So this is-- in Mojave, the way we call the policemen,
it's a translation of a Mojave word.
So when we translate, it doesn't mean policemen,
it means the men who will rope you like an animal.
It's the same word for tethering or roping
that you would use for a cow, or a goat, for a bull.
And that says a lot about our relationship
with that type of authority.
So this is kind of a conversation
I've had with my teacher, with Hubert.
And it's a story he tells me quite often.
It's some place he goes back to a lot.
And it was a story his mother told him
about one of the moments when they
came and took one of the largest group of Mojave children
to the school.
"The Stars Watching It All."
Just so you know, this looks like this.
So I'm reading all over the place with it.
[LAUGHTER]
And if I have a conversation with someone,
I add a little more.
[LAUGHTER]
Grandmom told me how it was when they
took the kids to the school.
The soldiers snuck up.
There wasn't time to hide the kids.
There wasn't time to disappear them
in a stand of Mesquite trees.
Too late for them to make it out to the cliffs
to hide with the owls.
A few didn't care and ran anyway.
Soldiers on horses snatched them up fast,
lifted them right up into their arms
while the horse was still running, or knocked them down
and turned their horse around sharp
to pick them up from the dirt like broken sacks.
Lassoed them like little goats and dragged them
back full of dust, strings of snot or slobber, and scrapes.
When they had got the last kid, they
tossed the little ones in the back
of the wagon because they were too young yet to walk good.
The ones who seemed old enough to walk
got tied to the back of the wagon
with the same rope they use for cows.
Off they went on a dirt road that
ran above the banks of the river on toward the school.
Soldiers on horses with guns at either side of them.
Some mothers followed as far as they could,
trying to carry their baby's dolls to them,
or a bit of food, or a rabbit blanket,
until the soldiers fired their guns to push them back.
That night back in the village was the quietest night.
The women stood outside their houses, holding their faces,
or walking lines in the dirt, lost in their own yards.
They couldn't even look at one another.
What could they have said?
The worst was the dogs.
They started crying.
They were drunk with loss and carved a warpath of circles
around all the houses, weeping.
They wandered out into the desert,
crying, crying all night.
But it was the bluest thing I ever heard--
those dogs.
The moon too that night joined in, a low bone-colored moan.
And loud-- so loud, I thought it was me crying.
Those dogs didn't know what to do without their babies.
They cried so hard, they made new stars.
And those stars fell to the dirt at their feet.
And those new lonely dogs ate them like wishes.
And this was how the police got their name.
The men who will rope your children like an animal.
And the thing about that story is that he never once
mentioned that the women cried.
And this was the story his grandmother had told him.
And it was so much easier for her
to tell him it was the dogs.
Dogs, they were the ones who cried.
They cried all night.
Because it was still a place she couldn't take her body back to,
that moment when the women broke in that way.