Living in Indian Country: Wild Ricing

When we returned from the reservation in August, I resigned from BetterLife. I wanted to be free to go with Wilson at the end of the month for ricing season. Without a job, I spent my days doing nothing but be with him. One afternoon we hopped on a bus to go see Bruce. We hadn't seen him at all that summer. Arriving at his apartment house, we saw a panel of buzzers for the different apartments, the names of the occupants above each buzzer. We looked up Bruce's apartment number, but his name wasn't on it. No one answered the buzzer. Wilson and I went home confused. That evening Wilson called Bruce's son.

"Sorry," his son said, "Dad was killed last month. He was all tanked up on his mo-ped, and took a turn into a car. He was killed instantly"
The next day, Wilson and I drove out to the veteran cemetery near the airport and found his grave, a simple white cross in a long row of white crosses. Maybe if we’d stayed in touch, he wouldn’t have started drinking again. We felt guilty for not having visited him earlier. As we stood at his grave, we knew he would always remain a very special and important person in our hearts.

The wild ricing season was the end of August and early September. Elders would go to the edge of the lake and inspect the crop, deciding the proper time to begin the harvest. The harvest had rules. No one can begin ricing until the season officially opens and canoes have to be within certain specifications. The point is to try to preserve the fields for another year.

Wilson loved to pole for his dad. Standing at the end of the canoe with a 15 to 20 foot hand-hewn pole, he pushed the canoe through the rice stalks. Walter, sitting in the middle of the canoe, was the 'knocker'. In each hand he held hand-hewn sticks about 32 inches long. The knocker would take one stick and reach out to the rushes, pulling them toward him over the canoe while with the other hand knocking the rice off of the rush and into the boat. Both knocking and poling are hard-learned skills; people who are good at it are in demand.
Not wanting to stay on the tract by myself, I went along every day and waited on the bank of the lake. I took a good book and sometimes took walks through the woods. Walter called me "Wilson's shadow."

One morning just after arriving at the lake, I saw Wilson throw a Coke can into the brush. I went to get it. Looking over the tall weeds, I saw all kinds of pop and beer cans strewn about.

"Wilson! How come everyone is throwing their trash here! You're Indians, you’re supposed to respect the environment!"
"Don't worry about it," he said, obviously irritated with me. "The Boy Scouts will pick it up."

They usually riced until dark or until their boat was so full that they could take no more in. When they got back to the house I rubbed Walter's back and listened to him talk about when he was a young man playing the amateur baseball circuit or when he was in the service and stationed in Germany. ("Sprechen due deutch?" he'd ask, "nein", I'd answer.)

Walter offered to teach me to dance. Everyone thought he was joking. But up he stood and over he came. I wasn't a very good student, but I had a good time.

Step by step, Wilson and his dad showed me the process of harvesting and preparing wild rice in the traditional way. Few did it that way anymore. If they kept their rice, most people brought it to a place for bulk processing. But many didn’t even hang on to it. A lot of the younger people would sell their rice directly off the lake to brokers waiting on the shore and at certain stores. Some ricers would get their bags wet, causing it to weigh more and get a better price. Others would put rocks in the middle of their bags. Some saved their money until the end of the season, but many took their cash immediately and spent the night drinking. But Walter and Wilson saved their rice. They preferred to keep it, process it the old way, and use it through the following year.

When Walter felt he had enough rice to get started, he went go to the backyard and placed a load of cedar wood in a small pit. After lighting the fire, he put a metal sheet over it. The sheet was bent up around the sides in order to keep the rice from falling off as he took a pole and pushed the rice back and forth on the sheet. This prevented the rice from burning while it was being parched.

Next came the 'jigging'. The parched rice was placed in a concrete pot that was put into a hole in the ground. Wanda then stepped into the hole onto the grain. Her hands on the ground to steady herself, she quickly moved her feet up and down to grind the hulls off of the rice. This could take about two hours. When Wanda got tired, someone else took over. I was glad they never asked me. It didn't look easy.

When the rice looked ready, Walter took it out of the hole to fan it. He put the rice a few scoops at a time into a wide, fairly flat, birchbark bowl, then, while standing with his back to the wind, bounced the bowl to shake the hulls out of the rice. Finally, the rice was brought to the kitchen table, where we all went through it, cleaning out any left over hulls. This was the final product, ready to store for meals all winter.

"Would you like to try some Indian popcorn?" Walter asked me.
Taking some of the rice, he popped it on the stove just like corn. Imagine making popcorn with rice!

Parching the old way was also the best way to finish the rice. When preparing it for a meal, rice parched the old way didn't have to be boiled. All I had to do was pour the hot water from the boiled potatoes (a staple at each meal) over the rice, cover it, and let it set for about 15 minutes and it was ready for the table.
In Wilson's mind, real wild rice is the only rice worth eating. But for me, it was bland and tasteless. I had to doctor it up with butter and salt at first in order to get used to it. I learned a lot about cooking that month, though. It had never occurred to me that baked beans or macaroni and cheese could be made from scratch. Annie also tried to show me how to cut up a fish. This was not something I wanted to learn, so I weaseled out of it as quick as possible.

In my simpleness, I had always thought I knew how to cook. Well, I knew how to make hot-dogs anyway. It was a blessing for them all that I didn't cook much while I was there.


This whole time and season was something that, in the years later, remained very dear to Wilson's heart.

Living in Indian Country: a Promise for Always.

I watched Annie pack things for Savannah and Candis to take with them to the foster home, including a few jars of blueberries she had canned. Apparently, Annie had crossed the line with the social workers, a line no one was telling me about. The girls weren't going far; they were going just to the other side of town. Wilson and I drove Annie and the girls over. Little emotion was expressed. It seemed almost normal routine and the exchange between mother and foster parents was over in a matter of minutes.

Wilson drove down a dirt road and stopped at a clearing near the lake. We got out and stood in the tall grass near a tree, enjoying the warmth. The breeze was cool and the air smelled of pine. The sun sparkled on the water.

"I'll always take care of you," Wilson told me.

"Really?" My heart soaked it in, "Do you really mean that?'

"Of course. I wouldn't have said it if I didn't mean it."

Living in Indian Country: Salmon Lake

That summer we drove up north to Salmon Lake. Main Street, just a few blocks long, looked shriveled and lifeless. Although there were some tired businesses such as a grocery, liquor store, laundromat, mercantile, bars, and a Dairy Queen, most of the street appeared worn out and empty. The Five and Dime, its window display of trinkets dusty and sun bleached, had a "for sale" sign in the door. Wilson was sorry to see the elderly couple retire. Apparently they weren't asking much for the store. On later visits, the store was closed, but remained unsold, the same musty wares sitting in the window.

Wilson's dad, Walter Hunter, lived in a yellow three-bedroom house on the tribal tract, a section of land built up with many of these identical homes. This tract was across the highway from the main part of this small resort town. Wilson's relatives, laughing during the telling, related how white tourists drive slowly through the tract with their windows rolled up and their doors locked, looking at tribal members and their homes as if visiting a zoo. Wilson’s relatives laughed, then cursed the tourists.

Walter had been a Christian for almost thirty years now, but still practiced many of the old traditions he was raised with. In his eighties with white hair and weathered hands, he kept constantly busy. While many of the homes around him were barren and dirt packed, growing more old cars and dogs then trees or grass, his lawn was clean and well kept. A source of pride was his cucumber patch in the backyard. One of his favorite stories, which he would tell over and over, was how he had caught two boys stealing from his patch a couple years earlier. Walter laughed and laughed as he retold about how one boy stood and vehemently denied the theft, all the while cucumbers were peeking out of his pockets.

The house itself was a simple box design used by the Bureau of Indian Affairs on many reservations across the country at that time. The front door, toward the center, brought you into the living room. The linoleum-covered floor extended into the dining area and the kitchen was behind a wall to the side. The wall brought you down a hallway to the bedrooms. The number of bedrooms differed from house to house. The furniture was simple and the thin walls were adorned with pictures of grandchildren and Native American mementos.

I was the last one out of bed on my first morning there. I could hear people talking and laughing in the other room. They had ignored me when we'd come in the night before. I stayed in bed as long as possible out of fear of everyone.

Living with Walter was his youngest daughter, Annie, her two daughters, Savannah and Candis, and Wilson's nephew Mathew. Finally their voices quieted down and I decided I to get up. I got dressed and joined Wilson and Walter in the kitchen. To my delight, there was a big bowl of unglazed doughnuts on the table.

"Can I have one?" I asked Wilson.
"Sure."

Great. I grabbed one and took a big bite.
"Ugh! What's wrong with these doughnuts!"

Wilson laughed. "Those aren't doughnuts. That's fry bread. That's the best kind of bread there is!"

Well, Wilson may think so, but after that kind of disappointment, it took me a long time to warm up to the things.

Annie was outside on the dirt driveway, leaning on a car, talking to two social workers about her girls. Savannah and Candis where about seven and four. Candis, in her pajamas, kept peeking out the front door. Every time she did, her mom would holler at her to get back into the house and get dressed. Figuring that this wasn't going to impress the social workers much, I finally took Candis into the back room, found some clothes for her and brushed her hair.

As Wilson left for the woods with his dad the next morning, he kissed me good-bye. Annie leaned over after he left and said, "He really must love you. I've never seen him kiss anyone in front of people before. Not even his wife."

I was sitting with Wilson's sisters around the kitchen table. It was beginning to feel comfortable. Now most of them looked at me and smiled and laughed as we talked. The atmosphere was relaxing. They didn't seem to care how I looked or what I wore. I didn't feel any pressure to perform.

Mathew's older sister Wanda kind of slid into her grandpa's house that day. When she moved, she glided across a room. Intelligent and quick-witted, Wanda radiated confidence. A beautiful girl with shoulder length black hair, heart shaped face and sunglasses; she wore her jeans tight. She quickly took me under her wing and invited me to go play pool with her down at the bowling alley. I went with her and watched as she teased and flirted with the men. Wanda was full of life and held people's attention. After the bowling alley, we sat in the grass at the park talking about Wilson while we ate snacks.
"Is Wilson a good worker?" I asked.
After hesitating a moment, she answered, "When he works."
I took that to be a positive answer.

Later I was told, "It's hard to get jobs around here. White people won't hire Indians, and a person can only get a job with the tribal government if they've got connections, like family on the council."

That evening, after hearing I'd been walking around the tract with Wanda, Wilson warned me not to walk around the tract by myself.
"There's a rapist that lives in that house over there," Wilson said, pursing his lips and pointing with them, a custom used rather than point with fingers.
"Everyone knows it?"
"Well, that's just the way he is. People just stay away from him."



The whole tract bore that feeling of “live and let be.”

March, 1980. Meeting Wilson

I hurried down the long hallway of the treatment center toward a patient's room. As I quickly walked, two men ambled up the hall toward me. One was a staff member, the other a new patient on crutches. The new patient was a Native American with classic features. He eyed me closely as he walked by, making me feel extremely uncomfortable. I didn't like being stared at.

That Indian better stay away from me, I thought as he passed.

BetterLife Treatment Center, on the seventh floor of Sunshine Park Nursing Home, was an alcohol detox and treatment center specializing in geriatric nursing care. Because of BetterLife's ability to provide specialized nursing along with alcoholism treatment, the program occasionally accepted younger people with physical needs other alcohol centers couldn't cope with.

I learned that the Indian man had been hit by a car after leaving Arthur's Bar six weeks earlier. Late to meet a girlfriend at another bar, he was struck by a fast moving Buick while crossing the street and sustained a fractured leg. He had spent the last month and a half in traction at the county medical center. He was at BetterLife because of the medications and physical therapy he still needed for his recovery.

BetterLife was focused around the 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous program. As a Nursing Treatment Assistant, I worked with patients on a daily basis with both their physical and alcohol treatment. Doing the first step with people was always one of my favorite duties. Reviewing their past in an attempt to bring out the problems related to alcohol and their powerlessness over it, I heard their stories and got a chance to know them personally.

Although most caregivers involved with emotionally vulnerable patients are able to remain objective and detached, it's not uncommon for a nurse to occasionally develop a close relationship with a patient. Unfortunately, I had a tendency to get attached to one or two patients at a time. Doing step work with patients only amplified my tendency in that direction.
I became attached to a seventy-year-old woman when she broke down and cried over the murder of her three-year-old daughter at the hands of her husband fifty years earlier.
I fell in love with an eighty-year-old Florida transplant when she swore at me for trying to explain that those were elm trees outside her window, not palm trees.

But having grown up without a good relationship with my father, my biggest danger was that I had an overwhelming need to be protected and wanted. In February of 1980, Bruce Gates was the resident I was most fond of. A war veteran, he was fifty-ish with white hair and a fatherly appearance. I wasn't assigned to Bruce's first step, but I'd met him in group session and found him to be smart, warm-hearted and funny. Although I didn't go out of my way to find time to speak to him, I enjoyed his teasing when we were around each other. We developed a warm friendship.

At the same time Bruce was also developing a friendship with the new patient, Wilson, the Indian man. Whenever I ran into Bruce, Wilson was with him. Together they would tease me good-naturedly.

Wilson also began hanging around the nurse's desk more.
He was kind of a nice person after all, I decided.


I wasn't assigned to help Wilson with his first step either, but he wasn't comfortable with the person who was and asked me to help instead. There was nothing in his first step that struck me emotionally. In fact, my initial impression was that Wilson was skimming the surface, not totally forthright in his story. But through the open door of this first step work, Wilson began to tell me details of his life.

He was 100 percent Chippewa from the Fish Lake Reservation. Wilson's generation was the last of primarily full bloods on that Reservation and until he was five-years-old, he spoke only Ojibwe. As a baby he lived near the lake with his family in a small house without plumbing. When his mother remarried after his father died, he stayed with his grandpa, Way-zhow-ush-quah-je-wabe, in the woods near Leech Lake. The rest of his five or so siblings stayed with his mother and stepfather, Walter, who were drinking heavily. I say five children or so because the number varied. Both adults entered the marriage with five children each, but some of the older ones were already married and others moved in and out. Five more children came after Wilson.

The drinking wasn't the reason Wilson went to stay with his grandfather. Grandpa drank too, although not as often as his daughter. Grandpa needed Wilson to help him around and be a companion. But the relationship was reciprocal; Wilson cherished the help and companionship his grandpa gave him in return. Spending much of their time alone together, they grew very close.

Of Wilson’s early childhood he spoke fondly, "We used to camp by the lake in large groups," he said, describing traditional events such as powwows and ricing. "Gathering wild rice every year was our time to be together and see friends and family. We looked forward to it, just like Christmas to you guys. Other times in the woods was when we gathered maple or went trapping and fishing."

Wilson stayed with his grandfather until he was five and it was time to begin school. When the time came to leave, Wilson hated to go. He adored his grandfather. But his parents still spent time with his grandfather at the gatherings in the woods. There, Wilson continued to learn from both his parents and Grandpa the traditional way of life and food gathering. However, Wilson's mother and stepfather were also Christians now. As Christians, they were determined to raise their children to be sober and love the Lord.

"They had all of us kids sit at the table after dinner for Bible study," Wilson remembered.

Nevertheless, after his Grandpa’s death six years later, Wilson began drinking. His parents, who had no problem with spanking him when he was younger, now backed away.

"You make your choices. Just don't come crying to us when you get in trouble," his mother said.

Wilson took to running away from home and getting into trouble with the law. Finally, he was sent to a foster home and then to a boy’s reformatory.After graduation from the reformatory he attended Haskell Institute, an Indian college in Kansas. There he trained as an architect. He enjoyed the work; creative design appealed to him. He worked as an architect for a couple of years before, according to Wilson, he'd dated the Sheriff's daughter once too often.

Wrestling with his jailers as he was being thrown into a cell, he grabbed the doorjamb with his left hand to keep from being pushed in and they slammed the heavy door right on it.
The next morning, the doctor worked to save most of his hand. Although the doctor was successful and he lost only half his thumb, he was unable to use that hand for a long time and so was unable to continue as an architect.

Wilson was in and out of jobs for the next few years. His life alternated between trying to pull himself together in alcohol treatment and being drunk. His life fluctuated from honest workman to social outcast and back again. BetterLife wasn't his first time in treatment; it was his fourth, and he now had a wife and four kids. He hadn't lived with his wife for the last six months, though, and he didn't see much chance of returning to his marriage. According to Wilson, she was always critical of him and mean with the kids.
"Anyway, my wife won't like me sober," he said.

Most days, I began my shift in the afternoon and inevitably found Wilson and Bruce leaning against the wall in the hallway. Wilson, swinging his cane in his hand, was always nicely groomed. His clothes, including his jeans, were always pressed, and the cuffs of his sleeves carefully and perfectly rolled under twice. The two of them talked quietly to each other as they watched people pass. They always had a big smile and hello when I approached.

When I had the opportunity to take a group of residents for a walk, Wilson joined me. It was spring, and another aide and I guided the group along the parkway toward the University. The river sparkled below us. Wilson and I, while at the same time speaking and laughing with the group and enjoying the sunshine, walked together and talked.

In the late evening, Wilson and Bruce were the only ones still in the smoking room watching TV long after the older residents had retired. With the shift almost over and the work all done, I took the time to sit down and unwind.

I couldn't imagine myself relaxing at night with the Indian I was sure to steer clear of earlier. Funny, now I looked forward to it.