the store. She had an old broom and was sweeping all the leaves off of her porch.

"Well hello there." she says to me. She stops sweeping, so I stop the wagon.

"Hi." I say, I absolutely adore elderly people as long as they don't hate me and the rest of the world.

"Beautiful day today." she says looking around "Thought I better come out and take care of these leaves that are piling up on my porch."

"Yeah good day for that." I say, I have to tell the boys to shhh because they won't stop fidgeting.

"What handsome young men you have there, and so well behaved. How old are they?"

"2 and 3, the one in front is Jalen and the one in back is Ty." I tell her, they immediately stop moving and look at her.

"I had 2 boys too and a girl. But they all have their own lives now." She says looking in the distance.

"Well I better get to the store." I tell her, I had to get back to see the hot new short stop, I had to.

"Ok well, stop by and visit me sometime. I always bake and never have any visitors to appreciate it anymore. " she starts sweeping again "My name is Alice."

"Ok Alice, I will. I am kind of new around here and these boys can eat. So count on it." I start pulling the wagon again and feel all warm on the inside because I made a new friend that day.

We go to the store and get our snacks something for dinner and leave...I had to watch all 9 innings with the rookie Jeter...so I am in a hurry.

I am one of those people that walk most of the time with their head down. I look up when we get to Alice's house so I can smile at her, just in case she is still outside. I noticed her porch is full of leaves. Old leaves. Rotting leaves. WTF? I just seen her sweeping it. Then I see old newspapers. The free one that comes out on Wednesdays with nothing but classidfied ads. Piled up and in various states of aging. I look at the house. Some windows are broke out and there is a county paper on the door warning of the house. CONDEMNED it says on a bright pink paper. It warns people not to trespass for this reason.

I couldn't believe it. I was freaked out. I turned to the boys to ask them if they remembered Alice. They just look at me, their minds on the gummy bears I bought to shut them up during the game.

That house was in Red Wing, MN. I lived there for a few more years but not on Potter Street. I remember when they tore that duplex down and wondered who Alice was and what happened to her?