Lost Elder in the “Rez”

by Cody

I’m full Native American. I wasn’t born on a reservation. I have lived on a reservation for a year. My great grandma was the last elder in the “rez.” Mom saw her cousin Donna posted my great-grandma on Facebook, “need caretaker ASAP.” (I call my great grandma my grandma.) We left sometime in the weekend, took six hours to arrive at Lovelock, Nevada. I remember getting out the car with Donna to greet us at the gate. The reservation is three streets. I don’t remember the names of them, but it breaks off to a street, which is the street in the middle of the reservation. It keeps on going three ways. 

To the left is a Shop & Go Gas Station. Keep going down, you’ll find a casino in the end of the town. The other street to the left from the one in the middle goes three ways as well. If you go left, you’ll meet another three ways. Left is a hospital, right goes into a neighborhood. Right form the Shop & Go is the entrance for the freeway. The street to the right from the middle street is where my grandma lived, in the farthest house into the “rez.”

 I’ve learned a lot from her. Loved her as she was my hero. Donna always told me to ask questions, also to drink water and splash your face when you get up. 

My grandma was blind, so she needed help around the house. Things I will always remember are how she always had coffee and two hard boiled eggs and a plain piece of toast for breakfast. She would always tell me to put on channel forty-two which was her favorite show. There were re-runs. It was Bonanza. She loved that show, she said. When I got to ask questions, I always asked what word means this, what word means that. When she was hungry, she’d scream out, “I’m ho-ga-die,” which means, “I’m hungry.” When she needed the restroom, she’d be like, “I need to go qui-ta.” Qui-ta means shhh, basically, and quita no-bi is the bathroom. 

School was about half a mile away. Wasn’t far at all. The town in general was small. This one thing my grandma told me is that we have two sides of us, two sides of you, and that is good and evil. In my mind, in that instance, I thought of God and Satan, but my grandma wasn’t Catholic or Christian or Mormon. That what she told me has probably been passed down generations without Christianity and such and such. My aunts, uncles, and cousins were cool. I remember one of my distant uncles I barely got to meet had died, and he barely got out of prison, so our family said. I have another uncle, but in Indian way, he’s a grandpa who I call an uncle. We built a flowerbed, a little fence so cement would form, put a lot of gravel in his back and front yards.

I was cool that year. No problem with the law besides once. Some kid I asked if he wanted milk, and I tossed it to him, and he tossed it back, and it was sort of open and some of it spilled on me. I got mad and went through his bag and socked him till I knocked that little boy out. School wanted to press charges, but I talked to the officer and told him why I got mad, and he let it go. Only time I have gotten into some trouble there. 

This one time, my uncle (the one I helped) had invited me to sweat (in a sweat lodge). It’s like a ceremony where people pray in a lodge with hot rocks heated by a fire. When it’s red and cracking is when we start. We put the rocks in the middle, we close the lodge, and we put water on the rocks to make steam. Us Natives say it’s so we can be purified, because it makes you sweat. It’s way worse than a sauna. There is some white folks who tried it to copy us, but failed. They couldn’t handle the heat and choked to death. I remember one of my family members has said we are used to it after generation after generation. It’s still going. No one really knows when sweat (the sweat lodge) started in this world, and another reason why we do it is to send our prayers up with the steam, because hot air goes up. In science class you should be able to learn that.

On the reservation, I’ve only seen a few people drink publicly, at City Hall, at some cousin’s birthday party there was one cooler full of beers and one full of sodas. Not all Natives drink or have long hair. I can’t say the hair one, because I got long hair, but my brother has a jail buzzcut he got out a few months ago, but before that, he had short hair. 

At City Hall, there were some family members who were drinking. They were young, but of age. Just my immediate family have started a tradition of every Mother’s Day we go to a powwow (A powwow is a gathering where we sing, dance, and reunite) in Stanford. That powwow started either fifty or sixty years ago. Pretty sure it’s fifty, though. I like that powwow. It’s cool. Sit around, chill, family and friends come and stuff. In a world of Indians, we all know someone who knows someone who knows someone else. People talk about respect our Natives, but I haven’t seen none besides a few. People say Indians are indigenous, rare to come across, from a dying breed. It’s crazy. It don’t feel like it, but it’s true. My elder just died. Grandma died last year, December 8th. The old timers said it’s about time for our next generation. Dying breed from my long time ago. Still a hundred percent Native American. I’m proud to say I’m one.

Songs is what I would like to pass down, but haven’t been able to have a chance to sit with people who do sing. Sure I have uncles who sing but none of them have said, “Come on Cody, I’ll teach you,” but I would have to come to them. Powwow-wise, I feel like I fell off, not connected how I used to be, you know. Sitting in a cell changed my thinking drastically. From a kid who started smoking around eleven years old, in elementary started not going to school for some hours in fifth grade. Sixth grade is when sis and I used to ditch and go to Frisco, chill for the day, come back home like nothing happened. Started bippin’ seventh grade, eighth grade was just chillin’ and in and out of juvie. Ninth grade, same thing, tenth grade, still here. 

The Beat Within has inspired me to write this, so yeah. Life’s cool. Chillin’. Nothing much to say now I also recommend this book called Thirteen Minute Murder by James Patterson. It’s three books in one, but it’s cool. Right now, just thinking what I could put on this piece of paper. Oh, this book I’m currently reading is called the Stand by Stephen King. It’s cool, but it’s about a thousand pages long. It’s interesting, though. It’s about a plague that kills everyone but a few who are immune an there’s good guys and bad guys in this book. The end.