[SPEAKING ACOMA] Hello.
How's everybody?
Good.
Because that's what we all wish for.
[SPEAKING ACOMA] That's what we need
to feel good about ourselves and about each other.
Thank you very much for having me be with you tonight.
I have always liked Tucson.
And I used to come summers.
To come summers Yeah, that's true.
Because I did work with the summer program of the AILD,
the American Indian Language Development Institute
for a number of years.
Until I moved to Canada when I was at the University of Iowa.
I mean, University of Toronto.
Well, I went to the University of Iowa.
But that was years before.
Well, I'm going to read a number of things.
And it'll be a mixture of prose and poetry.
I think I'll start with something
that I wrote some time ago.
In a sense there, you could say in some way humorous
tongue in cheek, as well as in the literary way
I would say direct and truthful.
The first one is called it's in a series.
I guess they're linked loosely.
The first one is called, Who Likes Indians?
What's the story he wanted to write
that he thought was possible and impossible to write?
Just another Red Boy idea.
He could never tell some days.
Red boy moments that's what they were.
Never could tell.
He thought of California San Diego, San Francisco, LA,
Barstow.
Barstow, where he spent one hot summer.
June, July maybe part of August.
He and his little sister had been
going to Indian School in Albuquerque that year.
When school let out in May, they went back to their home Res
for a few days, and then they were
taken from their home raised by their older sister
to the train depot in Grants.
And off, they went to Barstow, California.
Red boy moment I suppose.
The only thing he really liked about that hot, hot miserable
summer were the movies.
His little brother was crazy about
Shane.
And a movie about Audie Murphy.
Some little guy World War II hero.
What Red Boy really loved most though
was his little brother who would save up his money from pop
bottles he would find on the street
and sell at Billy's Market that sat
at the edge of the Indian colony,
where his mom and his sisters and another brother lived.
And his dad when he came home, home or not,
and was sober or not.
Red boy remembers that summer also because of his dad.
His dad works for the railroad at the railyards that
is at the other edge of the Indian colony
miles and miles of rail yards, boxcars, and boxcars
on the rails moving or stopped.
And around roundhouse at the center,
his dad works in there somewhere as a welder.
Red Boy is 14 that summer.
And he hates his dad.
It can't be helped.
It is a fact.
It is a way to survive.
It just was the case his dad was a drunk, and Red Boy was a kid.
And he couldn't ever tell what was going to happen.
No way, no gee whiz it way to go there here.
Daddy would come home from work dead tired, and miserable,
and dirty.
Just before dinner, he would say I
have to go get some cigarettes.
And he would leave, and we would wait
and wait with the supper going cold and stale.
Until mama would say go to little Joe's
to see if he's there.
Tell him it's time to eat.
And me, and my little brother would
go to little Joe's, the bar at another edge
of the Indian colony.
That was the Barstow, California story Red Boy
thought about to write.
But what the heck?
Nobody would read it who likes Indians and their stories
anyway.
Erase this fact.
Red Boy thought.
And then he said, maybe or maybe not.
Do you really think Americans had an identity crisis
in the 19th century when they violently killed, and raped,
and stole, and lied?
I mean, after all, it was Indians they were killing,
raping, and stealing from, and lying to.
And you mean to say they identified themselves
with those they were killing, and raping, and stealing
from, and lying to.
That's crazy Red Boy thought.
They hated the Indians, and they feared Indians.
Nothing more, nothing less kill them all.
That's why they did what they did.
That's what they did, and why they did it.
What do you call that kind of truth?
Insane.
But then, again, why would Cecil DeMille
make a movie that has a white man marrying an Indian?
The white man was British.
Oh, said Red Boy.
It makes a difference.
Maybe or maybe not said Red Boy.
And they lied to themselves when they killed, raped, and stole,
didn't they?
Maybe or maybe not, said Red Boy.