SOMEONE ELSE’S MOCCASINS Photos courtesy of American Indian Basketry and editor/publisher John M. Gogol. (Vol. 5, No. 2-Sept. 1985). Wishram Indian, Martin Spedis, ca. 1900. By Rich Wandschneider I‘d just finished reading Craig Lesley’s new book, River Song, and was talking about it with a friend as we drove from Nez Perce country in Eastern Oregon along Interstate 84 to Portland. One of the things I liked about the book, I said, was the sense of the real world, the way the characters—Native Americans from the Columbia River and from Pendleton and from Lapwai in Idaho—mix pieces of the Anglo world with traditional Indian culture. Drummers wear dark glasses and dancers wear “K-Mart moccasins” (tennis shoes); Indians live in trailer house lodges with Christian icons on the walls and supermarket fast foods in the cupboards, use nylon nets to catch the salmon and wrap it in aluminum foil to cook. Lesley’s descriptions of talk and trouble over religion sound right. The drumming and dancing and shamanistic practices live right alongside legal proceedings, the icons, and the midnight watches learned in Anglo America’s overseas wars. The characters do the best they can with their situations, using what they have or think they have, what they’ve seen work and heard might work. When things go right they celebrate with a drink or a dinner on the town, a new blanket or a ribbon shirt. When they don’t go right, they try again, or give in to drink and despair. Dave, my traveling companion, interrupted at this point to wonder whether a non-lndian had the ability or the right to create these book lives for us. Dave talked about Lucullus McWhorter, who lived with the Nez Perce for years and wrote about their war and their culture Lucullus McWhorter, who lived with the Nez Perce for years and wrote about their war and their culture for the white world, came to think that only Indians should try to tell the Indian story. for the white world. He came to think that only Indians should try to tell the Indian story. Dave also advanced a current Native American argument that white historians are taking away the only thing left that is really theirs—that after the land and the water and the way of life have been stolen and erased, whites are now taking away their history. 6ja vu. I had heard these arguments in 1960s Civil Rights debates and at Peace Corps conferences. Radical blacks and nationalist Turks had told me I couldn’t understand; some said that I shouldn’t try. I drove and thought back further, back to junior high school in Southern California in the early fifties. There was a Mexican side of our town called Pozole. 1 learned years later that Pozole is a soup made from hominy and pork said to be especially good for combating hangovers. I remembered a boy at Jefferson Junior High called Chato, a notuncommon nickname meaning “pug- nosed”, often used for boxers. This too I learned much later. At fourteen, Chato was bigger and faster and tougher than anyone in junior high. He had a waterfall—a ducktail— and long sideburns. Those of us in the blond, pre-pubescent majority lived in fear of Chato’s anger, and sometimes even his pleasure. Chato was a bully, and unlike many of the Chicanos (then called Mexicans), not afraid to bully gringos. He was unafraid of teachers, parents, principals and cops. Chato was also an exceptional athlete, the star of our junior high teams. He broke school records in track and field. We handed off to him in football and passed to him in basketball. Off the field we avoided him. . Jane was an Anglo girl, tall and pretty and as white and blonde as a Marilyn Monroe movie poster. She took up with Chato. They walked through the halls and the school yard draped around each other. Jane soon had a crude cross tatJan e was as white and blonde as a Marilyn Monroe movie poster. She took up with Chato. Jane soon had a crude cross tattooed on her hand, and she spoke with Chato and friends in Spanish. tooed on her hand, and she spoke with Chato and friends in Spanish. In my years in California, there were few whites who spoke Spanish with their Mexican neighbors. There was the preacher of a Mexican Baptist church, and a gringo boy at school who also hung around with the Pozole crowd, and wore raised collars, wedged shoes and tattoos on his arms. The rest of us knew little more Spanish than puta and caca. We wore ducktails not so long, wedgies not so high, ate refried beans and flour tortillas after ballgames, and in other ways touched the edges of Hispanic culture. Other Mexicans in the school crossed that invisible boundary. Eva, a beautiful cheerleader, dated gringos like me. Jorge became George, our student body president, and went to college. Another quiet and religious George went to law school and is now a judge. A few made their way in the white world while most of their neighbors stayed on the unpaved streets, passing through the playgrounds and small-time gangs to take laborers’jobs at the flower warehouse, the car wash, or on the city maintenance crew. They made their way at the edges of our white world. 30 Clinton St. Dec. ’89-Jan. ’90
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz