“Sorry, I thought we were good to go before you came in,” Dene says, and sits down to the right of the camera.
“It’s cool,” Calvin says. “What is this again?”
“You’re gonna say your name and tribe. Talk about the place or places you’ve lived in Oakland, and then if you can think of a story to tell, like something that’s happened to you in Oakland that might, like, give a picture of what it’s been like for you specifically, growing up in Oakland, as a Native person, what it’s been like.”
“My dad never talked about being Native and shit to the point that we don’t even know what tribe we are on his side. Our mom has Native blood on her Mexican side too, but she doesn’t know too much about that either. Yeah and my dad wasn’t home hardly ever, then one day he was really gone. He left us. So I don’t know, I feel bad sometimes even saying I’m Native. Mostly I just feel like I’m from Oakland.”
“Oh,” Dene says.
“I got robbed in the parking lot about to go to a powwow at Laney College. It’s not really a good story, I just got fucking robbed in a parking lot and then I left. I never made it to the powwow. So this one coming up will be my first one.”
Dene isn’t sure how to help him get to a story, and he doesn’t want to force it. He’s glad he’s already been recording. Sometimes not having a story is the story.
“It’s like having him as a dad and not knowing, and how he fucked us up as a dad, I don’t wanna come off like I think that’s what being Native means. I know there’s a lot of Natives living in Oakland and in the Bay Area with similar stories. But it’s like we can’t talk about it because it’s not really a Native story, but then it is at the same time. It’s fucked up.”
“Yeah.”
“When are you gonna start recording for me to say, like, whatever I’m gonna try to say?”
“Oh, I’ve already been recording.”
“What?”
“Sorry, I should’ve told you.”
“Does that mean you’re gonna use anything I already said?”
“Can I?”
“I mean, I guess. Is this shit, like, your job?”
“Kind of. I don’t have another job. But I’m trying to pay all the participants out of the grant money I got from the city of Oakland. I think I’ll make enough to get by,” Dene says. And then there’s a lull, a silence neither one of them knows how to recover from. Dene clears his throat.
“How’d you end up working here?” Dene says.
“My sister. She’s friends with Blue.”
“So you don’t feel, like, any kind of Native pride or whatever?”
“Honestly?”
“Yeah.”
“I just don’t feel right trying to say something that doesn’t feel true.”
“That’s what I’m trying to get out of this whole thing. All put together, all our stories. Because all we got right now are reservation stories, and shitty versions from outdated history textbooks. A lot of us live in cities now. This is just supposed to be like a way to start telling this other story.”
“I just don’t think it’s right for me to claim being Native if I don’t know anything about it.”
“So you think being Native is about knowing something?”
“No, but it’s about a culture, and a history.”
“My dad wasn’t around either. I don’t even know who he is. My mom’s Native too, though, and she taught me what she could when she wasn’t too busy working or just not in the mood. The way she said it, our ancestors all fought to stay alive, so some parts of their blood went together with another Nation’s blood and they made children, so forget them, forget them even as they live on in us?”
“Man, I feel you. But then again I don’t know. I just don’t know about this blood shit.”
Jacquie Red Feather
JACQUIE AND HARVEY RIDE in Harvey’s Ford pickup through a moon-purple desert on that stretch between Phoenix and Blythe on I-10. The drive so far has been full of long silences Jacquie maintains by ignoring Harvey’s questions. Harvey is not the kind of man comfortable with silence. He’s a powwow emcee. It’s his job to keep his mouth running. But Jacquie is used to silence. She has no problem with it. She’d actually made Harvey promise she wouldn’t have to talk. That didn’t mean Harvey wouldn’t.
“You know, one time I got stuck out here in the desert,” Harvey says, keeping his eyes fixed on the road in front of them. “I’d been out drinking with some friends, and we wanted to go for a drive. A night like this would have been perfect. It’s not even dark. That full moon on the sand like that?” Harvey says, and looks over at Jacquie, then rolls down his window and sticks a hand out to feel the air.