67. Gifts

Moving to Wallowa County fifty years ago, meeting and getting to know Alvin Josephy, and then the Indian people who lived here once and still call this place home have all been great gifts to me. In times of uncertainty and even darkness in the past few years, the face and words of a Nez Perce elder have come to take my thoughts and mind to older things, better things. 

Even when the lessons are hard, there is something assuring in them. Bad presidents? You wanna start with Jackson? Covid-19? My grandmother talked of 1918. 

 

And in the quick words of many Indian friends and in the new history books I read, I know that viral diseases were the tidal waves that swept the European settlers into power across the continent. And when I hear news of Covid-19 in the Navajo Nation and on reservations here with the Nez Perce and their Plateau cousins, I know that there is generational memory of the first smallpox and measles and diphtheria that crept ahead of the white Europeans who brought them and devastated Indian peoples.

 

What’s the gift of that? It’s the knowledge of resiliency, of Indians now helping themselves in this pandemic, all the while reviving ancient languages and traditions, remembering deeper pasts, embracing land, water, and fish in a kind of national surge that has us—Whites and descendants of the unwilling immigrants from Africa, and newer immigrants from all continents and—paying attention to how to live in this land. 

 

There are the practical things: using fire and restoring waters so that plants, fish, birds and the rest of animate nature can thrive; learning to take what we need and give back, so that fish and forests and soil will come back. Patience: the fish will remember ancient ways when dams fail or are breached.

 

And the spiritual things: learning to be together on this planet instead of siloed in our competitive worlds. The governor of California and the Texas mayor who put individual and family pleasure above community health on this pandemic Thanksgiving should listen to their Indian citizens. 

 

While pandemic cases and deaths rise today, I know that the world will live beyond this one, and tell myself and ask you to listen to our Indian friends. Take care of the earth and each other.

 

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