Eventually my thoughts turned to other thoughts—about my cousins, siblings, aunts, and uncles and the place we call ours. I thought about my cousin Jesse, the one who couldn’t make it to the funeral because he was back in jail. Earlier that summer Jesse had overdosed on methadone. The year before he was hit by a train; his car was pushed down the tracks for over a mile. Surprisingly, he lived, but not without some damage. Jesse is a big likable guy. The methadone overdose put him in the ICU. When my brother and I went to visit him he was still sedated and he had a breathing tube down his throat so he could not talk. His girlfriend, fresh out of treatment, was there.
He’s drifting in and out. Can’t talk because of the tube, she said.
The room smelled bad. His hospital gown was open to his waist.
Yeah, he was awake this morning. He can write but it don’t make a lot of sense. They don’t know. They don’t know if it’s from this or the train wreck. He makes some sense though.
We made small talk but it was hard. Every few minutes Jesse jerked in his sleep. His arms and legs flailed and then he quieted down again. When we ran out of things to talk about I looked around the room. I’ve grown to hate these places. I looked at Jesse. His chest was shallow. I noticed that he had a tattoo on his stomach. It was gang-style, large letters following the arc of his rib cage. REZ LIFE. We watched TV and then I picked up the loose typing paper from the side table. Some of the writing was that of my family and of Jesse’s girlfriend. A lot of it was covered with Jesse’s attempts at communication. She was right. A lot of it didn’t make sense. Words and letters trailed off or drifted, rudderless, across the pages. WHAT HAPPENED? I DID? And then a few pages later: THEY GONNA THINK I DID IT ON PURPOSE FUCK. And then later: I GOT LOTA HEART AND STRENGTH MORE THAN THEY THINK.
I wondered then and I wonder now. Does he? Do we? And what is this place—this rez, these reservations? What are these places that kill us every day but that we’d die to protect and are like no place else on earth? And what can we find here behind the signs that announce us?
2
This book, then, is about what can be found behind that sign and others—planted in American soil. It is about how reservations began, what they are now, and where they are going. You can tell a lot about a place by its exceptions, by turning over and inspecting the frayed corners of its quilt. You can tell a lot about the whole by looking at the part. You can tell a lot about America, about its sins and its ideals, by looking at and behind the signs that advertise our existence, the existence of a kind of American who was supposed to have died out a long time ago.
I once heard a journalist state that to write a book of nonfiction, a book about the lives of others, the writer had to feel in his gut that his informants owed him something, that he owned a piece of their lives. But I don’t think this is true. I think the opposite is true. I don’t think my family or my people owe me anything. I feel that I owe my life to them and I set out to write a book that reflects this, reflects the debt I owe them, and does them honor. To understand American Indians is to understand America. This is the story of the paradoxically least and most American place in the twenty-first century. Welcome to the Rez.
Charley Grolla, Red Lake Nation Conservation Officer
Courtesy Charley Grolla
1
It was a hot day in May 2006 when two Red Lake tribal conservation officers sped across the mirror-smooth waters of Upper Red Lake, uncased M4 assault rifles and shotguns leaning against the bow of the reservation conservation boat. Officers Nelson and Grolla never left the guns onshore—someone could break into their vehicle and take them. They had been on routine patrol when they saw two white men fishing on reservation waters. Grolla is a big man, an intimidating man if you don’t know him, or, for some, even if you do. He laughs a lot. He weighs nearly 400 pounds. His Ojibwe name is Ogimaa-giizhig (literally “Head of the Sky” but, more figuratively, “Head Thunderbird”) and he belongs to the Caribou Clan, just as his great-great-great-grandfather the famous Ojibwe war chief Waabojiig had. “When I was at the police academy in New Mexico,” Grolla said, “it was like boot camp, you know, like that movie Full Metal Jacket. It was tough. You got yelled at a lot. I saw a few girls cry the first day. A lot of those guys had never been yelled at before, they didn’t know how to do anything for themselves. I was glad I was raised the way I was. I grew up hauling wood, doing chores. At the academy all that work I did growing up helped. A lot of guys didn’t know how to do laundry or how to press their clothes. I knew all of that. When I got back from the academy I got my class number tattooed on my shoulder: IPA 71. I was half the size I am now. I was about 235 pounds. I could bench three hundred-something. Now I eat all the time. Because of the stress, I think.” Grolla used to work for the Red Lake police force, but he switched over to conservation in 2000, largely because of the stress. “A lot of guys quit this job. They do it for a few years and get tired of it and become what’s called being ‘retired on duty.’ They just don’t care anymore. I was getting to that place. I just didn’t care anymore and I didn’t want to be like that. It got to be too much. So I switched to conservation. I like being in the woods more.” Grolla’s partner, Corporal Tyson Nelson, is also imposing: dark, six feet tall, 235 pounds. Nelson is a boxer, one of the best from Red Lake, a place that has produced many good Golden Gloves.
Grolla’s shoes and socks were on the floor of the boat. He raced across the water wearing only his pants and shirt. His gun belt was off. Later, during the trial in Red Lake Tribal Court, his manner of dress would become an issue. “You looked like you were ready to tango, like you wanted to fight,” said Jerry Mueller, one of the fishermen. “No. You learn pretty quick not to go on the water wearing heavy boots. If you go over you could drown,” says Charley.
Grolla and Tyson had been watching as the boat with the two white fishermen neared the reservation boundary, marked onshore with a sign and on the water with white plastic buoys. Sport fishermen often ripped down the signs and cut the buoys. Only a road remains as a reminder of where the reservation boundary lies. Even though Jerry Mueller and his son-in-law were close to shore and could see the sign, they did not turn around; they continued fishing on Red Lake waters until they were a mile inside the reservation. When Mueller saw the conservation officers approaching he started his boat, gunned it, and then stopped—clearly the officers had the faster boat. “He knew where he was,” recalled Grolla. “We took him in and he was cooperative at first. He played stupid. ‘We didn’t know,’ he said. ‘We didn’t know.’ But we were really respectful, professional. Even though they saw the signs down everyone knows where the boundary is. You can see it on the shore. And it was totally calm. How could you drift a mile over the boundary when there’s no wind at all?”
Grolla and Nelson powered up alongside Mueller and his son-in-law (the case is referred to as the Mueller case although the boat actually belonged to the son-in-law), took hold of the 1984 Forester seventeen-foot fiberglass boat, and said that they were fishing on Red Lake Reservation waters and that the boat, motor, and fishing gear were being confiscated.
“If I’m on the reservation, I’m real sorry for this,” Mueller recalled saying. “I had no intention of fishing on your side of the lake.”
Mueller claimed later that Grolla said, “Your apology don’t hold no weight with me.”
The officers moved their assault rifles to the stern and commanded