Anyone else who has lived on a native reservation?
I’m dying for someone to talk to who can identify with and understand my experiences! I lived on a native reservation in northern canada on and off for about four years of my childhood. There was no running water, no police, and packs of wild wolfdogs roamed the streets. Sound familiar to anyone? Than please reply to my post! I’ve been back in white suburbia for years but am still in culture shock. I can’t seem to ever really adjust back. I’ve met all kinds of cool TCKs on this website who’ve lived all over the world, but so far nobody who understands reservation life from personal experience. Everyone I talk to answers my life stories with ‘Oh my goodness!’ and I feel more like a sideshow - hey, listen to the stories of this kid who lived in the wild, wild northwest!
Anyway, if you’ve got the ‘been there, done that’ Rez T-shirt, respond to my post. I’ll be glad to hear from you.
By the way, I’ve uploaded some pics I’ve found that remind me of the reservation, if anyone’s interested. They’re on a new post called Pictures - Reservation Memories. It’s not spectacular vistas, just stuff that makes me kind of flash back. There are certain pictures, certain smells, certain sights that make me flash back to the rez: houses without glass in the windows, with garbage bags taped up against window frames instead… seeing a dog wandering around loose… hearing a certain kind of bird that I know only by sound, not name… hearing gunshots at night… smelling sewage… seeing garbage strewn on the side of the road… smelling fish bait…
Aloha, Shalom, Bonjour, Danse, Hola, Konichiwa! Spent a portion of my childhood living on a Native American reservation in Canada because we used to man the post office there. So my culture is a mix between my own ethnic Dutch-Scottish-English-Irish-Austrian-Romanian, and Native culture. My Mom was a military brat who assimilated French, Japanese, and Hawaiian culture, so I also have those in my culture mix too. I've lived fourteen places, spread among two countries/one continent and an island. That's the short version!
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12 Comments to “Anyone else who has lived on a native reservation?”
June 16th, 2008 at 6:48 am
I didn’t live in a native reservation, but because I lived in a place called Los Banos (in the countryside)in the Philippines, rather than in Manila or Quezon City…the kids at school thought I lived in a place like you have described.
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June 16th, 2008 at 7:00 am
Hi! haven’t lived in a native reservation either- but can relate to all the rest- we did have running water most of the time though. but during monsoons we used te be shut off- no post coming through, no supplies for the shops- so only rice, onions, and potatoes available. Used to tell people back here that we lived like in the middle ages- haha
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June 16th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Dilia
Yeah, I guess mine was a bit of a ‘third world’ experience right here in north america. Most north americans are completely oblivious to the life lived on some Native reservations.
Mostly though the reserves are better, more ‘modern’ the further south one gets (in canada anyway), but the further north the less modern conveniences, the more poverty, and the less law enforcement. There was one reservation that had no electricity either, but the one I lived on did at least have that.
We had a car, thank God, so once a week we’d drive a hundred miles to the nearest town to get drinking WATER, glorious water, and food, and also to visit the swimming pool just so we could have a shower. The drinking water we got had to last us an entire week, so we were only allowed one cup of water per meal, which is three cups per day, despite the fact it was around 98 degrees outside. We also had to spare the water used for hygiene - we used the same basin of water for washing our hands, faces, and hair in. It got pretty filthy after a while. Being up there is the only time i dreamed about water and almost hallucinated about water.
There was one water pump at the edge of town which pumped water full of thick white scum, which wasn’t legally drinkable according to canadian law but some people drank it anyway because they didn’t have cars to go into town and get water every week.
We mostly fished for our food - if you didn’t catch fish you didn’t have much to eat sometimes.
Of course, that’s just the half of it… i haven’t even gone into the lawless violence that resulted from the complete absence of police. I think it’s probably worse than an american ghetto because at least they have police in ghettoes so far as i know. One reserve further north of us was nicknamed Little Vietnam because it was so violent. Yup, northern reservations are the other side of canada that no one’s heard about and no one wants to know about. But I survived it, and I admire the people who survived living their entire life there. The survivors are often like war veterans - haunted but tough and incredibly streetwise.
Anyway, I’m sure a lot of TCKs have stories of places in other countries which are much like what I just described, even if they’ve never lived on a reservation.
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June 17th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Thank you for sharing your experiences with us, Jackrabbit. It opens our eyes up to some realities some of us perhaps suspected but were not fully aware of. If you want to share more stories with us you are welcome. It’s very interesting to hear a first hand account of what life really is like in a Canadian ‘reservation’.
And, yes many of us I’m sure have lived in areas or traveled to areas where basic infrastructure didn’t really exist…but your story is interesting because these are areas in Canada.
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June 17th, 2008 at 12:29 am
Hi Jackrabbit
yes Ayako is quite right- it never occured to me that that is what reservations look like.
And though I don’t remember there was much police where I lived- there was hardly any violence. maybe some-one who lived in congo or something can relate to to that.
how long did you actually stay there? did you make friends? would you go back?
we used to have enough food and drink- though it was very plain: remember my mother being totally excited about carrots in the shop
but these reservations sound like an interesting and kind of forgotten place- should like to go there
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June 17th, 2008 at 8:42 am
When I wasn’t overseas in PNG, my time was spent on an indian reservation in northern Montana… While it wasn’t nearly as far into poverty as yours clearly was, but it Was a tiny little town…I grew up always being the outsider or the one at risk because I was the white girl.
I got lucky that I had two good friends that were Indian girls who kept me from getting beat up or blamed for stupid things, but it was definitely one of the
least pleasant things about coming back to the US for furloughs.
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June 20th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
River - totally understand what you’re saying about being the outsider… it’s extremely difficult being white on a native reservation.
More on that in a second - first I’ll answer dilia’s question: How long did I stay there? Well, we’d go there every spring and fall and sometimes summer and winter too, and stay for weeks or months at a time. This went on from about the age of 11-14.
Would I go back? For nostalgia’s sake maybe. I love the land, the vast wild forest… but the reserve was violent and dysfuntional, and though I have a lot of good childhood memories there, I also have some very bad ones. I’ve never gone back after one of my friends there died. His funeral was the last time I ever returned. Yes, to your last question, I did make friends. With both kids and adults. One of the truest and kindest friends I’ve ever had in my life lived there. He was twelve when I last saw him… a beautiful soul amidst all the violence that surrounded him. I have no idea how he’s doing now, if he’s even alive. I don’t know if even he, beautiful kind generous innocent soul that he was, got swallowed in the drugs and alcohol and guns and despair.
Back to what River said… my situation as a white on the reservation was made doubly confusing by the fact that I don’t necessarily look white. My father was Romanian and I inherited his dark hair and olive skin. The rest of my siblings inherited the other side of the family - fair hair, pale skin, light eyes, and freckles. I don’t even look related. The trouble was that I was immediately accepted as native, until people saw my family and discovered I was white. As I got older, I began to distance myself from my family, pretending I didn’t know them, as a manner of self-preservation. Because if I was native, I was safer than if I was white. Hatred of whites was especially virulent among the gangs of kids who harassed us, constantly hurling epithets and telling us how every aspect of ourselves and our habits was inferior and stupid to the native way. Reverse racism. I began to be ashamed of my European heritage. I only wanted to be native. Talk native, act native, think native. I braided my long hair, tied it with leather instead of a hairband, wore feathers, became more native even than the native kids. Which caused huge racism when I came back to white culture looking, talking, and acting native. I would then become ashamed of my dark hair and olive skin, asking my Mom why God cheated me and didn’t make me born blond-haired and blue-eyed like the rest of my siblings. I was caught eternally between two worlds, between two shames.
I think the most difficult thing about living on the rez was never being able to defend myself from the kids who would attack us. They’d start out by harassing us verbally, then it would progress into spitting on us and shoving us, and fairly soon it would escalete into outright physical violence that would leave us running to hide beside a large wolfdog chained in the forest who loved us but hated the other kids. He was a giant of an animal, rippling with muscle, and the strength of his jaws was tremendous - he was almost full wolf. The kids were terrified of him and would back off once we were with him. But that was a passive form of defense, although probably the safest. It was mentally humiliating that I could never hit them back… even when we were being physically harassed, or when I had a guy put his hand down my shirt, I was unable to defend myself because in a place without any law enforcement, it’s like a predatory jungle. I knew reacting back physically could mean we’d die. I knew the kids would bring more of their friends with them, and lie in wait for us, ambushing us on back roads or in the schoolyard or even at the door of our house. Because that was the way things worked on the reserve. It was war. If you didn’t have any reinforcements to call in, you’d be slaughtered. And there were more kids on their side than ours. Every single one of those kids who harassed us had access to loaded rifles, axes, and hunting knives, and I knew they’d use them if pushed. They were violent kids - shooting and mutilating animals, setting buildings on fire… The product of the violence,neglect, poverty, hopelessness, despair, drugs, alcoholism, corruption, and murders they’d grown up with their entire lives. I didn’t blame them for the way they’d turned out. But I knew better than to defend myself.
Would I go back? I’m older now, trained in self defense, and no longer afraid of those kids. They’re grown up, many of them probably dead, and the abuser-victim power they had over me is no longer there. I could face them today. They made me strong. But who purposely returns to a war zone? I remember the gunshots at night, the bullet holes in the windows, the vigilante justice… I don’t want to have to walk down a street as alert and tense and ready as a soldier. No. I don’t think I’ll go back.
The crazy thing is, these kids who hated me, who abused me, who terrified me, who made me conform completely to their culture for survival… now theirs is the main culture I’ve assimilated with my own, the one that makes me a TCK, the culture I feel more comfortable with. I’ve never adjusted completely back out of their culture. Isn’t that a bit messed up? Is that normal? Or is that Stockholm syndrome-ish?
Thanks for listening to my LONG rambles. It’s just the first time I’ve ever been able to open up about the pain and fear I went through. It was kind of a part of my experience that I’d supressed, instead I’d always focused on being nostalgic and wanting to go back. Boy, I’m a case, aren’t I?
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June 23rd, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Native Reservations? In Canada? I live near one. Think it’s Fort Chipewyan. Was actually just thinking about making a post on Native Americans and Residential schools here in Canada.
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June 23rd, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Maybe I *will* write it now. I hesitated writing about it, because it’s a touchy subject in Canada..
And, yeah, Ayako, as weird as it seems, there are places like these in Canada. It goes back to a long history, and I’ve been studying about it in school.. hence the fact why I wanted to write about it.
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June 24th, 2008 at 12:28 am
oh wow. I have not lived on a reservation but I can relate with some experience of living in poorer regions of Russia…
Though still, this is eye opening since ive known some natives in the past but never knew that the conditions of living are that bad.
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June 24th, 2008 at 2:23 am
Kristine, you SHOULD write about residential schools, because it is a shame, a blight, a horror, and an atrocity in our history that needs more public exposure. Besides being torn away from their families and their entire way of life and forced to speak another language and live a completely different culture, thousands were physically and sexually abused, and some were tortured (flogged, electrocuted,etc) and even murdered. I’ve heard stories of mass graves behind many residential schools. The schools were less educational than they were work camps, with most students never being allowed to go beyond a grade three level, instead spending their time working in the fields. This systematic and wholesale traumatization of an entire generation is what led to the immense problems on the reserves today. The legacy has reveberated through each succesive generation. The kids who were released from the residential schools basically had many of the same experiences as hostages/POWs. Thus, with Post Traumatic Stress and no training of how to handle life, relationships, bringing up children, etc, they not only turned to drugs and alcohol to drown their pain, but became abusers as well. Canadians look down on Natives for the substance abuse and violence, but are unwilling to examine the root cause. The government did this on purpose because once a people group is addicted to illegal substances, on government welfare for livelihood, assimilated to the money system, and loses the knowledge of survival off the land, they are then dependent on the governent and are no longer a threat. Self-sufficiant people are a threat to any government because they cannot be manipulated or controlled. You must take away their self-sufficiency, and tear them from their way of life.
Well, Kristine, you wanted touchy and controversial, you got it. Now I expect to be receiving hate mail…
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June 24th, 2008 at 4:52 am
Haha, jackrabbit, don’t expect any hate mail. Well said though.. What you feel about residential schools is something you share with many other people. I made a post about it already. It’s called the fetal diaries #34: behind canada’s mask. Hope you like it. It’s for the people who have suffered such atrocity.
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