"OFF THE PATH" an anthology about on the rez

When I came to Browning MT in 1961, I wanted to teach English partly because of a fantasy of creating indigenous writers like my 4^th grade teacher, Mildred Colbert, Chinook.  The superintendent at that time, Phil Ward, shared that dream because he was formerly an English teacher as well.  He wrote poetry.  If you’re reading this, you know what I write.  Phil Ward and I were white.  Do-gooders.

Fifty years later I get the news that Greg Hirst, a former student, will teach English in Heart Butte this coming year after a fine career in Wolf Point.  I’m already trying to make contact.  But somewhere I heard about an anthology that included a Blackfeet writer and ordered it:  “Off the Path, An Anthology of 21^st Century Montana American Indian Writers, Vol. 1.”  I just finished reading it and am absolutely so swollen with excitement that I could split screaming. 

Here are the names and their enrollment:  Adrian L. Jawort, who is also the CEO and editor, and Cinnamon Spear, (both Northern Cheyenne),  Luella N. Brien and Eric Leland Bigman Brien (both Crow which is Apséalooké) and Sterling HolyWhiteMountain (Blackfeet).  Luella and Leland are sibs.  I reach for the phone, but am hampered by the lack of a directory for cell phones.  The phone number of www.offthepasspressllc.com was in the front of the book and that worked.   I talked to Adrian and I’ve left a message for Sterling, but -- after all -- it’s Friday afternoon in August!

Adrian L. Jawort

Poor Adrian -- I swooped down on him with no warning and out of any context at all.  No matter.  He’ll get used to me -- I’m not going away.  Not because I’m going to horn in on what he’s doing, but because THIS anthology is what I want to see published.  TRUTH.  REALITY. CONTEMPORARY.

Sterling HolyWhiteMountain

These ARE 21^st century college grad people.  They do not wear feathers, they do not bend the knee to the gatekeepers, they know their stuff.  The most accomplished (Iowa Writer’s Workshop ring any bells?) is Sterling and you can see him reading on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Crs1Z9dZr8Q  In his story he talks about “court vision,” meaning basketball court -- not the other kind.  Court vision is when a player has mental awareness of everyone, what they’re doing, what they’re about to do, where the ball is going and how fast it’s traveling.  It’s something like getting the big picture.  That’s what these writers have.  

They talk rough -- they talk about booze and drugs with name-brand familiarity.  They know murderers and the murdered.  They’ve seen their parents slug it out.  The only thing that surprises me is that they don’t talk about dogs very much.  Sterling mentions them.  (I make it a policy to smuggle at least one imitah into every short story.)   They throw in words from their tribal languages.  Almost every character is from their generation, sort of half-in and half-out of success and the middle class, some of them convinced the only way to have a life is to leave the rez.

The staff of "Rez Made" clothing

And yet Sterling has a clothing company, http://rezmade.com, based in East Glacier.  Check it out.  The people in the photo above is very much the same kind as the ones in the stories, except there are a few maniacs in the stories and none in the pics.

Alcoholic dads are the worst monsters but they have multiple personalities and can also be your savior -- how do you cope with THAT schism?  How do you keep the pattern from rising up inside you and taking over your own innocent relationship many years later?  Cinnamon Spear makes you feel it.  Her other story, about having to give up $1,000 to save her little sister from a dumb mistake, and sleeping rough for a few nights because of it, while wondering what she has really done -- well, it’s not an Indian story.  I mean, it is, but there are no horses or feathers -- just the reality, a mix of innocence, yearning, family loyalty and murder.

Rez girls at Indian Days. wearing Rez Made

Cinnamon Spear also gives us the goody-two shoes girl who always does the right thing and has almost no experience on the wild side, but falls for a demon boyfriend.  It’s okay.  He’s in prison.  It’s a theoretical relationship based on letters.  Oh, boy.

Adrian Jawort masterfully handles the indigenous relationship with the dead in a story about meeting his brother for coffee -- because he needs to tell the brother he’s dead.  The brother is.  The story is so good you won't mind that I just gave you a spoiler.
  

Luella N. Brien and her twins

A prom girl conceived on her mother’s prom night gets ultimately trashed out at her own third prom by her “stereotypical Indian poet boyfriend as one of the props.”  That’s one of Luella N. Brien’s stories.  

Her bro Eric has a beginning website:  http://www.ericbigmanbrien.com  His story is about the writer's brother who wants the writer to take him in during Lent, because he has been told he will die on or about Easter.   Family is what happens when you're trying to have a life.

Woody Kipp, BCC journalism professor

These writers all have a touching conviction that a person can be a writer as a career but no one wants to teach English, so they all go for journalism.  It has worked for some, thanks to its immediacy, but they should talk to Woody Kipp.  Some take up Indian Studies and it IS time for them to crowd the white guys out.  I'm not sure they realize how many of these programs are being dropped by universities.  A few writers, like Adrian, already free lance here and there.  But the tribal colleges are welcoming.

There are no more than a few scattered sentences about the landscape or about Indian Days when the lodges are put up in the old circle:  moyis, “the circle where we live.”  No talk about vision quests or sun lodge tortures.  Instead, someone at the Indian Days pow-wow asks where the “49” is being held, and if you don’t know what it is, too bad.  You're missing something.  (It’s a hybrid of “Innun” singing and old white traditional songs, that I suppose got mixed in the Carolinas.  The first one I ever heard was a version of "She'll be comin' around the mountain when she comes.")

Darrell Kipp and I used to talk about NA writing and I always thought he’d break into the big time with a killer novel, or at least a chapbook of poems.  But he spent his life for kids and Blackfeet language, aside from being one of those solid people the rest of us count on.  Maybe there’s no shame in that.  Maybe it’s just as good -- being the person who inspires a new generation with a different vision -- maybe one that can only be seen if you have the equivalent of social “court vision” for those younger people.  They don’t fuss about grammar, they say fuck whenever they like, but -- curiously -- none of these people use slang for personal parts.  A penis is a penis.  Just a penis.  Good enough.

Okay, so "Breaking Dawn" is not realistic.

But love, oh, love, how they all love love and can’t resist falling into it, can never quite get over it, never believe it could ever happen a second time.  It will save them, make everything all right.  They crave the fusion.  Now how is that different from being a young white person or any other category of young adult?  I guess part of the difference is that on a reservation or just by being Indian, a person is always aware that the one you love might die.  Tonight.  Suddenly. There will never be an arrest or a trial.  But you could write about it.

If you want to read about it, go to their website www.offthepasspressllc.com or use Amazon.