Life Beyond The Reservation

I recently moved from Manhattan, New York to Bozeman, Montana, which worked out fortuitously in my favor, as the Covid-19 pandemic unfolded 7 months after I had settled into my new bearings. I now have a very different cultural and existential context to navigate, rife in country living challenges like removing noxious weeds, growing my own fruits and managing vole and rabbit populations under my deck. Chief among the changes I have encountered in this move, is the manner in which neighbors relate to one another. People living next door to me in Bozeman actually care about my well being and actively get involved to ensure my welfare on a daily basis. This new, deeply inclusive social construct, that was not a part of my vocabulary in NYC, implied I had to intentionally seed genuine interactive connections with my neighbors. New Yorkers avoid their neighbors at all costs. We don't make eye contact in the elevator, and we walk past one another without so much as a head nod if it can be helped. I spent 18 years doing this avoidance dance. The only time New Yorkers check in on a neighbor is when they are terminally ill or dying, and that's only because they want to know if that means a better apartment is getting listed. Yes we care about community, but in a 'don't bother me and I won't bother you' way. In Bozeman, that is not how they do.

Neighborly relationships in Montana transcend borrowing a cup of sugar from one another, we consciously exchange ideas, solutions, perspectives, share tea and baked goods, and go out of our way to help each other out daily, no matter the time of day. It is surreal for a New Yorker to experience that sort of generosity from people who we are normally wary of. I am sorry, I was consolidated by the big apple, not by Mister Rogers and Sesame street. Neighbors who make a conscious effort to engage each other frequently? Unheard of. It initially felt like the reality offspring of the twilight zone and Stepford Wives, but months later, I cannot imagine my life here without the support of this entire subdivision. Anyway, amidst this new found family in my rural, dark sky, artisan well and septic tank zipcode, is a helpful Macgyver, devoted husband, father of three, who patiently taught me everything from "how to use a riding lawn mower" to "how to fix a dislodged garage door." He fast became my primary source for crash courses on home maintenance. During our conversations, I learned he was born and raised on a Navajo Indian Reservation, and had many truly unique perspectives on life, identity constructs and personal evolution. Having sparked up numerous insightful dialogues with him, I felt compelled to interview him for his incisive, first hand accounts of growing up in a context most of us only know of as outsiders, and what it felt like to move out of there and experience life beyond the reservation.

Asher: From the outside looking in, we view Native American culture as sacred, deeply rooted in planet, people and natural phenomenon is this perception true to you as a Navajo descendant?

John: A big part of what’s perceived from the outside (looking in), is a mixture of truth and fable. The mythological, a blend of fictions from Hollywood, racial stereotypes and white guilt, tends to profile us in the vein of the “Noble Savage living in harmony with nature,” and my experience from within directly contradicts that ideological picture. Yes, back in the day we had hunter-gatherer tribes and agrarian tribes depending on the region, but that does not automatically make Indian tribes 'people who lived in harmony with nature', rather they are just people who found a way to survive the odds of the wild landscape they occupied. They did the best they knew how, to get by. We used nature like everybody else; by which I mean we also exploited natural resources and at times resulted in waste. I mean right here in Logan in Gallatin County Montana we have a ‘buffalo jump.’ We followed the herd, where it wasn't frozen in, and we drove them off a cliff to get our needs met in the least harmonious, but most efficient way. Just because we solved for a problem and did somethings right, does not mean we solved all problems and got everything right all the time. We were just people, trying to survive the wild odds, so I do not see us through the filter of 'Noble Savage' that's not the story you are going to get from me.

A: So human nature has always been human nature….

J: Yes. The human mind thinks and acts out of self-interest and self-preservation.

A: So from the inside looking out, what did you grow up believing or thinking it meant to be Navajo? How were you taught to emulate the identity? Did you feel specific values being handed down to you while growing up on the reservation? Is it of actual value to you now after having moved off the reservation? And did your perception of being Navajo change from the outside looking in?

J: You assume just because I was born on a reservation, I was cloistered into a tribal mentality. Let me explain. There’s always been public schools on the reservation offering the same curriculum you were raised on. Yes 99.9% in attendance at these schools are of the tribe given the facilities' proximity to the reservation and there is no diversity in experience or exposure within such a system but that circumstantially inhibitory framework does not automatically instill tribal values. Let's talk about what it means to be on a reservation. The land is held in a trust by the people for their people, which in itself is a joke to me, because when do we need to have a trust? We have a trust, to control assets that cannot be left in charge of either a minor or a disabled individual, so we were being treated as incompetent by our own. Think about how disempowering that sounds, everything is controlled by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Education, under Federal jurisdiction. Individual Navajo parents don’t have a say on what the kids learn, they don’t have the privilege of school choice. I went to a boarding school that taught me how to speak and write in my native language and I was instructed on our history but the quality of education is not one that bolsters intellectual autonomy or liberated thought, it just puts us out into the world knowing less than our non-reservation peers. We are on par with inner-city kids on welfare. Most Navajo don’t go on to post graduate studies or even undergraduate studies after K-12, because it isn’t even encouraged. I teach my kids aspects of my culture, the language and history, but it does not have real world application, it is interesting to learn of the past, but it does not enable a good lifestyle or income potential in today’s capitalistic free market world. I would not return to the reservation, nor would my kids. It does not equip you to live inclusively with the world at large, it just keeps you isolated in a context that stunts individual growth and freedom.

A: Why would you not return to the reservation?

J: Economically it strips me of my ability to innovate and be entrepreneurial, to create a life for myself that can empower me past being a welfare hand out. There are too many roadblocks to finding my path and living to the best of my abilities within the reservation, the real world allows me to take a real chance on myself, to see myself as an equal to everyone else. The reservation does not offer that scope of self-expression.

A: Roadblocks from the Federal government or from the Bureau of Indian Affairs or internal tribal council?

J: From the people and tribal governments. I tried doing a small business in renewable solar energy, to empower us to be off the grid and self-sustaining as a community. Mind you I had to do it by trial and error. It took me three years to get it set up to being profitable. As soon as I got my business off the ground, the tribal council took notice and set up their own electrical grid as a competitive business which then got subsidized by the government. Imagine a world where private sector is constantly undercut and underpriced by public sector, they have more dollars to play with, but are occupying the same playing field.

A: Why would they do that, after all you are trying to bring positive benefits and infrastructure to your community?

J: It’s a bureaucratic welfare state; it’s a communist format where they keep the power by continuing to deny agency to their public. It’s a way of control. If you start a business, the Tribal Indian government will replicate it, undercut you and put you out of business, this way everything continues to remain state owned, the money continues to run in the same circles, underscoring the same bureaucracy.

A: Are they trying to assimilate as many people as possible in the same schematic to maintain tribal integrity? Is their value system prioritizing the “we” over the “me?”

J: No. Because they drive people, who question the system, away. When you pursue further education and come back 'over-qualified', they drive you away. They maintain that if you are not supporting the current status quo, of being marginalized and being a subcommunity that stands apart from instead of as a part of the world at large, that you are somehow against them. They reframe your external education as a negative influence, because western thought has permeated the fabric of native culture, and seeded the ‘white man’s’ values in you. They make it seem like you are trying to convert those on the reservation to the 'white' way of thinking and being as well. Education received beyond the borders of the reservation is seen as a threat not an asset. I find this ironic because everything the Tribal government strives to provide within the borders of the reservation emulates what ‘white’ America has.

A: Interesting, so why enforce the divide when you can just be assimilated or be assimilating of the world that lies outside of the reservation borders?

J: Exactly. They want to emulate what the rest of America is doing but they don’t do it as a free enterprise, instead they are a welfare state that keeps us continually dependent on federal government handouts. It does not encourage entrepreneurship. My brothers tried being private medical practitioners on the reservation but got walled out, because the Indian government prefers all their doctors operating within the public hospital sector. What this really does, is it denies the people choice. It’s all subpar, and there is no room to develop good alternatives.

A: What if their intention is to ensure everything is equally affordable to all?

J: But there is no room for growth, to question and evolve the status quo. We cannot make things better, we just have to continue accepting things just as they are. I don't think this is the best things can be for people living within the reservation. That's why I left.

A: Am I getting this right, you are saying that it’s a socialistic model trying to embrace and express the freedoms that can only be extended by a capitalistic model? Which makes it a self-contradicting, self-limiting context for all involved?

J: Yes.

A: Won’t they lose human capital if they continue creating an environment that asphyxiates talent and individual expression? Doesn’t this result in a brain drain within the reservation?

J: Yes but the people who are in positions of control, who make money from the system being what it is, definitely mind being challenged. They would rather we left than try to go up against the prevailing system. Presently the funds circulate through the hands of those in charge and are solely disbursed by them to the people living in the reservation, they have all the say, why would they give that up? They feel threatened by people who are succeeding in society, because they don’t want to be replaced or have what they have built re-framed. That’s the problem with power, when you get the taste for a little of it, you will do what you can to keep it and grow it, because you begin serving the “me” over the “we.”

A: What would you say, as someone who belongs to what history would paint as a marginalized faction that is shrouded by a lot of oppressor/conqueror guilt, about the Black Lives Movement? They talk about needing reparations and apologies for the crimes against their race, against their ancestors, do you feel similarly about your people? Do you think about the history of your people and what you were subjected to as a collective race or do you remain in the present and claim “I wasn’t there for it in person, so I am not going to subscribe to that narrative.” Does history influence your present tense, if so by how much? And how do you inform the next generation of your history, do you teach them the pain or the personal catharsis?

J: History is there to learn from, not repeat or cling to for a sense of identity. If you look truly at historical events, you can find the right tools to find greater acceptance for what worked, what failed and what can be taken forward as lessons learned for the future. This means you do not fall into the same patterns as before, you don’t take a part of your story as an individual or as a collective and make that your whole story. Crappy things have happened in every culture, race, creed and religion for as long as we have been on this planet as a species. We can go back in time and every culture, race, religion and creed would need an apology from every other culture, race, religion and creed. Where do we start apologizing and making reparations? Do we begin with Black people? All the different tribes of Indians? The Jews? The Japanese? The Irish? Chinese? Syrians? Greeks? And who’s going to apologize to the early settlers, who fled England and Europe because they were being persecuted? What about the Climate Refugees now that we are treating poorly? Where do we begin issuing the sorry and what does it really accomplish? Any subgroup or nation that was ever colonized or invaded, any people who were part of a genocide, any group that was different and wanted to stand apart would qualify, and we were all both victim and perpetrator at some point. We have to be willing to own that and learn from our past. When have we not behaved this badly against one another? Even when we looked alike we were warring with one another. Did you think all the Indian tribes were at peace before we were conquered by the now aggrandized villain version of the “White Man?” No. We were fighting, killing and sacrificing each other.

A: So human minds have operated similarly, challenging for dominance, fighting for survival and taking over resources that were won through battle, suppression and slaughter since the dawn of our species… like chimpanzees? How do you let go of the racial memory of pain?

J: How did you get over being bullied as a kid? Or being the bully as a kid? You grow up, you come into your own self-expression, you put things in perspective for your self, you take personal responsibility, you see both sides of the coin and you get over it. Besides most of us are blends, we are products of globalization, assimilation and inter racial expression at times. Instead of replaying what has been and continuing to be the victim of a troubled past, learn from it and use it to empower yourself. Hard times make for stronger, wiser people.

A: To surmise your insight, one way or another we are here to realize we are all the same, even if we look different and follow different paths to god, country, wealth and resources. So don’t play the blame game?

J: Absolutely. How do you think we went from an agrarian to industrial to technological civilization? Progress does not happen without loss, both human and environmental. We sacrificed lives on temple steps before, now we do it on a larger scale so we can have hydroelectric power, or roadways. Everything has been built on someone else’s back at some point. Learn from Ghengis Khan, so we don’t need to repeat that lesson. Learn from the worst of what we can do as human beings so we don’t need to endure or emulate that again. We need to learn so we do not repeat our past. We need to accept what has been so we can evolve from it to be better than we knew to be before.

A: Did you see the History article on the intentional biological warfare that the early settlers waged against the Indians, because they knew the blankets were wrapped around small pox patients and they consciously disseminated it to the Indians to get them infected?

J: We give people from the past credit where it may not be due. Not to dismiss the possibility but I find the evidence sparse. They did not have clear documentation, and even the article admits that. I'm not sold on it. Did we even have enough awareness about germs back then to cunningly wage germ warfare? We did not have sanitizers and washing machines back then. Hygiene was questionable even among the colonialists. Are we saying that if a person of one race unintentionally infects a person of a different race that it can only be an act of racism? So with Covid now, if I were to infect you, and you were to infect a person of a different race, would we look back on all of this in time and call it 'biological warfare' between the races? It’s ridiculous. Ask yourself if we just enjoy creating narratives that further color in the bias we want to hold? We build stories around what we already want to believe.

A: Hmm yeah the outbreaks were in 1633, and there wasn’t a vaccine in Europe until 1810…. And you're right media often does omit, edit and use data to fit the narrative they know sells more papers. Reading a fascinating book called 'Manufacturing Consent' by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky that eludes to precisely that. Wonder, if we found out at a later date that more individuals of one race were susceptible to Covid, or certain neighborhoods got hit worse than others and those neighborhoods happened to be populated with more of one race than another that this poorly deciphered pandemic was also racially oriented 'biological warfare?' So where do you land on the article, dismiss it as conspiracy theories or prescribe to it as conclusive facts?

J: We are using few very highly debatable, utterly isolated events to fit a narrative that creates more divisiveness. Yes some human beings are capable of being horrible, but some are also extremely kind, but irrespective of whether it was viciousness or kindness the outcome was the same- there was an outbreak and a lot of Indians died. What can we learn from that and how can we move forward without making that another thing we demonize some group of people over. Why do that? The victimized group begins acting exactly like the perpetrators, by wanting the heads of those that wronged them.

A: What do you say about the present being similar to the past for some racial groups then? Because they claim, yes it happened to my great great great grandfather, but it is also happening to me, my son and my grandson now. What are your thoughts on systemic racism? And by extension, reverse racism?

J: There’s human nature for you. There’s people just being people! Some are ignorant, some are arrogant, some are aware, some are humble. Is everyone who looks like someone who is ignorant also ignorant? Is everyone who looks like someone who is aware also aware? Stereotypes are dangerous but convenient. I have heard members of every self proclaimed minority group speak poorly of members of some other minority group at some point. If you are around long enough you hear every kind of man and woman be an idiot at some point. Should we hold that against their whole community or do we hold that one poorly behaved individual accountable or do we fully address our own reaction to it? We are all guilty of the same behaviors. Racism is not solely claimed by white people. We need to stop advocating the victimization of any racial construct, because in doing so all you are seeing is skin color. You think you are speaking up for your people but you are really just whittling them down to one superficial attribute, their skin tone, and what’s more racist than that? All the judgments they extend is then based on skin color. I saw the most ridiculous post the other day, “If you don’t see skin color you miss the shades of racism.” That’s racism right there! Martin Luther King said “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” We are farther from that day now because of “Black Lives Matter,” yet we do not see that as our collective truth. We have made his statement find such perverse expression now. People are hurting themselves, they are robbing their kids of the present and future they deserve. We are shamed into seeing skin color first and foremost and are called racist if we don't. That is not how I am raising my children to see the world. That is not how I want the world to see my children. A filter of divisiveness cannot help us find unity.

A: Agreed. Now that you have left the reservation and have such an inclusive positive outlook on integration and assimilation, what’s your view of the reservation from the outside looking in? What changes need to happen on the reservation to improve the quality of life for the people still residing there?

J: The way a reservation operates needs to change. Federal control needs to ease off, we need to do for them what we did for the rest of the States, create freedom, opportunity and choice. The government has to give the power back to the people. The government needs to trust in their ability to have agency, to act in their own best interest. 

Take the training wheels off; stop giving them crutches and help them coin the cures. On the reservation, my people are not mentally disabled, or primitive savages, they have the skills, education and abilities to make a life for their own selves if they are empowered with the freedom to think and act for their own sake. Hand-outs only disempower the people living on the reservation. The current structure does not act in their best interest, as it results in a brain drain. The current system makes people like me, who want to be able to question and evolve, leave the reservation in order to make a better life for our families and selves. The ones who stay and are smart, milk the system and assume political office.

A: There’s an incredible book about the elite charade of charity called “Winners Take All” by Anand Giridharadas that I enjoyed tremendously because he calls out the flawed system for keeping the needy in a state of perpetual need. So how would you qualify those from the community speaking out about identity and the right to land titles in favor of the indigenous community they belong to?

J: There are ways to keep land within the tribe that does not involve the current system having to carry forward with it. You can put caveats on land ownership. You can create associations and trusts, but that need not come with the suppression of the people living on these lands. The system is not linked to tribal membership. You can have certificates of bloodlines issued, find ways to keep the land rights within a community without preventing them from succeeding as individuals. When is a society prioritized at the cost of the individual? Communism? Socialism? Not in a free market, not in a free world. Not in America.

A: Did the people ask for this segregation, or did the government coin this “reservation” system as the most viable solution?

J: It was a treaty to stop a war between the government and the people, but outlandish promises that sound too good to be true, often are. Pine ridge and Navajo reservations are so impoverished because they follow socialism not capitalism. There’s no incentive to evolve one’s engagement when there is a glass ceiling to one’s growth, isn’t that why women are fighting the gender ceiling on pay equity and paid leave?

A: What do outsiders need to know about Navajo reservations and the Indians living within its expanse? What has eluded us that we need to perceive now? 

J: People are all the same. We all have dreams, hopes, joys, ambitions, and feel the same failures, struggles, concerns and fears.

A: Everything you have said reminds me of Shylock’s monologue from Merchant of Venice but you seem to highlight that Shylock shouldn’t have even gone after the pound of flesh for reparations, that he should have let it go and moved on. Your views make me feel like that was his limitation, despite claiming that he is the same as everyone else, he felt entitled to something more. You can’t be the exception and want to be the same all at once… It’s like out of guilt you want to put someone who has felt wronged on a pedestal, but that very pedestal alienates them from belonging and thus makes them feel like they are even more discriminated against. Like one goes from being quoted to being a quota within the length of one article? 

J: When you classify somebody, you pity him or her. Virtue signaling is an outgrowth of this limited way of processing diversity. You say you’re putting someone on a box but really they are in a box, you claim it's out of respect and honor but really it's out of ignorance and arrogance. All you’re doing is incarcerating a group of people based on the most obvious parameters and confining them to borders they cannot breach, either through labels (identity markers) or through land holdings, (i.e. reservations).

A: What about our perception of Indian culture being more conscientious of life on earth? That your rituals were rooted in wild spirits, shamanism, and natural forces? Most of us on the outside believe you are a voice for coexistence between people and planet, is that not true? 

J: I can’t speak to pantheism, animalism and paganism. I was raised Christian. And even when my grandmother was younger, and she knew her ancestors subscribed to beliefs that were connected to natural phenomena and the earth, not all Indians believed it, because there was skepticism, there was questioning, there was aspects that remained unaddressed by those belief systems. Christianity answered some of those questions and so many converted. We are all just searching for the practices and philosophies that help us understand the world best. To many this is science. Personally, I don’t think it much matters how we get to god, and I don’t think one way of getting to god is the only way. And just like you can have crazy negative militant versions of a faith, riddled with people who use it to manipulate and control more people, you can also have compassionate, healing, open-minded expressions of that faith, coalesced by people who want to empower other people to embrace a more inclusive, holistic understanding of life and death. Every religion, whether it is pagan or Christian or Muslim can be good or bad, once again it comes down to people being people. Even my ancestors who were pagan, I cannot claim that everyone found expression in those practices in the same way. Some sought power and summoned the dark forces. People can make everything good or bad. You cannot ever generalize how a belief system finds expression through one person as the absolute expression of it, because it never is.

A: What would you want to leave readers with? How should I help you conclude this interview? 

J: You (the reader) have got to find your own sense of belonging. What is your place in the world, in nature, in life. Who are you? What are you inheriting and what is the legacy you are going to leave behind? What would someone say about you if they truly got to know you, not just judge you based on their limitations? How can you become the best expression of self that you are capable of through conscious contemplation? Find who you are and how you can leave the world better than you found it. A lot of people are about instant gratification in today’s world. I want to create contexts that leave greater abundance for my children than I was raised in or given. It’s not just about me, but also about the generation that stands to inherit the world from me.

A: Would you say identity stems from the outside or from within? Nature or nurture?

J: A mix of both isn’t it? We are shaped to believe we are one way based on how others perceive us, but there’s also the element of personal choice and self-awareness.

A: So why do some people get held back by how the outside world perceives them? What makes some people claim that their context is compromised continually by external perception?

J: Because it is so hard to change the narrative within. It is easier to think how you have always thought. It is easier to subscribe to how people before you have thought, and to hold the fort down with the same thought pattern. It is easier to feel how you have always felt, than to take on the uncomfortable journey of changing yourself for the better. It’s hard to evolve, it requires work, and it means having to take constant responsibility for one’s self. People would rather have instant gratification, and what’s quicker than blame? Shame? Condemnation? Those are conclusive, quick and gratifying. They give you a target to focus on that is outside of you. You have a villain. But really that is just addressing the symptom not the source. You are the source. The source is not outside of you.

A: What do you say to the people from your own tribe who will take a position against you on these perspectives?

J: I will probably be called a sell-out and a traitor to the community for finding and owning my individual voice. The people on the reservation will say I am embodying the white man's mindset. They will not acknowledge the courage, resilience and strength it took for me to find my own way. It is easier to label me with a negative stamp. I have applied myself, I have worked very hard to find my own place in this world both professionally and personally. I broke out of conditioning, and a deeply unhealthy system to find a way of life that was more inclusive and less divisive. Ultimately people who see the world through the lens of racism, who see their own fate as forever in the hands of others, will never find the agency within to show up differently. They will defer that responsibility, because it is a burden to bear.

A: Fair. That unfortunately dismisses any one who has gotten out of the system as the exception and not the rule... To break out of the restrictions a society and system has placed upon a person is no easy task, to speak out against it requires courage, but if rising above and living an assimilated life automatically makes you pro-white, then isn't that just more identity profiling?

J: Yeah is it okay if my own race is disparaging me for finding a way that works for me? What would be the solution for my family, for my kids? How can we evolve how we show up while keeping all the labels my own people and the outside world places upon me at every turn? I would not be able to function. I would be judged for being true to my own self. That is no way to live. This is why I don't want my whole name mentioned in this piece. I want to protect my family from unnecessary exposure to further attacks, for the very act of being who we each are as individuals, without all the labels from both sides to hold us back.

A: Thank you John for sharing your personal truths and understandings so candidly with me.

Thank you John for sharing your personal truths and understandings so candidly with me.

 Note to reader: To protect the identity of the Navajo Indian, father of three, I was requested not to divulge his whole name or share a photograph of him. He does not wish to be made an example of or trolled online, rather to share his insights as mindfully as he can. Hope you will read and internalize this interview with that consideration in mind. You need not agree with this piece in order to hear him out. His voice offers unconventional insights into his people and into what it means to be a minority group, which made for a revelatory interview, something I believe we can all benefit to learn from. Take what resonates, leave the rest. John was not born to privilege, he has fought hard to find expression both professionally and personally. Do not dismiss his views as those born out of privilege, because that would denigrate the incredible bandwidth for personal growth, integrity and responsibility he has consciously opted for when faced by insurmountable challenges. Thank you.

Image created to reflect what it means to be Native American after leaving an Indian Reservation. This illustration by Asher Jay, the author of this piece, portrays a man whose identity is in question, whose individual voice is in need of being amplified, whose headdress is composed of directions he could take if he was allowed the freedom to be, and who has a butterfly, a symbol of metamorphosis on his forehead. His ear lobes are covered in symbols that represent a compass and a target leaving who is within quotation marks, i.e. labels uttered by the outside world. He is also questioning whether to be present, be anchored in the past, the future or in self (spiritually). His eyes have been illustrated in a style reminiscent of Kachina dolls, leaving room for the viewer to question if his identity is a stereotype or an archetype.