The Tao of Nookomis Page 12

  “Aniin Neeji Bemaadizing. Makaday Migizi Equay nin dizinikaz. Maggie Manypenny nindizinikaz zhaganashshimong. Hello, fellow human beings. Black Eagle Woman is my name. Maggie ManyPenny is my English name.

  “I’m here tonight to talk with you about our Native kids and special education. I suppose I have a special place in my heart for these kids. You see, I was identified and placed in special education as learning disabled from the third grade on all the way through high school. I suppose in a way maybe I belonged there, for at least some of those years, but now that I’m older, I wonder if maybe I just didn’t need a jumpstart. And now that I’m a teacher, a Native teacher and special educator myself, I want to advocate and ensure that none of our reservation young ones ends up in special classrooms unless they truly belong there. And likewise, I want the ones who really need it to receive the services they deserve.

  “I want to say from my perspective the reasons so many of our Native kids end up in special education. The reasons have to do with a variety of things: of coming from families that are poor, where there is little in the way of reading or enrichment materials in the home; of events in their home life that interfere with their schooling; of the decisions made by teachers, the vast majority being white teachers, mind you, and white administrators, making decisions that result in a special education placement; of teachers and administrators who know little if anything about Native kids, teaching Native kids, and have little if any knowledge about our language, history, and culture; administrative policies (discipline, curriculum, instruction) that favor mainstream (white) kids over our Native kids; pressure to put our kids in special education because of the state tests and graduation standards. Mostly, however, I think the issue lies in subjectivity in the psychological and assessment practices that are used to determine placement. Somewhere in these practices the race card is exposed. Why else do the vast majority of the kids in special education classrooms have brown skin? Why else is there such a high incidence of Black, Hispanic and Native kids in SLD (specific learning disability) and EBD (emotional behavioral disorder) placements all over this country?

  “You people can’t fool me and tell me that so many of our Native kids belong in these placements. I’ve been there. I am there.”

  you should have seen that school board room when I sat down. You could have heard a pin drop it got so quiet. And when I sat down I was so emotional my voice was cracking and I started crying, and my mind was flashing all the things from my life experience that led me there to that room, that night.

  So I’m going to watch those people like a hawk, I am. Everything in my experience has led me here to this place. When I see the little ones in the center, when I see them walking down the road, when I see them dancing at the pow-wows, I see me. I see that little girl that was me in each and every one of them. This is my reason for being here.

  This is why I am.

  Desiree

  Excuse me for talking like this, but I’m so pissed off right now I’m just shaking. I just came from that school. I wanted to tell them to go f--- themselves, but I just sat there and took it, biting my lip so hard I could taste blood. Them people are always telling what’s wrong with us and how we should be raising our kids and all, and I just get sick of it. You know? Sometimes I just want to punch someone just hard. If that bitch teacher says one more thing to piss me off, I’m going to.

  They’re telling me that my girl belongs in the special behavior class. Desiree ain’t no angel, but what about all them White kids that are always raising hell? Do you see them sitting in any special classes? Shit no. And what is this assessment B.S. they keep telling me about? So someone checked this and that on a piece of paper, and that shows she belongs in that room. They ain’t seen her here at home helping me with her brothers. She takes care of them like a big sister should. And they ain’t seen her in the summer when she works for the rez cleanup crew and gives me some of her check so we have enough to live on. None of them A-holes were there with that f------ sheet of paper to check off that. They ain’t seen her at ceremonies. They ain’t seen her help her aunties. They ain’t ever seen her bring food to elders at the pow-wows. They ain’t ever seen her dance. She moves so strong, so beautiful, it makes me cry sometimes I’m so proud of her. They ain’t ever seen her selling my crafts and giving me the money. They ain’t ever seen her give the hindquarters of every deer she ever shot to those who need it more than we do.

  I’m just so damn tired of hearing them always tell me what’s wrong with my girl. Like she’s some damn demon child or something, ’cause she ain’t.

  Maybe they should be assessed, put themselves in a class with behavior problems for the way they treat us Indians. For the way everyone in every f------ store we walk into follows us around like we’re gonna steal something. For the way they talk to us like we are f------ deaf every time we walk into that school to hear the bad news they are always dishing out to us. For the way they pretty near put every one of our kids in those special classrooms, and say they’re all gang-bangers and won’t amount to nothing. For all the lies they spread about us in their history books and for ignoring the real truth. For teaching Spanish and French, and now Mandarin Chinese, for Chrissakes, but then lying to the Indian parent committee that they can’t afford to hire an Ojibwe language teacher because the school is broke. For the way they think all of us are nothing but lazy, good-for-nothing drunks. They should check off a sheet for all that.

  If there’s anyone that needs a behavior class, it’s them. If there’s anyone who needs to learn how to behave, it’s them.

  THIS ALL STARTED about a year ago. Desiree was thirteen and in the seventh grade. She told me she was going to basketball practice every day after school, but that day the school called and said she couldn’t be in basketball because of her grades and the fact she’d been missing too much school. I didn’t know a thing about any of that. I told them I made sure she was on the bus every morning. So when the school called that day and told me all of that I was really shook, because all along I thought things were going great for Desiree, especially when she had a tough time after her grandpa died.

  “Mom, I’ll catch a ride home after practice with Mel,” she’d been saying every day on her way out the door. Mel’s her friend, and was on the basketball team as well. Her mother had a car you could trust to make it into town and back, so she always picked her daughter up after practice.

  So every weeknight Desiree was getting dropped off at home about 7:30 p.m. or so and here she wasn’t even in basketball. And many times she’d come in talking about practice and here she was spinning a big tale to me and like some sucker I’d been soaking it all in like it was all the truth. I guess I had no reason not to believe her. I just know when I found out she was lying to me I had this whole rush of feelings—sad, angry, anxious … maybe more angry than anything. But still, she was my little girl, my Desiree. And there was love mixed in there with the anger as well. Love.

  “Mrs. Strong?” It was the school woman’s voice on the other end of the line. “Is this Desiree Ogema’s mother?” She got that Ogema name from that worthless father of hers.

  “This is she,” I said in a flat tone, expecting bad news. Schools never call with good news.

  “This is the school. Mrs. Strong, is Desiree home today? She’s been absent quite a bit lately and it’s becoming a concern.”

  Phone calls like that were so hard. Like getting punched right in the stomach. I didn’t even know what to say at first. My lips were all dry. Then I said I would talk to her when she came home from basketball practice and that school lady told me she wasn’t even in basketball, either. So then I really started worrying. Where was she? Where had she been spending her days? A lot of things start racing through your mind when things like this happen. Was she hanging around with some boyfriend? Was she using? Then of course I really started to worry about her getting hurt or killed, and I started to think about the cops pulling in the driveway and telling me something awful had h
appened to her. Bad news was my life. I’d had some pretty rugged times and had more than my share of bad news. Still, you never got used to it. It still hurt. You might look just hard on the outside but inside you’re just lost and bawling.

  So anyways, I sat there by the window waiting for her to come home that day and pretty soon it was 7:45 p.m., then 8:00 p.m. At 8:15, I called Gerri, Mel’s mother, but the phone just rang on and on, no answer. Then I put my little ones, Derek and Justin, down for the night, and as I came walking down the stairs I saw headlights snaking in the driveway, and it was Desiree slamming the car door and walking down the path toward the door swinging her gym bag as she went.

  Of course I was right there at the door when she walked in.

  “Where you been?” I couldn’t hide being pissed off. I could hardly talk I was so mad. My lower lip was just shaking.

  “Holy,” she said. “Geez, I been at practice. You know that.”

  “You ain’t been at no practice,” I started in on her, my voice getting higher and louder, and her spitting those lies, and then she stormed into her room and slammed the door, and I heard her saying, “I hate this f------ place.”

  And I was hollering at her to watch her mouth or I’d wash it out with soap, and I wanted to go in her room and just slap her. But I didn’t because I had to get control of myself before this got out of control and she ended up storming out the door, and then what would I do?

  Then just as quickly as it all started the house got quiet again and I had to have a smoke and I fumbled with the pack and had trouble with the lighter because my hands were shaking. Soon enough I was pacing the living room and puffing away like a freight train and trying to calm down. And then my mind was racing and wondering if I had to worry about her sneaking out her window as soon as I went to bed so she wouldn’t have to face me in the morning, so I ended up sitting up half the night like some kind of watch dog.

  I relived her whole life that night. My Desiree.

  She was born at the Indian hospital in Cass Lake when we were living up on Leech Lake rez. Even the nurses said she was the most beautiful Indian baby you ever saw. I was only sixteen myself and still a kid. That worthless father of hers was eighteen. We were living with his parents after my dad kicked me out when he found out I was pregnant. That was a whole other story. What do you do when you’re out on the street, pregnant? My mom, I remembered, she was just begging my dad to let me stay at home. I remembered she was crying and calling him every name in the book, but he was stubborn as ever, and once he stood his ground there was no changing his mind. I got that stubborn streak from him, that miserable SOB. So that’s how I ended up living with Desiree’s father on Tract 33, the rez housing project, up there in Cass Lake.

  Desiree was a beautiful little girl, she still is. She was an easy baby. Slept all night most of the time. I tried to be a good parent, but you know when you’re still a kid yourself, I just missed having fun myself and I suppose sometimes I left her with sitters I’d never leave anyone with now that I’m older, so I could go out and have a good time once in a while. But I always made sure she was clean and had decent clothes and stuff like that.

  Anyway, her father disappeared when Desiree was only about six months old, and I was out on the street again because I couldn’t just stay there with his parents, and I was sleeping on couches of friends with my baby and doing whatever I could to get by—cleaning their houses, babysitting, stuff like that. That went on for quite a few months, and then I finally was able to get on AFDC (Aid for Families of Dependent Children) and find my own place. I found out that worthless father of hers moved to the Cities. He hasn’t shown his skinny ass around me ever since. Eventually, when Desiree was about eighteen months old, I moved back to Fond du Lac to my parents’. I guess my dad forgave me, or whatever. Finally, when I was twenty-one, I got my own place through rez housing. Like I said, my dad, he seemed to forget and forgive. Me, I still resent his kicking me out back then when it seemed I needed help more than ever.

  I had other boyfriends and ended up having two more children—boys—from one of them. That man didn’t work out, either. He liked to drink and fight, and I was afraid of him because he’d get really snaky sometimes and be pushing and punching me around. Finally, I had enough of it and told my dad, and he came over and beat the shit of him, and I never saw his fat abusive ass again, either. My boys, they’re just in the third and fourth grade, so they aren’t causing me any grief yet. But Desiree is fourteen, and I’m afraid my troubles with her might just be beginning.

  DAD REALLY TOOK a shine to Desiree. When she was little, him and mom would take her on the pow-wow trail with them in summers. Mom made her a dance outfit and taught her to dance. She’d spend most of her summer weekends traveling all over Minnesota and Wisconsin with them going from pow-wow to pow-wow. She became a good dancer, really good. And they were teaching her other things as well, like to be respectful and helpful.

  My dad had a stroke last year. It happened on a Friday and it was a massive one. I took Desiree in to see him on Sunday night, just before he passed. I was okay until she started crying when she seen him like that and then I let loose, too.

  Us Indians, we lose so many people along the way. I lost my first brother when I was fourteen. He killed himself when he was drunk. It was winter and he’d been drunk for months and on the streets in Duluth and sleeping who knows where, not eating, mixing booze and pills and who knows what else. I couldn’t even cry when my dad came and told me about him because I suppose I had been expecting that to happen sooner or later. Later that night, when I was lying there by myself, I was thinking about my brother when he was a little boy, how we used to go sledding, and how he would protect me on the school bus from all those miserable White kids. To see the little boy that he was in my memory, and then to see him drunk with all the hurt he carried. Then I cried real soft because I didn’t want to wake anyone and the tears just ran down my face. Sometimes when I cry like that I just wail. There is no pain as complete, as perfect as grief. Someone said that when we cry, we lose the ability to speak. Then a year later, my baby brother died in a car accident. He wasn’t driving. Didn’t matter. Him and two of his buddies got killed when they ran into some birch trees.

  So my mom, she has had to bury two of her boys, and then my dad, and I wonder how she can even live with that pain, but she manages. I think I would not survive if I lost any of my children. I cannot even imagine that.

  I think Desiree was hurt deep to the bone when my dad died. She was his favorite. I remember I went into her room and woke her up to tell her but when she saw me she already knew just by the look in my eyes.

  “Pappa,” she said. I still remember her crying that over and over again that night he died. She was a sixth grader then. So if there was anything I could point to that began that long spiral downward for her, I think that would probably be it.

  SO AFTER THAT DAY I found out she’d been skipping school and lying about basketball and all that shit, I put her on a short leash and it seemed to work, at least for a while. I made sure she came home right after school off the bus. I called the school once a week to make sure she was there, too. And I wouldn’t let her go anywhere with any of her friends unless I knew there was an adult who would keep a close eye on them.

  “Hey, Mom,” she’d call me sometimes when she was at her friend Mel’s house, “Can I stay overnight? Me and Mel are playing video games, and it’s lot of fun.”

  And of course, I’d melt and let her stay, but I’d make sure to have her put Gerri on the phone to make sure it was okay.

  So, anyways, for a couple of months things were pretty rosy. But shit, then I guess all hell broke loose ’cause one day the phone rang and it was that school lady on the phone and she said could I come in and get Desiree ’cause she was suspended for fighting. And my f------ car wasn’t running and I had to catch a ride from my mom, and then I went storming in the school and there Desiree was sitting in the principal’s office acting all bad.
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  She got in a fight with some White girl, she said. “That bitch was calling me squaw behind my back, and nobody does that to me.”

  “So what about that other girl?” I said to that fat-ass principal. “She gonna get suspended, too?”

  And he told me what I thought I was going to hear. “Mrs. Strong, the other girl was attacked by Desiree.” Then he went on about how that White girl wasn’t going to be suspended and all and I went off on him and told him a few things, and then I took Desiree and we went home.

  I thought about putting her in the tribal school after that because that f------ town school was so damn racist. I had to put up with the same shit when I was there. But then I knew that tribal school had all the kids that had been pushed out of the public school, and I didn’t want my girl hanging with any of those losers, either.

  So when Desiree was home that five days for being kicked out of school, I had my mom take her ’cause I was working then as a substitute cook for Head Start. But I found my mom was a real pushover and was letting Desiree do whatever she felt like and feeding her sweets and watching TV all day and being on vacation more than being kicked out of school.

  Well, after that she went back to school, and then it was something every week. They could have set me up with my own office there because I seemed to be spending all my time dealing with something Desiree was up to. I was trying to think of all the things.

  Smoking in the girl’s bathroom.

  Skipping school.

  Swearing at a couple of teachers.

  “They’re racist,” she’d say. That was always her excuse, and although I knew it was true, I’d tell her that was what they wanted. They wanted to see you out of there. They were doing it just to get you riled up. But still, I got sick of her using that as an excuse all the time, too.