The 1961 entering "class" of teachers at the Browning rez school was young, maybe a half-dozen beginners. There were almost no Native American teachers. The group hung out together which was easy since most of them lived at Moyer Motel when the tourists were over. One handsome, intelligent, easy-going English teacher was teased a lot because he never had a girl-friend. He and I worked together happily.
Finally a student complained to the school board that the teacher made unwanted advances. The student was white, blonde and blue-eyed, but not from the bridge-playing, shop-owning class. Many years later the superintendent described what happened.
He had known what homosexuality was, of course, but not so much pedophilia, which he chose to ignore. He called the school lawyer and asked for advice. That fellow said, "Call the teacher in, tell him what evidence you have, and suggest he is gay. If he is not, he will punch you out. If he is, he will resign." He did resign and moved to Australia.
The most recent scandal was the white female drama teacher who was sleeping with a cast member who was male. She left also but I never heard the terms.
Last night I watched Frontline on tv, another version of an old story. This time it was about Dr. Webber, a slight-built pediatrician who specialized in boys. Suspicion of the Indian Health Service is always high and you can form your own opinion of the management interviewed except for one person: Mary Ellen LaFromboise who was managing the Browning hospital when Dr. Weber was found out and moved on. Now she is the head of Child and Family Services. I've always admired her.
There was a loose cohort of good students not much younger than the teachers. You might recognize the names of Elouise Cobell, Darrell Robes Kipp, Curleybear. There were more than that. They were at the heart of the Blackfeet Community College, unimaginable in 1961. They linked with Canada and national indigenous movements. They struggled hard with how to renew the old ways. They kept getting smarter.
The BIA tries to manage by assigning respected tribal people but then undercutting them, giving them no power, using them as fronts. Now the tribal people have been out in the world, building networks and figuring out power structures. They are taking their sovereignty back, but we are all old now. I've been watching for more than sixty years. Some of us have died. I was only able to stay because I tucked myself under the wing of an old prestigious sculptor born there who pulled both of us into a tiny circle of old people born in the 1880's.
No one wants trouble but often the only way to force change is violence. All is image. The additional problem is whose image? Missionary respectability, romantic liason, D.C. suit warrior, never-never land, or simple survival?
Journalists come if the weather is good, often through help from academics. They're Progressives --they think -- trying to see into the heart of the matter, but they're a little scared. Yet they don't know what it is to "perform" toughness for the sake of simple preservation. Too nice to "get it."
I write a lot about this stuff but think about it a lot more, even though I'm white. During the years Dr Webber was in Browning, I was at the Heart Butte High School. By then we had a lot of tribal teachers. HB was considered rougher than Browning, but that was fantasy. I never heard rumours about Webber, but there were rumours about the HB priest. Sex seeped into everything. Several tribal women very quietly confided childhood abuse. Murder stories passed through our days.
And yet the transcendence of the land endured. The reporters called it "beautiful."
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