GALEN ANTHONY UPHAM

portraits by Bob Scriver

It’s been a long time since I came to Browning to teach high school English in 1961.  I had no idea what to expect and wasn’t really prepared to teach English, except that I had a solid grip on grammar.  I was trained in theatre and, as it turned out, that was a fine way to approach a tribe that appreciates performance:  not high test scores but more like fancy dancing.  I found the scripts as I went along.  Here’s a link to one list: they are people but they are also roles.  Many are gone now, but only in this world.

http://worldconnect.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=tsmith&id=I187000

I tend to confuse students.  Over the years Greg Hirst has had to remind me again and again that he is not Mike Hirst, his brother.  I do remember who Charlie Hirst is, since that’s more recent.  He wasn’t a student -- he was the maintenance man for the Heart Butte school bus fleet until he was found dead in a flaming pickup after I left but right in front of the teacherage where I lived.  I was there 1989 to 1991.

Whichever Hirst was actually in my classes was a good student.  So was Greg.  It’s partly genetic and partly memes -- these are mild-mannered people who value learning of all kinds but are careful about how they manage it.  Greg is out at Heart Butte now, though he just retired from a long career in Wolf Point.  He has been solid and contributing for many decades.  When he finally gives it up, he owns a big house in Great Falls.  He needs space for lots of books.

Verena Rattler has been a conscientious historian.

It’s easier to think about people here in terms of family.  There are always outliers, but in the main there are shared characteristics and unless one gets into some entirely different environment that hits all the wrong keys -- which might very well be about success -- then they are doomed.  The white man’s way of keeping track by name through the father doesn’t really work for a culture so recently oral.  There needs to be a circle of old ladies who remember and sit together counting who-is-who-and-how.  For instance, Misty Upham, who belonged to the same descended-from-Heavyrunner family as the Hirsts, was driven over a rain forest pisgun, a buffalo jump.  It's a high price for fame and success.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/witw/articles/2014/01/17/native-american-actress-misty-upham-talks-about-her-role-as-domestic-worker-in-august-osage-county.html

I’ll come back to Misty later.  What I want to talk about here is the Uphams I knew personally. They are entwined with Hirsts and Kipps and other worthy cousins.

One of the things I do is to cut out all the Blackfeet obits from the GF Tribune and tape them onto cards, then alphabetize.  I don’t date them because what I’m looking for is relationships.  Eva Upham, who died at 97, was the mom for a special person, Galen Upham.  (Also, his brother Dennis, who was a little like him, and some others.)  It’s Galen I want to talk about.  I have a special attachment to Galen, but when I mention it in certain company they get mad, because they think that THEY are the special ones.  His gift was in part giving people that feeling.  He looked like a young Abraham Lincoln.  

Young Abe Lincoln

He’d pull his old rez car into the so-called driveway in my East Glacier years and honk until I came out and sat on the edge of my so-called back porch.   (I called it my "drunk-catcher" because boards were missing.)  He’d stay in the car and we’d visit for a long time.  He was famous for stealing one of the red tourist touring buses and driving it over Going-to-the-Sun road by moonlight.  He was drunk, probably, and if you know that Backbone of the World track, the miracle was not getting away with the theft, but simply staying on the road.

I wrote a script about it:  one of those Outlander time-travel things.  Galen is driving over but he wrecks and ends up in a snowbank which keeps him from being killed.  While he lies in the wreckage, an old-time young man just like him is there on a vision quest, and they talk.  If I were writing it now, I would make the ancient one a warrior -- that pass was a war trail first.

But Galen wasn’t a warrior -- or didn’t think he was.  When he got too far into the alcoholism, he’d be committed to Warm Springs.  A lot of people wanted him to kick the booze.  While he was there, he’d take his guitar over to the children’s building and play for them.  When he was stabilized, he’d be back home.

I ran into Galen and Olivia at Indian Days, walking in the dark evening, holding hands.  In those days the lights were only strung up temporarily -- the only permanent structure was the pump-head for water, a big cement cube alone out there in the grass most of the year.  The young couple was plainly very much in love, well-matched.  Olivia was remarkably beautiful.  One evening she was reading in bed and smoking, but fell asleep and that’s how she left us. There were no dragon’s eggs that hatched.  

Somehow that whole family had a bit of of mysticism in them, I think more from Eva than from “Doc,” who had been a musician in Bob’s High Line dance band in the Forties.  Once when times were good, Doc brought in a deer head to be mounted.  It wasn’t a remarkable specimen -- I think he just wanted to show off to Bob, who was skeptical about ever getting paid, with reason.  For years Doc left it, probably forgot it was there, maybe was expecting Bob to cave in and say, “Here -- just have it.”  In the end Bob needed some glass deer eyes for another mount and pried them out of the head.  After that, mutilated, it was hard to look at, so it was tossed.

I hadn’t realized Eva was a Canadian Guardipee, which is often a Metis name and maybe includes some far north “Cree medicine” genes.  Cree medicine is the love medicine that Louise Erdrich often mentions, but Louise’s white genes are German and Guardipees would probably be French.  Eva had a sense of elegance about her and a sweetness that both Galen and Dennis shared.  March had it, too, and she married Peter Sellars, part of that 8th grade bunch in my first class ever.  He was a high IQ kid, quite balanced, but he got dumped in there because, I think, he played his cards close to his vest.  Never let people know how much you know.

In 1988 when I was the Methodist minister for a year and monitored study-hall for grub money, Galen and Olivia’s son Glen turned up.  He had that same arrogance that became pride once it was backed up with accomplishment.  I had no money at that point (do I ever?) and was wearing cheap canvas slip-on shoes.  Glen looked at my feet and sneered, “Potato pickers’ shoes!”

I’d humor him and even slip him a bit of money now and then.   The kids asked,  "Are you related?"  Sort of.  I worried.  Times had changed and he was one of those who stole needles from home ec class so he could experiment with penetrating the skin on his hands.  It’s drug-related.  But twenty-five years later he’s okay, living up in East Glacier.  He’s not much like his father, maybe.  I haven't gone to look for him.

I still have a story Galen wrote.  It’s about a Blackfeet chief who kidnaps an English teacher and keeps her hostage until she will teach him to read.  Of course, a kid who read as much as Galen didn’t need to be taught even how to write.   He just did it.   Ever since then I’ve searched for what it was I ought to have taught him, the grail that could have saved him.  It’s a searing, flaming thing.  I mean both the search and the grail.

Galen was three years younger than me.  (1942 - 1987).  I was in Saskatoon in 1987.  The next year I came back to the rez, homesick.

HISTORY SUBDUCTION ZONE: one plate over another

Today I read two articles about Blackfeet.  One, in The Guardian was by Kristen Millares Young in Seattle.  Her resume is at: https://kristenmyoung.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/kristen-millares-young-resume1.pdf   
Her website is at www.kristenmyoung.com

Kristen Millares Young

She is a pretty woman, trained in journalism at fancy places but aspiring to be a novelist.  The first one is called "Subduction" and its place is Neah Bay, which is a rez.  The one on the coast with werewolves and whales.   She wrote a good article about Misty in The Guardian.  I haven’t read "Subduction", but I listened to her reading from it.  I think it’s fancy writing, haute Harvard, closely observed, and out of control.  (Do you hear the condescension?  I can’t help it, so I’ll just stick a flag in it.)

Misty Upham, an actress who went over the edge

Here’s the link to the article:  

http://www.theguardian.com/global/2015/jun/30/misty-upham-native-american-actress-tragic-death-inspiring-life?CMP+ema_565

An older white man from Montana has just written a book about the “Baker Massacre” and is promoting it as “the real story”.  He is impressed that when he was a kid, no one knew anything about it, but now they do because of Jim Welch.  He believes that living in Montana entitles him to the story.  Actually, there’s quite a bit written about this event, including what’s embedded in the “Blackfeet Heritage, 1907-1908” transcription of the commodity rolls which is available through the Blackfeet Heritage Center.  [SEE BELOW]  He evidently doesn't know how to google and didn't ask a librarian.  He gets my other flag.  

Come on, mister!  For decades Carol and John Murray have been publicizing this story and making sure it gets marked annually with ceremony. One of the quickest and most appealing things to read is Ben Bennett’s version, “Death, too, for the Heavy Runner.”  It's a fiction version of events.  Bennett was a history prof in SF and is gone now. These accounts are laden with mythology, romanticism, bitterness, truth, and outrage.  I put a version in a book of mine. The emphasis depends upon the writer and the times.

Now I’m going to be a target myself.  I didn’t know Misty Upham, but I knew a lot of her relatives.  Let’s start with the oldest genealogy that I have.  The Blackfeet Heritage book gives us these relatives.  (In the only Amazon customer review of “Death, too, comes for the Heavy Runner” the person only wants to know how Heavy Runner got his name. Grab those factoids!)  But I’d like to know far more about Ben Bennett.  Knowing about writers tells you a lot about what they write.  In the meantime, I’ll give you the Blackfeet names of some Upham ancestors.

Illustrations, including the visionary cover, by Tom Saubert

He's in Kalispell.  http://tomsaubert.com/

He accepts commissions.

http://amertribes.proboards.com/thread/324

Many images here of Blackfeet/Blackfoot

http://blackfeetnationstore.com/store/

Source for the books that are resources for the info below.

FROM THE BLACKFEET HERITAGE 1907-08

William Upham was 37 when the commodity list was made.  His father was Heavy Runner, whose parents are unknown, though the entry for Emma Miller claims his mother was Ah-poh-kee-a.  His mother was Rush-in-the-Night, daughter of  Ee-pun-sevis-wa-ah. All these folks except William were dead when this list was made.

The descendants of Heavy Runner are split into two claim-groups at this point, descendants of Dick Kipp, who was said to have been adopted as a child by Joe Kipp after the Baker Massacre, and Richard (Makapini/Red-Eyes/Last Gun) and Mary (Eesqueepeesaki) who was the father of Thomas Kipp who was the father of Darrell Kipp (Apiniokio Peta, founder of Piegan Institute).  Joe Kipp and Cobell were the scouts that led Baker to the wrong camp.  Heavy Runner had been elsewhere only a short time earlier.  The soldiers were in pursuit of Mountain Chief, who had possibly been warned -- they had left.  Feelings about Kipp and Cobell run high.  Darrell Kipp contested vigorously the material tucked into the commodity list as footnotes. (From Robert J. Ege)  Joe Kipp was well-known as a bootlegger and may have known where the camps were because of delivering whisky only a short time before. Baker was alcoholic and many of his soldiers were drunk, good consumers. Both scouts had family connections to Mountain Chief.

The sibs of Tom Kipp were Cora, Louis, George, Cecilia, Annie and Jack.

The half-sibs whose mother was Old Woman are Joseph (Berry) Kipp, Spear Woman, William Upham, Cut Bank John Kipp, Mary, James, and George.

The children of William Upham at the time of the list were Joseph Upham (9 yrs old) and Dick Upham (6 years old).  They were said to live in the St. Mary’s valley near Babb.

Now I switch to another genealogy book also composed by Roxane DeMarce.  This much more recent book was voluntary; that is, people sent in their own information.  It’s also generally available through the Blackfeet Heritage Center and includes other historical material.  The only entry under Upham is John Edward Upham (wife JoAnn Leotta), children Brittany Jo, Bethany Marie.  Sibs are Tony Francis, Lisa (husband Copiskey), Doug and Laniana.  Father was Francis, and other descendant is Karen.  John Irvin Upham was his grandfather and Hiram Upham was his great-grandfather.

Now I switch to “RootsWeb”, an online source.  http://worldconnect.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=tsmith&id=I36547

A Good Man Dead. Hiram D. Upham, son of Hiram and Delphia Upham, was born in Madison County, NY, Feb 22, 1838, and was therefore, at the time of his death on June 3 [1893] 54 years of age. Possessing more than ordinary ability, young Upham was given a good education in the schools at Coldwater, Mich., to which place his parents had moved from NY. For several years his uncle, Judge Upson, presided over the circuit court in the Coldwater district in Michigan. During Judge Upson’s third term in Congress Gad E. Upson, a brother, was appointed agent of the Piegans and with him to his post at Fort Benton came his nephew, the subject of this sketch. In the summer of 1865 Major Gad E. Upson was nominated by the republicans for delegate in congress and was beaten by Sam Mclean. During the canvass he left Hi, then chief clerk, in charge of the agency. In the fall of 1868 Major Upson, being compelled by ill health to relinquish his post, he was placed in charge to settle up the affairs of the agency.  [Note from MHS: there is no explanation for sliding from Upham to Upson.]

T.C. Power steamboat on the Missouri

T.C. Power himself

Continuing on as clerk under other agents until about 1873 he entered the employ of the firm of T.C. Power Bro., trading at the agency then located on the Teton about three miles above the present town of Choteau, [now Teton County] and at Fort Macleod. In the latter part of the seventies he became associated with Joseph Kipp in business, which partnership continued till the time of his death. Trading at Carroll, Fort Conrad, Robare and Piegan, the firm is one of the best known in northern Montana.

In April 1885 Hi, Joe Kipp, Charley Thomas and several others, went to the Sweetgrass mines, then but recently discovered, and Hi was made recorder. Upham was interested in the Summit Mining Company, whose claims are located in Flathead County west of St. Mary’s Lake. About two weeks ago his health was so impaired that he thought best to go to Great Falls for treatment. On April 28 [1893] the physician telegraphed Kipp to come to Great Falls, but upon his arrival there Upham seemed to be better, and Joe left for home after being with Hi three or four days. The next day after Kipp left, the sick man’s condition was so changed that little hope was entertained for his recovery. On the day of his death A.B. Hamilton called about noon to see him and when admitted to the room was recognized and welcomed by the sufferer, though anyone could see, and he realized it himself, that he had not many minutes to live. Holding his friend’s hand while he approached the dark valley and with scarcely a struggle he ceased to breathe. The bereaved family consists of four children the oldest being 10 years of age. Coming to Montana in his 24th year and living here continuously for 30 years, Hiram D. Upham was admired by every man who knew him. A man of brains and sterling integrity, loyal to his friends and family, generous to a marked degree, of jovial disposition, wholly without sham he finished his work without flinching and is dead. [Reprinted from the Teton Times June 10, 1893]

H.D. Upham No More: the Many Friends of Him Whose Name Appears above Were Shocked with Almost Inexpressible Grief When They Heard of His Untimely Death, Which Occurred in Great Falls Saturday Last. He Had Been Suffering for a Year past with an Affection of the Bladder. His Physicians Had Finally Told Him He Could Live but a Few Days Unless Relief Could Be Had by a Surgical Operation. They Told Him the Operation Would Probably Result Fatally. But He Decided to Risk the Terrible Ordeal And, as the Doctors Predicted, the Operation Proved Fatal Within Twenty Four Hours. The Writer of this Is Only Able to State Some General Facts in the Career of the Deceased. He Was Upwards of Fifty Years of Age and a Native of New York. While a Very Young Man, Perhaps Before He Had Attained His Majority, He Left His Home in New York, and Went West, Settling in Coldwater, Mich. He Entered the Law Office of Judge Upson, His Brother-in-law, (Afterward a Leading Member of Congress for Several Terms) and after Pursuing His Studies the Usual Time, Was Duly Admitted to the Bar. He Had Scarcely Began the Practice of His Chosen Profession, However, When Major Upson, Brother of the Judge of Choteau County, Was Appointed Indian Agent at the Blackfeet Agency and He Came on with Him, Having Been Appointed Agency Clerk. This Was in the Early Sixties. After Serving Some Time in That Capacity He Was Chosen, and as the First Probate Judge of Choteau County. Subsequently He Became Associated in Business with Joseph Kipp at Fort Conrad, Later at Piegan Agency in the Indian Tradership. Mr. Upham Was a Notable Character among the Old Timers in Northern Montana. Everybody Seemed to Know Him, and Not as “Judge Upham,” but Familiarly and Affectionately as “Hy Upham.”  He Was a Man of Remarkable Abilities. Clear-headed and Reliable in Business, Socially Genial and Witty. There Was a Certain Ruggedness about Him Coupled with a Heart as Tender as a Child’s and as Affectionate as a Woman’s. No Man Was Ever Freer from Revengefulness, or Jealousy, or Petty Meannesses, That Characterize So Many. Six Feet or More in Height and Large in Proportion, He Seemed the Picture of Health and Long Life; and with His Happy, Whole Souled Ways, He Was a Person One Could Scarcely Associate with the Idea of Death. His Friends Were Almost as Numerous as His Accuaitances, and He Held Them as with Hooks of Steel. It Is Safe to Say That the Death of No Other Person in Many Years Has Caused Sincer Sorrow in All this Section than That of Hiram D. Upham. No One Who Knew Him Will Deny That He Had Faults, Which Is Only to Say He Was Human.. But If Men Are to Judged by the Deeds Done in the Body, Then Every Tender Heart Will Hope, and Every Liberal Mind Believe, That When the Books of the Great Accountant Are Written up a Balance Will Be Found to His Credit. Though His Death Seems Untimely to Us, We May Perhaps Quote Apprepriately the Words of Colton: “Death Is the Liberator of Him Whom Freedom Cannot Release, the Physician of Him Whom Medicine Cannot Cure, and the Comforter of Him Whom Time Cannot Console. Standing by His Grave as it Were, We May Say: “Here Are No Storms, No Noise, but Silence and Eternal Sleep” FAREWELL, DEAR FRIEND, A LONG LAST, A SAD FAREWELL. C.L.B.

BIOGRAPHICAL: Information was supplied by Carol Ann Chattin Kramer P. O. Box 144, Babb, Montana 59411-0144; Phone: (406) 732-4430 dated 5 May 2002. It states:

"Hiram D. Upham
Leeson, History of Montana (1885) P. 1028
Montana Historical Society, Helena, Mt.

Hiram D. Upham. P.O. Conrad, Was Born in Madison Co., N.Y., February 22, 1839; Son of Hiram And Delphia Upham. Before Coming to Montana Our Subject Had Been For Several Years Located at Coldwater, Mich., Engaged as Collector of Back Pay, Bounties, Pensions, Etc., and Came to the Territory in 1865 as Clerk under Major Upton, Who Located Here as Indian Agent and Died the Year after His Arrival. Mr. Upham Continued to Work as Clerk under Other Agents until 1871, After Which He Acted as Indian Trader for T.C. Powers Sessions in Vicinity Of Fort Mcleod, for Several Years. In 1878 He Became Interested with Joseph Kipp in General Merchandise on the Marias River at Fort Conrad, They Being Also Engaged in Ranching and Trading with the Indians, and He Is Now Interested In the Dupuyer Ditch Co."

CENSUS: This family appears in the 1880 US Federal Census for Montana Territory, Choteau Co., Belt Creek District 4. Enumerated 23 Jun 1880. See line 11 as follows:

Upham, Hiram D. W M 40 Indian Trader N.Y. Fa: N.Y. Mo:N.Y.

Hiram married Emma Spear Woman Heavy Runner of the Blackfeet tribe.  She had a brother William Heavy Runner who took up the name UPHAM.  You will find two Upham lines. One from Hiram and the other from William Heavy Runner UPHAM. When looking up these lines go to ROOTS.WEB.COM you will see both lines.  Terry Smith who has the Indian side and Jacqueline Upham Oliver the UPHAM SIDE. Both are correct in many ways. Difference Source used. Also see Descendent of John Upham by Frank Kidder Upham 1892. Also go to the Upham Family Society Melrose, Ma Beatricef@Msn.com.

Rose or Rosa UPHAM b: 17 DEC 1880 in Dupuyer, Pondera, Montana
Kathryn Marie UPHAM b: 27 NOV 1883 in Browning, Glacier, Montana
Joseph Johnson UPHAM b: 24 APR 1885
John Hiram UPHAM b: 29 AUG 1889 in Blackfoot Reservation, Browning, Glacier, Montana
Myrtle Stella UPHAM b: 6 APR 1893 in Barnard, Lincoln, Kansas

I’ll continue tomorrow with personal memories and may post more info as I find it.  This has been a remarkable family.  I don't think that will change.

MISTY UPHAM HAS GONE ON AHEAD

Misty Upham

The death of Misty Upham is a terrible tragedy, but it can be a crucial occasion to question why so many Native Americans, very often female, die under mysterious circumstances.  Most cases are never resolved and some are never even found.  There are huge grinding dynamics of racism, sexism, international attitudes, literature, and media forces that are hard on almost all women, but particularly women of color from indigenous families.

An old “flamer” from out of the past almost immediately claimed that Misty was not “really” Indian, but a British subject who snuck in through the Canadian border.  This way of relating to indigenous people -- claiming they are not the pure and fantastical figures so many imagine -- is just a way of continuing the justification to wipe them out.  It is smallpox of the mind and entirely too infectious because people always think there is some secret fact they can claim to know.  And if it somehow indicts the victim, that gets us off the hook.

with Benicio del Toro

The Upham family is a deep and valued part of the Blackfeet tribe, which was split when the border with Canada was decided upon, as though it were a ranch that had a superhighway built through the middle of it.  “Doc” Upham played in Bob Scriver’s dance band after WWII.  Hiram Upham is the long-time pastor of a Pentecostal church, the Browning Evangelistic Center.  You can see him on YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gnjfol2kV4   I’ve written about Galen Upham on this blog.  His grave is in the same cemetery as Hoppy Big Beaver at the west edge of Browning, but I’m not sure it has a marker.  His sister told me it’s close to the left of the entrance.  This family is highly spiritual with a general outlook of helping and valuing others.  

Blackfeet families are often split between Montana and the Seattle area because of economics, esp. the industries during WWII, the government effort to relocate Indians to cities, and the use of Indians to harvest crops like apples or to string hops -- seasonal ag labor.  Economic conditions that enforce unemployment push stigmatized people to do hard field labor.  This is another aspect of the grinder.

with Meryl Streep

The glamour industry (international-level corporate movies) and social action (indie and nonprofit movies) have a more subtle economic impact.  The queen-sized tribal woman in a “red carpet” gown has had an impact strong enough that these days the Homecoming Queens of the rez all dress in fancy ball gowns full of dazzle, usually strapless though it often snows during the Homecoming events.  (They are generally rented.) Yet the roles in the actual films are usually country people living in hardship, often historically.  

Role models on the rez will sometimes dress in the 19^th century way of early reservation: bandannas, wide leather belts, mother hubbard shifts, high top shoes -- NOT historical beaded buckskin, which can be worth thousands of dollars.  Then the real power women, the ones who moved up through the baby boom, dress middle-class white: permed hair, nice suits, high heels.  This could be seen as offering choice or as making confusion.  The ones who’ve been to college, maybe earned graduate degrees, wear jeans and shirts, not usually cowboy-tailored.  Indian men who’ve been to Harvard wear khakis and blue chambray shirts.

How can a person be effectively “other-directed” if there are so many others, all intent on “othering” you even more by pushing you into roles they want fulfilled?  Most difficult of all are the ones of family, wanting money and prestige and home nursing.  To claim belonging, which can turn into ownership.

One problem with being an actor is always being moved, so where is home?  Even Marilyn Monroe lived in a place that was mostly just a bed and a lot of carpet.  If a person is “on location,” the housing might be almost anything.  The other problem is that one is not in charge of one’s own work.  In the first place, roles that fit one’s gifts are not always there.  Who writes scripts for a young Indian woman who is not Pocahontas?  Not Indians.  So there will be a burst of offers, then silence -- maybe for years regardless of the prizes and praise.  What do you do during that silence?

Even if one is employed, the director is the one who decides what you do.  (Except for the agent on the phone, urging strategy.)  In film one must “become” the character, who is usually a person in crisis because that’s what makes drama.  And always the co-players (among others) are saying,  “Here, take this pill.  It will help you.”  Even if you’re careful not to drink, the pills can get you.  Once your metabolism and deep brain have been contradicted and confused, you lose your inner gyroscope.  The Indian way in this event is to go apart, to find solitude.  If anyone could help, it would be a shaman, but these days they’re all busy getting big fees from white people who want magic. 

Indian/indigenous/aboriginal actors who do a lot of stage work, maybe in a repertory group like the ones in Canada, are much helped by that context, but even Graham Greene can suffer, even in the midst of success.  There need to be plays and movies that reflect, suggest, lay open the wounds in a way that doesn’t infect them.  The Uphams I know are all natural writers, performers.  They have the genes for it.

We can never really know what happened to Misty that night and therefore it’s really impossible to assign blame.  The Northwest forest is underlain with treacherous volcanic terrain, water-soaked soil, tangled vegetation.  It would be easy to fall over a precipice, thrashing and grabbing at ferns on the way.  More tourists die in Glacier Park every summer from falling off a cliff than offending a grizzly.  

Cops are no more monolithic than tribes.  One officer will go out of his way to help, the next will react with resentment or even anger.  Under-funded, over-scrutinized, exhausted officers are more likely to turn their attention away.  Of all the things they’re bad at in a structural formal sense, it is persons whose inner world has seized them who are the most problematic.  How do they have the time and energy to go bushwhacking after a young woman who has already left many times and who always comes back?

If you look at statistics, the number of indigenous women who turn up as bodies, often decomposed, is as shocking as ebola stats, but right here among us -- not far away in Africa.    Most of them were not reported as missing.  Some of them have no known families, though autopsy evidence shows that there must be children somewhere, if they’re not dead, too. Some women have been doing sexwork that turned into violence and the fact that they are “of color” is for some predators permission to kill.  This was NOT the case with Misty.  The line between suicide and murder is a thin one -- some call suicide “self-murder.”  Some are already walking dead.  This was NOT the case with Misty.

What is most distressing about Misty’s death is that her family, the community, the larger world of Hollywood celebrities, all knew her and loved her, but it was no protection at all.  It was no explanation of her last few hours.  There is no one to blame and punish -- or maybe it’s everyone, which is no better.  There should be a play, maybe a Rashomon play, that explores those moments at the lip of the ravine, at the edge of the performance space.  

"JIMMY P." -- EVERYBODY TALKS ABOUT HIM

Mathieu Amalric and Benecio del Toro

When off-rez people try to convey their felt understanding (which is not the same as factual understanding) of Native Americans, they will often recommend a book and that book is likely to be both dated and written by a white person.  Only recently a valued elder of a favorite congregation where I used to talk recommended that I read Zane Grey’s 1925 book,  “The Vanishing American.”  It was his dearest connection to “Indians” which he wanted to share.  But not only has Zane Grey taken several serious body hits in a revealing bio (his nieces were his sexual partners on his fishing trips and his accommodating wife wrote at least parts of his famous books) but also, anyway, Native Americans refuse to vanish.  The idea is now considered an unjustified assumption by out-of-touch anthropologists and political wishful thinking.  Indians never have been what everyone thinks they are, even what the Indians themselves imagine they are.

Even Sherman Alexie, that arbiter of who is qualified to write about Indians, when asked to recommend a book about Indians, came up with “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” by Dee Brown, a white history professor writing about the 19^th century prairie genocide.  Many insist on clinging to “The Education of Little Tree” which was a stereotypical account by a Nazi sympathizer hitting all the Stations of the Indigenous.  When asked which Jim Welch novel they like best, most go for “Fool’s Crow” which is again the same old boy-coming-of-age-on-the-prairie which at least includes the Baker Massacre.  We didn’t used to be allowed to talk about that.  But when Jim tried to write about his true life in “The Indian Lawyer,” it didn’t sell at all.  Back to the mythologizing, the dream.

Now comes a book I bought thirty years ago, resurrected by a French director, Arnaud Desplechin, who (naturally) fell in love with Native Americans by reading “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.”  The book is “Reality and Dream: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian”, written by a psychoanalyst named George Devereux in 1951.  It is about the quite modern topic of battle wound trauma plus PTSD, which “Jimmy P.”, a real modern Blackfeet soldier, suffered in WWII. 

East slope of the Rockies, Blackfeet Reservation, Montana

Desplechin calls his movie “Jimmy P.” and at Cannes it got mixed reviews.  Evidently it was at least in part a self-indulgent work of art, just as Devereux’s book was.  Desplechin relished the chance to come to the rez and feel part of the ceremonies, just as Devereux loved checking his patient out of the hospital so he could come to dinner at his house with his family.  A real Indian!!  Imagine!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDNoaSMKx0g  is a 1946 reference document used for this movie.  The US government made it to try to explain what was not yet called PTSD, and to assure everyone that all would be well in the end.  Bombastic and simplistic, directed by John Huston, it’s still pretty moving.  The officer in conclusion tells the men/boys that the success of the postwar world rests on them, and for the most part they have indeed made major contributions.  Another reference used by Desplechin was “The Exiles,” a 1957 movie by Kent MacKenzie.  I’ve ordered it from Netflix.  By 1957 the fates of traumatized veterans, including my brother-in-law, who was a reservation-born white boy, were pretty much settled.  He gave up fighting in bars -- but not drinking -- and settled into running the family mercantile store on the rez.  The compression of horror inside him was never discussed.  Anything German made him explode.

I’ve always thought that the overwhelming popularity of Westerns in the Fifties was an attempt to explore the issue of war stand-down afterwards: who is the enemy, what to do with the kill-reflex, how can one not feel oneself, how much can a person take?  I also think that the combat-related man-on-man SM underground coming out of those times addressed the issues in a straight-forward and private way, which makes it a serious philosophical category.  (Forget all the pop permutations.)  Both the film-makers and the reviewers ignore the larger subject of post-war drama in society, opting for a personal story, though a few reviewers plainly expected more explosions.  Or maybe they thought Jimmy P. would flip out and scalp someone.

Benicio del Toro and Misty Upham

Desplechin’s a great admirer of psychoanalysis, which has just now been shaken to its Freudian roots by neurological research.  Like Indians, psychotherapy will endure, but mostly by transforming.  This movie is yet another transformation.  I haven’t seen “Jimmy P”, but the trailer is at:   http://www.wildbunch.biz/films/jimmy_p   Of course, I know the places and local people on the rez, but not the professional actors. “Devereaux” is a local name, but it’s a Metis family here.  (Benicio Del Toro could be considered Metis,  but not the French kind.)  “Everybody Talks About” is a familiar local Blackfeet name.

Benicio del Toro

The crux of the matter is that for a rez Indian returning, the rehabilitation was different.  For most, being a soldier meant being equal, respected, effective, in a community.  Afterwards he was “safe,” the doctors kept telling him.  For the rez veteran, or at least some of them, there was no safety, no respect, and stereotypes plus unemployment pushed them back into a chaotic place where everything had changed.   Rotten Tomatoes review website offers a range of opinions from yawn to wow.  The review I liked the best is at : http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/jimmy-p-psychotherapy-of-a-plains-indian 

Reactions by ordinary people are still missing, since the movie hasn’t traveled the country yet.  Given the unenthusiastic response of key reviewers, I suspect most of us will see it on DVD and would have anyway, since there are no movie houses closer than thirty miles and none of them play this kind of film.  There may be tribal pushback.

Michelle Thrush is Cree, Misty Upham is Blackfeet, Mathieu Almaric is French.

When asked, Darrell Kipp always says that the most accurate book about Indians is the Heinlein sci-fi tale, “Stranger in a Strange Land.”  (Kipp’s military service was in Korea, but not in combat.)  Sherman (no military service) pitches a guy named Stephen Graham Jones, a Blackfeet born in 1972 who writes horror stuff and was not raised anywhere near the rez or even Montana.  (Sample at  http://www.wordriot.org/template.php?ID=701)  I never heard of this guy.  I wonder whether he is actually enrolled or just invoking ancestors.

Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Ceremony,” is a key Indian-veteran book that everyone thinks of as addressing Vietnam, but was actually a WWII book.  Despite its status as a deeply meaningful book, there’s a certain kind of person who will tell you Silko is not Indian. Heinlein is, of course, white.  Blackfoot/Blackfeet is a “trope,” a kind of sub-genre that is as much hype and glossy magazine as it is a reality.  The reality would bore hell out of the reviewers who shrugged off the movie called “Jimmy P.”  But the Jews, the Irish, the Germans (ironically), and -- as in this case -- the French, are quick to claim their recognition of the Blackfeet experience.  

The Blackfeet have been a little slower to claim the universality of their genocide with all the others.  Maybe they need to cherish their unique identity a little longer, even while everybody talks about it.