24
“Yo, you wanna throw another log on?” nudged Jordan.
“Yeah man,” said Miles, as he reached into the stack behind him.
“You know, this fire is special. It’s sacred. The Peta Wakan, the Sacred Fire, it’s our connection to the Earth, and to the stars, and to our ancestors. It carries our prayers out into the world, and it grows stronger as it burns, and this one’s been going since the first day of camp a couple months ago.”
“And it’s never gone out?”
“Nope. Never. It’s the heart of the village, keeps us alive in more ways than one, it’s probably charged up with thousands of prayers by now. I put my heart into it with every chunk of wood,” he motioned to the split piece of pine in Miles’ hand. “I place it with intent, instead of just tossing it wherever, and I pray a few words of whatever rises to the surface of my deepest intentions.”
Miles accepted the invitation, carefully nestling the log into the perfect spot, closing his eyes to silently share his thankfulness of being at camp, escaping the heat just in time to feel the warmth of gratitude pour over him.
“And you can do the same with your tobacco, you know.”
“Yeah, I’ve been trying to do that lately.”
“It carries the energy from your heart and gives it to the world, or you can give it directly to someone when you offer them a gift of tobacco, even just a cigarette. It’s the intent you put into it that matters, the tobacco’s simply a vessel of unseen energy, the real power comes from in here,” Jordan tapped his chest. “Now let me ask you something serious...”
“Shoot.”
“You think I could bum a smoke off ya?”
“Good one,” laughed Miles, as he handed his pouch over.
“Thanks brother, pila. Oh man, you only got a couple left, I can’t take your last bit of crumbs.”
“Eh, it’s cool, smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, right? Consider it a gift from my heart to yours.”
“You catch on quick,” he applauded.
“Better save me enough to roll one though.”
“Dang, you catch on real quick, hey.”
“Aho,” came a shout from the approaching darkness. “I come bearing treasures from the great beyond.”
“Ambrose!” cheered Jordan. “I’d recognize that delivery through a tee-ex-eleven-twelve-fourteen voice scrambler all day long.”
“It’s TX-1020C, jackass. Now do you want this shit, or should I run it over to the fossil camp real quick?”
“I’d hate for you to get caught up in another piece of razor wire out there, we’d better just take that stuff off your hands and save us all the trouble.”
“Ass.”
“I try. Now whatcha got there for us?”
“Well, for Miles, I have four grilled double cheeses with tomato, a thermos of Ziggy’s special recipe, some Funyuns and hard candy in case you get bored, and a brand new pack of Spirit, courtesy of a first night camper who wanted to grease the security wheel. Probably an infiltrator.”
“Probably. But, hey, Miles just put in an order for those, like thirty seconds ago.”
“Aw sweet, that’s how it goes out here.”
“So what d’ya got for me?”
“Oh yeah, I brought you one of these,” offered Ambrose, as he pulled a circle from his pocket.
“Damn it. You get me every time with that.”
“Just smarter, I guess.”
“Lucky.”
“Well, maybe if you’re lucky, Miles will share some of his reward with you, I wouldn’t though.”
“You see, that’s the difference between you and Miles here, he’s a fine upstanding young man, and you’re just standing there.”
“You shoulda just quit when you were ahead.”
“When was that?”
“Oh yeah, huh?”
“Thanks for the provisions,” Miles dove in to pull Jordan’s head above water. “Exactly what we needed, on all three counts.”
“No worries, you’re out here doing all the hard work.”
“Doesn’t feel too much like work.”
“All the best jobs don’t.”
“I know that’s right,” mumbled Jordan through a mouthful of molten muenster. “When you’re working from the heart, all the hassles of life just kinda fade away.”
“Jeez dude,” coughed Ambrose. “They’re turning you into a real life hippie out here, aren’t they?”
“Wait a second,” Jordan protested. “This better be soy cheese on sprouted grains, and organic, I have an allergy.”
“Hey now, organic’s where it’s at, anything else is full of poison and hardly passable as food.”
“Welcome to the rez.”
After a moment of settling in, Miles hesitantly asked a question he thought he should already know the answer to, “Are we on the reservation now?”
“This guy,” teased Jordan. “Doesn’t even know if he’s on the rez or not. It’s not your fault though, most Americans have a hard time remembering where the border’s supposed to be.”
“Burn,” diagnosed Ambrose.
“What’re you taking about? You’re American too. Ain’tcha?”
“Fraid not, I’m Canadian, brother.”
“No way. Well no wonder, now it all makes sense, you’re beady little eyes and flapping head, but you ain’t got no accent.”
“Musta loost it when I was oot and aboot, I’ll try to find you a coffee crisp next time I bring you a double double, eh?”
“That’s better. Fucking Canadian, who’d have thunk it. You come all the way down here just for this?”
“Yes sir.”
“And you get deported if you get busted, yeah?”
“Yes sir.”
“And you’re willing to risk all that to help us defend our water?”
“Well, it’s all of our water. And it’s all connected, even if we are upstream from you, but this pipe is devastating my hometown just like yours. It’s all coming from the tarsands. They’ve already wrecked an area of land the size of Delaware, over a million acres, and the last spill was a million and a half gallons, and nobody blinks an eye. I figure wherever we can stop it, gets us the same result.”
“There’s some First Nations up there putting up resistance, itn’t?”
“Yeah, there’s a few camps, I’d imagine I’ll check them out when I get tossed out of this place.”
“Sounds like a plan to me. Well good on ya for being here, even if you are Canadian.”
“Probably shoulda kept that to myself, huh?”
“Yep. Ay.”
The next week was more of the same. Jokes and prayers, frybread and tobacco, Miles worked in the kitchen by day and laid his heart by the fire every night. The conversations weren’t always easy, generational heartaches had to be worked through, there is much healing to be done among the self-inflicted wounds of the two-legged race.
Miles dug deeper into what his heart had to say, opened doors he thought he’d bricked over lifetimes ago, tears fueled the flicker of his prayers, he was starting to feel something. Unless that was just the frybread.
It turned out that camp was not on the rez. At least not on today’s rendition of where America thinks the line should be. The reservations are constantly shrinking, sometimes just a mile at a time, as we set up liquor shops next door for our captive clientele of birthwritten addicts. The maps of treaty land and the current occupation bear no resemblance, the once connected reservations have been whittled down to a fragmented existence on toxic soil, while family fortunes built on dollar-an-acre Indian land claim no responsibility for their inherited privilege.
The more Miles learned about the true American history, the more he felt the guilt bubbling in his gut, that definitely coulda been the frybread though.
Ancestral guilt. It’s passed down through the DNA, through the last seven generations, and we carry the traumas of our ancestors as well, some of us more than others. But that can all be healed. Must be healed. The work to be done can be difficult, on both ends, but through patience, humility, and understanding, it is more than possible to reunite the colors of the medicine wheel, it’s written in the stars.