r/IndianCountry

This Fourth of July felt different.

For most of my life, I celebrated because that's what we did. Fireworks, flags, cookouts. I never stopped to ask why or to learn the whole story behind what we were celebrating.

This year changed me.

When my son left for his apprenticeship helping restore Native land damaged by environmental disaster, it sparked something in me. I started digging into my own family's history. I grew up knowing I was Native, but I was mostly separated from that side of my family. It never really felt like a place I belonged.

The more I learned, the more pieces of my life began making sense. My love for the earth. My beliefs. The way I've moved through the world as an adult. I realized I'd been carrying parts of my ancestors with me long before I understood where they came from.

But I also uncovered the parts of history we rarely talk about. I learned that my own ancestors were sent to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Reading about what Native children endured there was heartbreaking.

Then I read the Declaration of Independence for myself and saw the words "merciless Indian Savages." To realize that the same document we celebrate every Fourth of July also contains language dehumanizing the very people who first called this land home stopped me in my tracks.

So this year, I'm chose something different.

I'm not rejecting America. I'm rejecting the parts of our history that celebrate the suffering, erasure, and forced assimilation of Indigenous people, including my own family.

Loving a country doesn't mean pretending it has no scars. Sometimes loving it means telling the truth about its history so we can honor everyone who has carried it.

This Fourth of July, I wore this shirt not out of anger, but out of remembrance. Because before I can celebrate freedom, I have to acknowledge the people whose freedom was taken.

I know this is unlikely for me to find her exact recipe but I really miss my mom, she passed when I was 27 and for the first time since she passed I wanted to make frybread like she used to for tacos tonight. Turns out I can’t tell what recipe is her frybread recipe because she’s got a bunch of unlabeled ones. The photo is the only recipe I think could be similar but there’s no instructions on the heat for the oil and I thought frybread didn’t use yeast. I can’t tell if this recipe would be for regular rolls or frybread. If anything does anyone have a recipe they could share? I miss my mom and I have our three sisters soup recipe still but I really really miss frybread.

NatiVisions is extending the Late Deadline to
Monday, July 6th!
The NatiVisions Film Festival offers Indigenous actors, filmmakers, writers, directors an opportunity to present their current work.
Screenings are free and open to the public! Bluewater Cinemas located in the Bluewater Resort & Casino in Parker, Az
Along the Colorado River on the Colorado River Indian Reservation. www.bluewaterfun.com

https://filmfreeway.com/NatiVisionsFilmFestival-915947

Today seemed like the perfect day for a rewatch! Anyone else?

it smells really good, wish i got two more when i was there. love sweetgrass.

Standing at Mt. Rushmore, of all places, Trump has just said in his America250 speech that people that say America is on stolen land, are Communists, evil, and many other things. This just happened just moments ago or I would include more details. This isn't the only thing that has been said that litally points to natives or can be taken as pointed, but again... I had to come and get this started because the irony and full audacity. It's not surprising, really. But even still.

ETA: Speech is now available

The Video Starting Just Before Part Where It Is Referenced

ETA2: For those that don't wish to watch:

“As for those who peddle Marxist lies about our heritage, tell our children that we live on stolen land, or that our heroes were oppressors, they're doing something much worse than slandering our past," Trump said. "They are slandering and attacking our future."

The late Klee Benally gifted the world a game of indigenous resistance. What better day to burn the fort than now.

Aho, thank you and a heart "hey how are ya!?", cousins.

Some of you remember me from the frybread saga. The auntie I met two-stepping, the one who saved me in my smoke-filled kitchen. I planned a romantic one this weekend involving foraging (which I have no idea how to do) and people wanted a follow up, so here we are.

Before you read, remember: y'all asked for this. We're floating on the Turtle's back together now.

I took her foraging first. Beautiful but hot day. Told her I was taking her to a sacred family foraging ground. Costco. Because free sample day has to count for some level of genetic foraging knowledge. My mum and her mum before her: all big fans of sample day.

Then we got ice cream.

Relatives, I need to disclose something. I am lactose intolerant. Deeply. Spiritually. I don't know about you, but my ancestors did not raise dairy cattle and my body has NOT forgotten this. Not much ancestral cattle land in six nations lineage. But something weird that happens to every anti-lactose homie: sometimes after a long while of abstinence we think "ah it's been a while. I'm sure I'll be ok".

This, in literature, is called foreshadowing. Chekhov's dairy.

So I got the big ol' cone. Locked eyes with her. Said "I love this stuff."

She smiled and, by Bepsi, I saw the creator in those eyes.

Anyways, we start our romantic walk in a near by trail. Eight good minutes I've demolished that cone and thought "man, why has it been so long since I've had one?".

Then the first rumble. The ancestors knocking. A low war drum starting up somewhere deep in my lower territory.

And it escalated FAST. I'm not gonna downplay it this time. My colon declared independence and started seceding from the union one organ at a time. We were a solid 3km from any bathroom. Open trail. No cover. Just me, this beautiful woman, and a betrayal building inside me with the force of rage of an auntie who's lost 5 rounds of bingo in a row. No lucky troll in sight.

I made my excuses and started boogieing. Huffin it. I was doing the walk, you know the walk: heel to toe, everything clenched, moving like a man carrying a full cup of hot coffee across a frozen lake. Praying. Actively praying. Dropping tobacco in my MIND because my hands were busy maintaining the seal.

And then, about a half km from the gas station, the Creator looked down upon me…

…and said no.

I won't describe it. I have respect for this hallowed community that's helped me so much. Just know the treaty was not merely broken; it was burned, the council fire scattered, the land salted and I was the forsaken. There was... an incident.

Somewhere a hawk screamed. Haa-kAWWW. Not now brother hawk. We have a situation.

I became, in an instant, a man with a heckuva down south scenario and a woman one trail bend behind wondering where I shuffled off to.

I couldn't go to the gas station. I'd been removed from polite society. I went into the treeline like a wounded animal looking for a quiet place to make peace with the end.

And this is where you need to understand the Creator does not abandon his most foolish children.

Because there, maybe 20 steps into the brush, draped over a low branch, a clean, dry, folded almost with an almost loving intention, was a pair of pants.

A perfect pair of tear off track pants.

I don't know what gathering took place in those woods. I don't know the ceremony that left a flawless pair of men's pants hanging in a tree like fruit. My size. Well, as far as track pants have sizes, I suppose. I did not ask questions. You do not interrogate a miracle. When the Creator leaves you pants in the wilderness, you put on the pants and you say miigwetch.

I dug a shallow grave and gave the fallen back to the earth in a brief and tearful ceremony. I put on the Sacred Pantaloons. I walked out of that treeline reborn. A clean man, a new man, a man wearing another man's pants.

She was waiting at the trailhead.

She looked at my pants. My pants were not my pants and she knew it. I left in grey shorts. I came back in navy blue (that fit me suspiciously well). She is not a stupid woman.

She didn't say one word about it. Just looked and said, "Find what you were looking for out there?"

And relatives, I said yes. Because I did. I found pants. I found mercy. I found out this woman will look directly at the aftermath of my worst moment and keep me anyway.

We're going for sorbet next weekend. Indoors. Bathroom located on a map in advance. I'm wearing the Forrest pants as I write this. They're mine now. We've been through too much.

So I come to you humbled. Pour one out for whoever left those pants in the tree. You saved a man's love life and you'll never know it.

Mvto. Hydrate, relatives.

I'll go back to the trail this weekend and try to smudge away the bad spirits but that is haunted ground now, cousins.

P.S: since some people messaged me: Scone dog is fine. He came back later in the evening. Good pup. Image related.