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Only On The Rez

-Snow is a good thing because it covers the trash.
-Spring means forgotten trash and mud.
-Christmas is really tax season and Santa works for H&R Block.
-Jealousy and love is measured in broken windows and windshields.
-It don't count if your 3rd cousins or more.
-Panty Tree is full after the prom.
-The shoulder of the road on the way to the dump is called the "trash lane" so those hauling trash can drive slowly there.
-Stray dogs are legendary and have names, just no homes.
-Everyone that makes popovers sit in the same place and sell the same thing, thus I dubbed it Popover Wars.
-Someone will steal the cheese out of your fridge but leave your TV alone.
-Someone will steal your air conditioner out of your window while it is running and you are sitting by it.
-You can get "death by cream corn" when someone throws commod cans at you.


You all heard the term before, "Only on the Rez..." Almost everyday, so please if you live here or ever lived here or on any rez...please add to this phrase in the comments.

Without Grams

Without Grams
By: Dana Lone Hill

It has been awhile since I lost my Grams, and I am not used to it. I have a hard time adjusting, I cry, fight these feelings and try hard to forget my pain of life without her. I even talk to people, friends, relatives and ask them “How?”
How do I get over losing my grams? She’s gone…and how do I deal with it? You know what people tell me? They say it takes time; you will be alright, ok Dana. And then they tell me how it was to lose their Grandma and how they dealt with it. Then they cry after awhile and they can’t handle the pain of losing their grams, the woman that set the path in thier lives, the woman who taught them, like my gram taught me- to be strong and not take crap from anyone. And now all of a sudden, I have to go through the rest of my life without her. How do I do that? I realized after seeing, hearing, and lending my shoulder to more than a few, that no matter what my Grams wasn’t coming back here on Earth to be here for me. I realized how selfish I was to think she would stay here on Earth for me and only me forever.
No longer could I just pick up the phone and ask about important things or talk about things that mattered to me, in life, like I tried to do so many times in the last few months.
Yes, Grams I did vote for Barack.
How do you make creamed peas?
Is there school tomorrow?
Do you know how the weather will be?
Grandma, you know the Vikings rule.
Can you please tell me the secret to your potato salad?
I know you love the Cubs, but you know the Yankees rule,
How come you never told me Elvis was so cool?

I started thinking about all the seemingly stupid questions and statements I bothered her with and started thinking about how she put up with me. I love my grandmother truly and deeply but what can I do? I can’t wave a magic wand and bring her back. Then the other day during the Superbowl, I realized she didn’t leave me.
It was in the middle of frying chicken that I thought of how I called her one other time during the Super bowl from Minnesota and pleaded for her to teach me to make fried chicken.
I must have taught you well, she said, because I am making fried chicken too. We stayed on the phone for the next two hours burning up my phone bill and she taught me to fry chicken, her way. She also taught me potato salad that day, and although it is good, it is not the secret recipe that I think she took to heaven with her. I started thinking of all the other things she taught me in life, like my deep appreciation for sports, my soft spot for cats and dogs, my awesome sense of humor and my ability to write. I didn’t know she wrote until I saw an article she wrote for The Lakota Times way back when her mother and my great grandmother passed away, in her honor.
Her honoring her mother through writing for her inner strength made me realize that those we were raised by and grew up with don’t really leave us. They stay with us by all the inner strength they passed on, skills they passed on, and things they taught us about life…like a simple bowl of potato salad.

The Legend of the $2 Shit

When my mom lived in South St. Paul MN, (or was it West, I get them confused) she lived about a block from Walgreens. One thing I never knew from growing up on the reservation is that a city can just turn your water off...for not paying your bill. I knew like lights and stuff can go off but WATER???? I guess for civilized folks thats easy to see, but water? lol. Now I know how my ancestors felt back in the day when they thought "How the hell do you sell land?"

So by the time my mom lived in South St Paul (or West), I was used to the concept of getting water turned off, being I was 32 I had to hustle around a time or two to pay the bill just to have the luxury of flushing the toilet, which brings me to my story of my brother Jesse.

When my mom's water got shut off, instead of waiting for her to pay the bill later in the day, he trucks it to Walgreens' buys two gallons of drinking water just so he can walk back to her house and take a shit to flush the toilet, thus became the Legend of the $2 Shit.

What I never understood was why didn't he just use the public restroom at Walgreen's, then again when men shit they like to take over 20 minutes and marinate in their own stink.

(pictured above is the reciept from the $2 shit that my mom saved, god I love my family!)

Just an update

Finally bought a new computer and it is sweet.
I am apprenticing as a quiller....sweeter.
I will post a pic of all the quill colors I dyed in the last two days.

I have learning everything from plucking a porc to picking quills that are the right size....all that is left is the wrapping and damn if it isn't hard.

I believe I learned the right way though, from the beginning. The process is long and hard and time consuming.
In these steps.
Getting a dead porcupine, usually roadkill but I just purchased 5 pounds from Montana and there was hardly any hair at all in them.
Washing the quills with Dawn dishsoap to get the dirt and grease off.
Rinsing them then soaking them in fabric softener so they don't get staticky.
Next you lay them out and let them dry, always turning so they air dry.
After you boil your dye and dye the quills which is a time consuming process in itself because they quills have to constantly be watched and turned, in order for the right color.
After rinsing the color off they need to be dried again....then they are ready to be picked looking for the right size.
When that is done you must select a pattern and trace onto rawhide. The pattern is then cut very carefully with an Xacto blade.
You choose the colors for the pattern and proceed to wrap the item you just cut out. After the item is wrapped you then prepare it for sale, such as putting on earwire or jump rings ot necklace clasps or a leather tie.
Hu, and some people thought it was just a pair of earrings.
This is tradition that carried on into the contemporary age.
Pictured above is an earring and necklace set by Anita Big Crow Begay.

Here are the quills before I dyed all of them.


After I dyed them




Colors you never seen in quill work

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The man with the shiny pipe puffing out cherry tobacco smoke looked at the modern day warrior and said:

What is the belief of your people on heaven and hell?

The modern day warrior stood by the pool table in the polished area of this man's house that he just met at the bar. He wore a leather jacket, was smoking a cigarette, and held the bottle of rum the man gave him to swig on. He took a long drag of his smoke, a gulp of the rum and answered:

There is no heaven or hell. Our lives here on Earth are as bad as it gets. This is our hell, heaven is next.

The man with a collection of fossils encased in locked cases worth more than the young warrior's income, snorted:

Ha, no wonder your peoplewere bad ass warriors. I would ride into battle too if life here was hell!

He laughed as the modern warriors realized all of his ways of beliefs from generations back suddenly came to a halt, by this man, he met in a bar.

The man sharpens his pool cue and swigs the rest of his brandy:

But what if, what if hell is really night after night of twisted dreams and heaven is when we awake...and then, there is nothing else?

...life and death by post it note...

She was tired. She worked for a non profit trying to save the world.

Her days faded to nights and most the time she only remembered her head hitting the pillow.

She woke with a hangover, head pounding. It had become a habit to buy a bottle of gin on her bus ride back. After her divorce and her ex was awarded full custody, she had nothing but her Tanqueray and tonic, and her cat. She would drown herself in gin to forget the problems of her clients.

"Your daughter called, you missed her birthday party last night." Her co worker yelled at her.

She forgot? How could she? She went to her office and looked at her desk. there was post it notes layered and piled everywhere. She knew she wrote it on a pink one, she began peeling off the layers of post it notes.

Doctor's appointments, clients appointments, vet appointments, reminders to buy this, pick up that.....until under a note about an appt. at court, she found it. Her baby girls birthday party reminder.

She looked at her post its, layered everywhere. In those layers was a life she didn't live. A life that slipped through her fingers by post it note.


Little reminders that faded from time....