Americaca – the Sounds of Silenced Survivors: Surviving America’S Campaign to “Kill the Indian, Save the Child”

By Samuelin MarTínez

I was an Indian without a tribe, stuck in the Oakland Housing Projects with only a maternal compass to guide me. Dios te bendiga, Mijo, my mother would say placing her hand on my forehead each day, asking God to bless me. I could feel her medicine, her energy, and her hope for me enter my body, fill my soul, and warm the cold. This was Her Blessing Way, praying for my protection in her absence, warning me of all the dangers. There were many dangers for an Indian boy in 1950s Apartheid Oakland, a reflection of Apartheid America.

This is a story of raising children in a country that hated US, a story of how my mother fought to protect her Native son, a story of how she WON! This is an example of a common Native struggle; native mothers protecting their children, during and after The Indian Wars. This is about the generational trauma from The Indian Wars and the wounded soul of an Indian boy, growing up to be a Warrior in response to that war against our humanity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481737203

Samuelin MarTínez

I am the son of an American Holocaust Survivor. We pray for those who preyed on US. I pray for those who cannot see and who have inherited the riches of America, an America built on Native-American graveyards. They ignored our blood to enjoy their inheritance. Such invisibility is brought to Light in these words of prayer, love, and resistance. We demand to be seen and to be heard. Our children's lives depend on it. I am the Great grandfather of one, a Grandfather of nine, a Father of six, a Brother of nine, an Uncle of too many to count and a Partner to one. For all my relations I have joined my mother’s voice of protest to what AmeriCa has imposed on my family. I have responded with 42 years as a Conscientious Objector to war and as Community Activist in the MeChicano Human Rights Struggle; with 38 years as a Psychiatric Social Worker at La Clinica de La Raza, an Outpatient Mental Health Clinic. I have also responded with 18 years' service to the Northern Council of National Compadres Network, 15 years as a Temachtiani, a Sweat Lodge Leader of my Mechica-Familia Lodge, and 12 years as a Mitotiani, a Mexica Prayer-Warrior / Danzante Azteca with the Palabra Cuauhtonal, Ascending Eagle, and a Sun Dancer for five years with the Northern Paiute at Fort McDermitt. To honor all my relations has required me to write this book, my personal Mitotli- Offering. I offer you a glimpse into the experience of Americanization, from Native eyes who see the lies, Native eyes who realize the Native adobe heart my mother gave me will never be taken from me again. Before anything else I must express gratitude to Women, like my mother, who have historically raised a voice protesting Violent Crimes-Against-Our-Humanity. She taught me how to lift such a voice of hope, love and resiliency. I have been trying to understand man’s violence and addiction since four years old. I am a witness of two world views with irreconcilable differences exploding in the living room of my childhood between my father who became Americanized in America’s second war with the world and my mother who retained our Indigenous culture as a Medicine Woman and Oral Historian. I am the man she wanted me to be.

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AmeriCaCa

Don’t step in it! Don’t bring it in the house!

The Sounds of Silenced Survivors

Breaking the Silence

Surviving AmeriCa’s Campaign to

Kill the Indian, Save the Child

Congressional Relocation Acts 1800s - 1900s

We Prayed for this country who first Preyed on US

Samuelin MarTínez

US%26UKLogoB%26Wnew.ai

AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2013 by Samuelin MarTínez. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 04/12/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-3721-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-3720-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013906408

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

About the Book

Introducing… AmeriCaCa

Stuck on the bench

To know me is to know my mother is my compass

In the beginning… The Word

Lo Injusto—what is not fair

America scar/red me… Vicarious Trauma

¡Hay Dios Mío!

Why does AmeriCa hate me?

AmeriCanned Dream

Chalk Dust

Prairie Chicken

Looking for a friendly face

Relief

The Army… Salvation

Body Dysmorphia

Back Home

AmeriCan Bully

Praying for Paying for it

Close Encounters

Take your medicine… Like a man

De Grading System

Return to the Scene-of-the-Crime

Supplemental Income

High School

Close Encounters of the fourth kind

Defining Moments: water falling, a butterfly, and a flower

I won the Lottery

The Debate, generation after generation

God Bless My Children

Amá pinched me in church

I am a Mitotiani

God Bless AmeriCaCa

Paternal Love, a sacred bond that cannot be broken

Four Generation Poems from the second, third, fourth, and fifth of Seven Generations

The Indian Dream

Con Cara & Corazón / With Face & Heart: To my six children, six grandchildren and great-granddaughter

My Death Song

About the Book

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I was an Indian without a tribe, stuck in the Oakland Housing Projects … with only a maternal compass to guide me. Dios te bendiga, Mijo, my mother would say placing her hand on my forehead each day, asking God to bless me. I could feel her medicine, her energy, and her hope for me enter my body, fill my soul, and warm the cold. This was Her Blessing Way, praying for my protection in her absence, warning me of all the dangers. There were many dangers for an Indian boy in 1950s Apartheid Oakland, a reflection of Apartheid America.

This is a story of raising children in a country that hated US, a story of how my mother fought to protect her Native son, a story of how she WON! This is an example of a common Native struggle; native mothers protecting their children, during and after The Indian Wars. This is about the generational trauma from The Indian Wars and the wounded soul of an Indian boy, growing up to be a Warrior … in response to that war against our humanity.

Introducing . . . AmeriCaCa

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I was an Indian without a tribe, stuck in the Oakland Housing Projects… with only a maternal compass to guide me. "Dios te bendiga, Mijo," my mother would say placing her hand on my forehead each day, asking God to bless me. I could feel her medicine, her energy, and her hope for me enter my body, fill my soul, and warm the cold. This was Her Blessing Way, praying for my protection in her absence, warning me of all the dangers. There were many dangers for an Indian boy in 1950s Apartheid Oakland, a reflection of Apartheid America.

This is a story of raising children in a country that hated US, a story of how my mother fought to protect her Native son, a story of how she WON! This is an example of a common Native struggle; native mothers protecting their children, during and after The Indian Wars. This is about the generational trauma from The Indian Wars and the wounded soul of an Indian boy, growing up to be a Warrior… in response to that war against our humanity.

Lisa, mi querida compañera, while reading a chapter in this book, called my attention to the difficulty reading the word AmeriCaCa repeatedly. The Ca sound with a hard ‘K’ as in the word Carnival. While praying in Tlanextli, the Morning Light, I thought of editing the CaCa out of it. But, then I remembered the Oakland Housing Project School’s Special Education where I had attended.

They thought that my learning capacity or intelligence was retarded and treated me as if that was all there was to me, just because they thought so. They beat me and insulted me for speaking Spanish, the only language I knew. When I stopped speaking altogether, they tried to make me speak. When I started speaking the Americano words, they wanted to change the way I talked. I remember staring at the chalk dust erased from the blackboard, floating in a ray of sunshine that burst through a dingy window. I identified with that dust because I felt like they were erasing me, too, as I tried to remember who I was before they made me dust.

I remember it like it was yesterday, trying to repeatedly make the kah sound like kuh with a soft u and pronounce Ameri-kuh without the Mexican-Indian accent they did not want to hear. I sharpened my ability to distinguish between fair and unfair when a French family stepped through the projects and their accents were exalted by all the teachers. Oh, how cute! they would say. All the while I was being sent to special education and speech therapy. They made it easy to see what was not fair. They neither hid nor masked it. The raw truth was there for any child to see and to reach the same conclusion that I would over and over again, always wondering when it would be over.

I remember the physical and emotional experience evoked by repeatedly trying to make Ca, Ca, Ca, Ca… sound like kuh. It was like feeling in my gut, something stuck in my throat that I did not want to swallow. A hard-to-swallow moment integrates the thought, the emotion, and the body, like gagging, regurgitating, or coughing up the experience, a tell-it-like-it-is moment. The word AmeriCa and all of its hard-to-swallow moments was especially difficult when putting together two or more. CaCa brings to mind the first words I think of when something hard is about to happen or when I forget something important, like the code to my locker. Oh Shit… CaCa.

So, each time you come across the words AmeriCa, AmeriCan, and AmeriConning another child to believe AmeriCa is God’s gift to humanity, think about my gut-wrenching, hard-to-swallow AmeriCanizing experience. Perhaps thinking about a garbage Can is a bit strong. You can paint it red, white, and blue and then paint stars on it representing each state taken by war and Conning deceit training you to believe every morning that those weren’t invasions and wars but were One Nation, Under God and you still have a… can. You said it! Some of you might say, God blessed America and it is all garbage, too.

Consider the poetic license I use in an attempt to appreciate the power of the spoken word—breaking the imposed silence, spilling the beans, and screaming to the world, AmeriCa abused me… violated me! AmeriCa killed my mother… filled her body with cancer and generational trauma and tried to break her adobe heart! For all of this, I SCREAM, AmeriCa is full of _ IT You might see from my vantage point why I have to be so raw and so real.

My mother called to me, Mijo, ¡no tomes del agua puerca! Do not drink the pig water! Come and drink this medicine-water. All my life, each time I found myself eating and drinking from the wrong table, her voice would make me thirsty again for the Traditions that she raised me with. This reminds me of Psalms read at funerals, . . . though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death… thou set a table before me in the presence of my enemy… My mother won a mortal conflict with America trying to take her Native son away. I am the victory of her teachings which I now teach by example.

THE SOUNDS OF SILENCED SURVIVORS

First, I lift a voice for my loved ones like my mother lifted for me. This story represents an autobiographical Light, Torch, Example, Measuring Stick, and Great Mirror to find your way back home. In tlauilli, In ocotl, In machiotl, In coacoca texcatl, Mixpa nicmana.

Second, I raise a voice for those Survivors—Witnesses of The American Holocaust, victims of child abuse, rape, violent exploitation, oppression and legislated hate. I lift a voice to heal ourselves and protest the crimes against our humanity.

Third, I write for those who are neither survivors nor witnesses but who benefit from the inheritance of Indian Wars. These are the people who wish to consider that there was an American Holocaust by listening to a survivor, that they might hold and then touch the possibility that native love heals survivors, predators, witnesses and passive benefactors.

Fourth, I write for those who don’t want to believe the heart-wrenching possibility, but who are willing to listen, even though they defend their childhood affiliations with pledging allegiance to the American manifest destiny along with its related American burden of saving Indians by destroying everything Indian. I write with a native hope that in listening they may realize, I never lied to them.

Fifth, I write for those who don’t give a _ _ _ _ and who dismiss with disdain all experiences that are different from their own. I write to invite them to consider that we pray for those who preyed on us, inherited blood-gold, blood-land and prospered from Indian Wars while native children suffered, and continue to suffer, the aftermath of irrational hate crimes against our humanity. I write with native love, a love that we have never surrendered, that they may see our Light in the darkness of blind patriotism and its related bigotry.

With this book I give voice to our humanity, our resiliency, and how we fought as young as five years old for our Native identity and integrity. Our Ances-tree-of-life was cut down; the Native trunk was left to rot and then they tried to uproot US. With our Native roots exposed, we were dying of over-exposure to an Americanization process that actually legalized hate. This is a story of how we fought with the only weapon we had—LOVE for our Native children, Love from a Native Mother protecting our Ances-tree.

My story proposes that The Indian Wars have not ended. Loving our children, in the face of an opposing force that is making a killing, continues to be the ambience in which we raise them. Multi-billion dollar corporations are profiting, to this day, from The Indian Wars. This is our inheritance passed from one generation to the next and is our BLOOD on America MONEY. Native blood is the American inheritance of Blood-Gold.

Our native inheritance is our Resistance—our continuing struggle to defend our native right to feed, clothe, shelter, educate and love our Native children, visible only to those who know… How to see… Where to look… and WHY? This is visible to those who want to see.

This book, from the hard-to-swallow name to the ending death song, explores two worldviews in mortal conflict, irreconcilable differences. This mortal conflict exploded in the living room of my childhood and saturated all aspects of my life, and from my native eyes I saw the lies that AmeriCa tried to teach me not to see.

My eldest brother Bito, hearing my outrage on what AmeriCa had done, reminds me that the Oakland Housing Projects were full of poor, working-class people of all races, who caught all the same CaCa. Throughout our history, there were always White People who recognized our humanity. They fought alongside US, raised their voices, and even gave their lives protesting the Indian Wars and Legislated Hate. America disdainfully called them Indian Lovers, and they caught the same shit we caught.

Bito reminds me of Black Indians who were adopted into many Native Nations as far south as Brazil, as far north as Mexico, and all over what eventually became the United States. There were also Irish Soldiers who refused to fight for the United States invading Mexico. Instead, they fought alongside Mexican soldiers. This is why there are many red-headed Mexicans. In fact, you can line up 50 Mexican Indians and you will see a range of types from blonde-haired, blue-eyed to very dark-skinned with thick curly hair. I tell my children that the blood of the world runs through our veins.

Bito reminds me that all Indian nations on every continent have Indigenous roots and traditional ways. They experienced what we experienced, an Invading force occupying their lands. Where there is a history of Kings and Empires, there is also a prior history of Native Peoples.

I share my brother Bito’s hope in making this introduction clearer and stronger. I got to thinking that when he heard of what I wrote about AmeriCa, he must have associated the word AmeriCa with white people and thought that my lambasting about AmeriCa was about what all White people did.

Let me clarify. The Lakota Nation Elders did an assessment and diagnosis of the Land Rush and Gold Rush storming through their ancient lands in the 1800s. They described what they saw as Wasichu and warned their young not to envy the Wasichu or follow any of their ways. Wasichu did not describe the complexion of the skin as pale-faced, but described their behavior as an insatiable greed for acquiring more and more. Wasichu means He who eats all the fat and leaves none for the children, elders, sick or disabled. This is the context in which Wasichu behavior was discouraged.

In the 1500s, the Mexica Nation named the wannabe Conquistadores Ixnex and gave US the same warning—not to envy or choose their ways. Ixnex (Eetch-nawtch) describes someone who has done a great inequity to the human family, like someone who burns down a village while people sleep, a mass murderer who uses sacred words like freedom, liberty and justice for all. Ixnex acts as if he does not do a crime against humanity, but the ash is on his face, so he is called Ixnex—Ash-Faced One. When I write AmeriCaCa I mean Wasichu and Ixnex, the insatiable greed of the Ash-Faced One who does not see our humanity and therefore fails to see our Human Right to shelter, clothe, warm, feed, doctor, teach and protect our children from wannabe Wasichu and Ixnex.

I pray for those who cannot see and who have inherited the riches of America, an America built on Native-American graveyards. They ignored our blood to enjoy their inheritance. Such invisibility is brought to Light in these words of prayer, love, and resistance. We demand to be seen and to be heard. Our children’s lives depend on it.

In response to what AmeriCa has imposed on my family, I have responded with 45 years as a Conscientious Objector to war and as Community Activist in the MeChicano Human Rights Struggle. I have responded with 38 years as a Psychiatric Social Worker at La Clinica de La Raza, an Outpatient Mental Health Clinic. I have responded with 18 years’ service to the Northern Council of National Compadres Network, 15 years as a Temachtiani, a Sweat Lodge Leader of my Mechica-Familia Lodge, and 12 years as a Mitotiani, a Mechica Prayer-Warrior / Danzante Azteca with the Palabra Cuauhtonal, Ascending Eagle, and Sun Dancer for five years with the Northern Paiute at Fort McDermitt.

To honor all my relations has required me to write this book, my personal Mitotli—Offering. I offer you a glimpse into the experience of Americanization, from Native eyes who see the lies, Native eyes who realize the Native adobe heart my mother gave me will never be taken from me again.

This book is my Inxoxitl Incuicatl, Flor y Canto, Flower Song, written so that we will not forget who we really are. It is an effort to clean the AmeriCaCa from our souls, so we can be who we are, Native. Nuestra experiencia es nuestra escuela, our experience is our school, and my life experience offers a unique perception from which to see what America has done to its Native son.

Sit with me and consider All My Relations as my life has progressed from a vulnerable child in kindergarden to an elder, pouring water over grandfather rocks in my Family Prayer-Lodge, Pray-Dancing in Mexica Ceremony or the Paiute Shoshone Nation Sun Dance. Or, simply consider me a humble Native man in recovery, offering other men a drink of medicine water and a road map home.

While writing this I tease my compañera Lisa. I am having an affair… with this book. It has been like that… a falling-in-love feeling at a younger age. When I am away from her I am thinking about her constantly, writing down on little pieces of paper… love notes that I do not want to forget to give her, constantly trying to find the time to be with her; this book is a Love story. My two little ones, Maritza and Mateo, have been with me through this entire affair with their love. Papi is busy now, writing his book for US, like Nana Vela did.

I had a dream and woke up laughing. I was having a conversation with my book. She was asking me in Spanish, I don’t like the name you call me. Why do you have to call me AmeriCaCa? After I explained the reasons why, she offered alternatives like The Americanization of a Native son, which scared the shit out of me. I call it like it is, what the USA Congress called its efforts to Americanize us, Kill the Indian, save the child.

In these chapters, I open wide the doors to the living room of my mind, and invite you in. Sit and visit with me. I add water to the frijoles as you drink from my cup, a love story that a Native mother gives to her Native son. Sit with me and consider loving my children with a paternal compassion to feed and shelter them.

In AmeriCaCa, help me protect the children from all that could poison their minds, confuse their destiny, and turn them against themselves. Much like your children, they are targeted by corporations to make them consumers, and to then be consumed. America moves them away from the unconditional love of a Native American father to unconditional profit for America, showing love for neither Native children nor their mothers. In our experience, America has not been child-friendly.

CRYING CHILDREN

American history is rife with military blockades of native people, cut off from their resources for life, and children being forced to suffer hunger, cold, and fear. Crying children compelled the people to find a way to shelter, feed, clothe, doctor, and stop the crying. The cries of children are a force that changed our native world, a change that was especially difficult given our memories of living self-sufficient lives. My mother tells a story of my crying out of hunger and cold; my cries obligated her to leave our ancestral home and Relocate to American cities.

There was only one way allowed for a people surrounded by military forts—leave your ancient lands and go to the only place left open to secure what your children need. Thus, our love for our children was used like a military weapon to take away our sovereignty. This is the story from the perception of one of those hungry, cold children in AmeriCa. In time… I will be forgotten; what must be remembered is what happened to my mother and me. America came between US and tried to take her Indian Dream and turn it into something ugly.

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Stuck on the bench

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CON . . . FUSION

When the kindergarden teacher, teasher, as I pronounced it, at High Street Homes elementary began reading another story she had all of my attention. I listened to every word and studied every picture. It was a moment of relief for me because talking story was the only thing familiar to me in school. My mother was a storyteller and filled my first five years with a world of native places and people who did wonderful things. Through her stories I knew of our grandmothers and grandfathers, of remedies, foods, prayers and special celebrations. I knew all about her childhood and my own. She talked about our Indian Dream, which she held for me. I was a significant part of our history, an answer to her prayers.

Teasher was reading about a boy that was brave and smart. She read words he said and things he did that filled him full of character. I imagined being like him. He grew up to be a very strong man who would save the world of fear. Everyone except this brave boy who became a strong man thought the world was flat and ships would fall off the edge and be eaten by monsters. The queen and king of the time were described as wonderfully rich people who did wonderful things. They gave this brave young man three ships: La Niña, La Pinta, La Santa María . . . "¡Hay Dios mío!" I was startled at Teasher speaking Spanish, the forbidden language, my mother’s tongue, but I remained silent… not even moving my lips. At that very moment I was certain the Principal would burst through the door and grab Teasher, shake her and yell at her. But nobody yelled, SPEAK ENGLISH, YOU’RE IN AMERICA! I held my breath as my body stiffened; the only thing that moved was my eyes. They must have changed the rules again, I thought, maybe when I wasn’t looking.

Maybe I didn’t hear right, I thought, ’cause only I noticed Teasher had just spoken the forbidden language. Surely I was wrong, because she always got crazy when we spoke the forbidden language. How much of the story did I miss, trying to focus on just the story. And then I heard it… Columbus discovered America. What a wonderful thing, instead of falling off the edge, that this brave man discovered a new world calling the people he found there…

I froze in fear, filled with con… fusion, staring at a picture of a dumb-looking Indian. My eyes filled with rain. I searched my mind for my mother’s words, "somos Indios, mijo," we are Indian, my son. The only place I could hide from this association between the dumb-looking cartoon character in the book and me was in the silence of my mind. I hated this story but did not know why. The dumb-looking Indian had no strong character—like Columbus, no voice—like Columbus, no daring mission—like Columbus. And now I wanted to be like Columbus and not Indian… like… my… mother. I cried inside.

Later that day, I spoke my mother’s language in an effort to soothe the ache in my heart. I was sure it was safe now that they had changed the rules. That is when I learned that the rules applied only to US.

HEART-WRENCHING MOMENTS

For those of you who were led to believe that history was His-story and the only story, I share the following that was helpful to me. It was heart-wrenching for me to see that the truth that I had been taught became the lie. Those whom I was taught to reverence, because they discovered and then civilized America, were in reality suffering from delusional grandiosity, a schizophrenic reality. They presented themselves as God’s gift to humanity on a manifest destiny to save the new world. They spoke sacred words about America, the beautiful bringing salvation to my world. They taught that my people refused the wonderful things America did because we were stubborn Indians who don’t know better and other worse things were said. It broke my heart to hear things like this about me and my beautiful grandmother, Mamá Bertina, pura India, pure Indian, as my mother would say.

This story may help those, who like me, from vulnerable ages were taught to pledge our allegiance and pray to a flag every morning. Perhaps you, too, were taught not to question and think critically about America, the beautiful. Perhaps you experienced, as I did, an unexplained discomfort, an arresting of our innate resiliency, our natural tendency to triage right from wrong, fair from unfair. At impressionable ages, were you also isolated from your mother and TOLD to stand, hold your hand to your heart, and pledge your allegiance to one nation, under God?

During such ceremonial moments did 1,000 images burst in your head and pierce your heart, too? Did you also grow up associating God and America with a willingness to kill or die for her? Did AmeriCa saturate your impressionable childhood with the raw fear that The Russians Are Coming! Did you hear the siren and were told to duck under your desk, tuck your head between your knees, and hug your legs tightly? Don’t worry, America will save you, with the bomb, we were told every morning… proudly… full of fear causing me to be full of a need to be saved and rescued by God bless AmeriCa.

Holding my heart, I remembered the adobe village where I was born and the bronze plaques in the school gym with the names of my father and uncles who fought and died in America’s second war with the world. This memory helped me feel more American every school morning. For four years, I associated America the beautiful with God and war. Whenever we went back home to Colorado for only a visit, I stood before those bronze plaques again, held my hand to my heart, and pledged my allegiance to the flag.

I could see my Amá and all the elders around me looking at me saying "¡Qué Lindo! how beautiful! I thought they were saying Qué Indio and I got confused, Indio and Lindo sounded good to me—but immediately I remembered America telling me over and over ugly stupid and lazy" Indian… another heart wrenching moment… the fusion of two opposing realities, America and Indio. I realized that this opposing reality to America the beautiful was also piercing my heart… the ugly, uncivilized, lazy Indian… I was taught to believe about myself and… them. At age nine, I became aware of an internalized shame and an effort to hide one… in order to be part of the other. I then recognized I had been feeling this way for the past four years, every school morning—mourning who I am. One was dying in order for the other to live. I was dying to live… American—literally!

Every story and song saturated me with the message that some are More American than Others. I was taught that being more or less American was associated with those who had more or less of everything related to the American Dream. Thus, those who were less American were blamed for having less American blood, courage, pride, roots and smarts. This is how I became more or less Americanized, always struggling with this heart-wrenching conflict between two worlds.

My experience was cemented as I stood almost naked before the Sargeant at the Military Induction Center in downtown Oakland on my 18th birthday saying, NO, I Won’t go to Your Vietnam War! Only two years before I had been angry at my mother for refusing to sign the Marine Corps enlistment papers authorizing me to fight for our country. Back then, I still believed everything that I was taught about America. My mother, on the other hand, did not believe enough to sacrifice her son. I could not understand her reasoning, and argued yelling, What do you know about war?! In that moment, I had forgotten who she and I really are. She responded, "Mijo, you don’t sound like yourself… be patient… do not rush into war… piénsalo bien, mijo . . . think before you jump."

What helped me throughout such heart-wrenching moments may also help you. Imagine a small pueblo or barrio, perhaps one you have lived in or visited. At the center of this pueblo remember the park or plaza. Imagine yourself sitting on a bench. From where you are sitting, look toward the center.

Now, imagine it is a warm spring day and you are enjoying all of the beautiful trees, flowers, birds, and grass. At the center of this park or plaza you see a fountain with running water falling in a cascade into a full basin of water. In that water, imagine there are golden fish and emerald green frogs. To the side of the fountain, underneath a tree, and atop a rainbow-colored zarape, blanket, imagine you see a child slowly standing.

From what you intuitively know about children, you can tell this child is just learning to walk. You can tell by the way the child toddles toward the fountain. Intuitively, you know this child is curious by the way he is touching and tasting everything. When you see the child climbing the rim of the basin, you know this child is a climber. As the child kneels over the edge and reaches outwardly into the water, he begins to lose balance…

What does your instinct tell you to do?

Imagine that you are ALARMED and JUMP up from the bench. RUNNING to the child you INTERVENE and grab the child to PREVENT the child from falling in. You know that this is the right thing to do. You also know that someone should be RESPONSIBLE for this child; you SEARCH for that someone. You naturally COMFORT and PROTECT the child; you hold this child feeling a surge of pride and duty, willing to continue until the child is left in good hands.

This Intuitive Wisdom is called Innate Resiliency. It is something that you are born with and which is fostered in the context of relationships. It accumulates through life experiences and doesn’t require a university degree. You know intuitively what to do!

Imagine the same park or plaza and you are sitting on the same bench looking to the center. You notice the same naturaleza, fountain, tree, zarape and the same curious child climbing the rim of the basin, beginning to lose balance while reaching into the deep water.

Now Imagine what would keep you stuck on the bench impeding you from applying your intuitive wisdom. What if that child was of a different race or class? What if you are concerned about being accused of pushing that child? What if you were taught that those people should take better care of their children and should be taught a lesson? Imagine you are invested in teaching those people a lesson. What if you heard all of your life in subtle and overt ways to let them drown in their own stupidity!

What if you were indifferent, arrogant, or believed it was the will of God? What if you did not sleep well the night before, drunk, or sleepy from too much medicine? What if you had barely made it to that bench and everything was on your last nerve? There are many reasons that could cause you to not notice or care.

Now, imagine that child was a Native child, perhaps five, 10 or 15 years older, and you took a minute to wonder about the reasons the youngster was losing balance. Allow your innate reasoning to ponder. Imagine he was pushed.

What if someone related to that child told you, America pushed this Native child! Imagine all the reasons you could not believe this, all of those reasons that you hold dearly because they comfort your worldview, a comfortable perception of your reality. Imagine yourself concluding this disturbing testimony is impossible, unbelievable; America could not possibly be causing the economical, political and environmental circumstances that would push a young Native son to the edge.

Your perfect world of being on the right side of God could not be disturbed by needing to jump from the comfort of your bench to rescue an Indian child from an America that contradicts what has been described to you throughout your life as the divine will of God. Your perfect worldview of America, as God’s gift to humanity, on a manifest destiny to bring salvation to such a child, could not be obstructed. It would be better to let that Native child drown than for you