Even though we haven’t become as much a part of the public consciousness as, say, the Sioux or the Iroquois, our language has. Once listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most difficult language to learn, the Ojibwe language has given English the words “moccasin,” “toboggan,” “wigwam,” “moose,” “totem,” and “muskeg.” We’ve even met on middle ground. We provided “musk” from “mashkiig,” or swamp, English provided “rat” and together we built the word for a swamp-dwelling rodent that looks an awful lot like a rat—muskrat. If that’s not a fine example of cultural exchange I don’t know what is. Through years of trade we imported only two words from the French—couchon, which became “kookoosh”; and bonjour, which was transformed into a greeting, “boozhoo.” Hello.
And, on top of all of that, we’re funny. We really are. I should state, however, that I am among some of the less funny Ojibwe people. John Buckanaga (which means “He Wins,” another perplexing Ojibwe name), from White Earth Reservation, is funny. John Buck was at a seniors all-Indian golf tournament at Fond du Lac Reservation near Duluth and someone was trying to get him to mess up his tee shot by asking him, Hey, John, so you’re getting older—do you use Viagra? And John Buck said, Yeah. Sure I do. Well, does it work? I guess so. At least I don’t piss all over my shoes anymore. And then he drove his ball 220 yards down the fairway.
Which brings us to stoicism. Ojibwe are not usually described as stoic. We’re not usually described at all. This is just fine with most of us. We have been called some choice names in the past, though. “These people are a wild, barbarous, and benighted race, and are, perhaps more than any other people under the influence of the chiefs, head men, and Prophets,” suggested one writer. I would have to disagree.
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On August 3, 2007, I drove past one of the signs on the southern edge of my reservation on my way back to Bena, our ancestral village. My grandfather had killed himself earlier that day. Eugene William Seelye, an eighty-three-year-old veteran of D-day and the Battle of the Bulge—a man who left the reservation only once in his life and made a promise never to leave again, an Indian man who dodged thousands of bullets—shot himself in the head and died alone on his bedroom floor.
My grandfather was not an easy man. He was not one of those sweet, somewhat bashful elderly Indians you see at powwows or feasts or at the clinic, willing to talk and tell dirty jokes; not the kind of traditional elder that a lot of younger people seek out for approval and advice; not the kind of woodsy Indian man who will take you hunting and explain, patiently, how to lead on ducks or where to find the best mushrooms. When we were kids and my cousins and I came into the house from playing, more often than not he would say, “Get the hell out.” He was, and everyone will tell you this, a hard-ass.
His looks reinforced this impression. He was thin and rangy. He wasn’t especially tall, but he seemed tall. He never changed his hairstyle. His full head of hair, black, then gray, and finally all white, was cut longish and combed back and held in an Elvis-type pompadour with Brylcreem. In many pictures he poses without a shirt on. He was tough. He was the only person I knew who had a sword hanging on his wall. The family story was that it was a Nazi officer’s sword and that he took it off a German corpse. Once, when I was a teenager, I got up the nerve to ask him if he had gotten it from a German during the war. Hell no, he said. That’s a Knights of Columbus sword. It ain’t a real sword. I asked him where he got it. I traded a Luger for it. I asked him where he got that. Where you think, boy? I shot a German and took it.
We had never been close while I was growing up. He scared me. We didn’t have much to say to each another. I wasn’t the only one who felt small next to his anger, his rage, his perpetual dissatisfaction. He didn’t have a lot to say to anyone. When, as a girl, my mother saw him working without a shirt on and saw the scar that circled his shoulder, she’d asked him what happened. Got shot was all he said. He didn’t say that after surviving D-day and the Battle of the Bulge and many other battles in France and Belgium, he and his patrol had crossed into Germany near Aachen (not half a mile from where Charlemagne had reigned as emperor). He did not say that the man in front of him, a guy named Van Winkle from Arkansas, stepped on a land mine. The mine blew off Van Winkle’s legs and blew apart my grandfather’s shoulder. He told us nothing about any of this.
In the 1950s he was living with my grandmother and their four children in a small two-room shack in the small village of Bena on the Leech Lake Reservation. The shack had been built around the turn of the century and at that time it was the only house with walls and a ceiling in the village—the rest of the dwellings were wigwams made from bent poles and covered with bark. All six members of the family lived in this run-down thing. No running water, no bathroom, a woodstove on which to cook. The family was terribly poor. My mother remembers one winter when they had only thirty-five cents to their name. My grandfather took the thirty-five cents and bought a plaque that read: “The Lord Shall Provide.” That night at dinner my grandmother served the four kids, but instead of serving him she put the plaque on his plate. If he’s going to provide and you’re not, then eat that. See how good it tastes.
He was offered a job eight miles away—still on the reservation, only eight miles down the highway—that included a good salary; a fully furnished house with plumbing, electricity, and heat; and a beautiful view of Leech Lake itself. My grandfather turned it down.
It’s only eight miles away, Gene. Eight miles.
I made a promise to God that if I made it home I’d never leave again. This is home. I plan to keep my promise. I’m not fucking leaving. He never moved away from Bena and never traveled off the reservation if he could help it.
Our small ancestral town of Bena has a population of around 140 and a bad reputation. Even though it sits on a major highway and a lot of people drive through it, it is really known for only two things: a cool-looking gas station that’s on the national register of historic places, and the number of outlaws who call it home. Gerald Vizenor once called Bena “Little Chicago” because of the rough handling outsiders sometimes get there. Vizenor has not been forgiven for that. He doesn’t go to Bena much. It’s got, in addition to the gas station, a bar and a post office. It used to have three gas stations, two hardware stores, two grocery stores, seven hotels, and two bars. My grandmother’s father—known to everyone as Grandpa Harris—owned both bars during his life. A full-blooded Scot from Chicago, he had somehow ended up in Bena in the early part of the century. After spending most of his young life in logging camps, he eventually bought the Wigwam Bar, sold it, and then bought the Gitigan (Ojibwe for “garden”) across the street. He married my great-grandmother, an Indian. An irony for you: at the time my grandmother’s father, Harris, owned the Wigwam Bar, my grandfather’s grandmother still lived in a real wigwam made of bent willow saplings and tar paper across the sandy street a hundred yards down the road. During the 1930s and 1940s, it was illegal to serve liquor to Indians. So Harris Matthews sold whisky and beer to his in-laws out the back door and they drank back there but came in the front to dance. Harris was, by all accounts, kind of an asshole. Once he was fixing the roof of the Gitigan and someone walked by and asked, What are you building, Harris? A whorehouse? He replied, If I was building a whorehouse I’d have to put a roof over the whole fucking town.
I got the news that my grandfather had shot himself on the morning of August 3. I was in Bena by early evening. I passed the “big house,” which is what everyone calls (without irony) the house my grandfather lived in. It isn’t actually big, just bigger than most of the other houses in Bena. His new Chevy Silverado was in the yard. I pulled to a stop at my grandmother’s trailer, just down the hill.
Cars huddled around my grandmother’s trailer and I heard voices coming from the porch, the deck, and inside. It was packed. Some people were already drinking beer; most were not. My favorite uncle was staggering around the living room without his shirt on and gave me a hug. My grandmother sat on the couch with my mother. My grandmother was the one who had