Watching TV in Indian Country By Mike Roselle Mike's Four-Month Stay Amongst the Lakota

We here at Lowbagger have received lots of angry letters from angry African Americans who read our piece on The History of White People in the Conservation Movement. Well, actually no one wrote us at all about it. But if they had, we would have printed their angry letters. If we had gotten a nice letter, that would have been cool, too. But we won’t be holding our breath for that.

Here at Lowbagger, we do not know if we have any African American readers at all. We’re not sure that we have any readers at all. Though Josh tells me we get something called hits. We do not know if any African Americans are hitting on us. We do not know very much about our readers, so we treat them all equally.

If we knew that an actual back person was reading our site, and we knew whom that person was, we would treat them differently. That’s because we are white people. We just naturally like being seen with really cool black people. Why this is true, I do not know. But I wanted to ask Bob Dylan, a famous white musician, who actually hung out with a bunch of cool black people (or at least says he did in his new book, Chronicles). We couldn’t reach Bob on the phone. We don’t know if he has a phone. We don’t even know anyone who knows him. We will get back to you on this after I talk to Mr. Dylan, and not before.

Like of lot of white people, I don’t really get to hang around with many black people. If I said I had a few black friends, you would think that I was a Poser. So, I won’t say it. But, I do have a few black friends. I know you won’t believe this. And if you ask any of my black friends, they will probably deny that they would consider me an actual friend. So, don’t even ask me if I have any black friends. I don’t. And if I did, I would certainly tell you about it.

Anyway, if you are white, I am not talking to you. If you are pissed off, I don’t care. If you are black, you are probably not reading this. If you are black, and are not yet writing an angry letter, I have but one request; hang out with us. Be seen with us. Write for our website. I promise you it will be at times both difficult and boring. The food will be bad, the music worse. There will uncomfortable moments when we realize how little we have in common and words will be hard to arrange into normal sentences. But it will be a very rewarding experience, at least for us.

If we don’t get any letters at all, we will assume that we here at Lowbagger have failed to reach a diverse audience, or indeed any audience at all. We will say that we tried. We will say that our attempt at humor bombed like a Ted Nordhaus essay. We will apologize. We will keep on trying, and keep on failing to reach a diverse audience until we get some funding for a Diversity Coordinator. Good Diversity Coordinators usually have college educations so this will set us back a few bucks. Unless we get more funding from the big foundations, the main reason we will have failed is because we are mostly white people, and nothing has changed.

Another group of people whom we have not received angry letters from are Native Americans. Native Americans live in Indian Country, but that does not mean we can refer to them as Indians. I’m not even sure if we can properly call anyone from India an Indian. Or even someone from Indiana. They call themselves Hoosiers, although no one in Indiana I talked to seems to know, or care why. Many Native Americans are upset that we killed most of their ancestors and stole their land. This is understandable. Some would even want us to go back to where we came from and never come back. This, too, is understandable. The problem with this idea, and I blame George W. Bush, is that there are no other countries that want us, unless we promise to stay for only a couple of weeks and spend all of our money. This would make an otherwise good idea prohibitively expensive. But if you find the money, I would volunteer to be the first one on the plane. 

Quiltman

Last summer my good friend Michael Donnelly thought I needed to get outside more. He thought I was spending too much of my time sitting around smoking and watching TV. He wanted me to go up to the Warm Springs Res and see our friend Quiltman, who is a major Native American dude. Quiltman’s ancestors fought with Custer, not against him. The Lakota were in the process of killing all of Quiltman’s ancestors and taking their land. But this is not why he hangs out with white people. He seems to like the Hippies up at Breitenbush and usually Michael is the only white guy he hangs out with. When we got to Quiltman’s house it was a beautiful warm clear day. From the house that he, his father, and his grandfather lived in, though the kitchen remained unfinished, you could see the imposing cinder cones of the Cascades. Quiltman was inside smoking and watching TV. He offered me a smoke on his pipe and we watched a movie on his VCR.

I have actually hung out with Native Americans before. I was ordered to by a Federal Judge in Rapid City. I had been arrested at Mount Rushmore for hanging a Greenpeace banner on the giant sculpture of four dead, white guys. The Black Hills is scared to the Lakota, so they do not like these concrete white guys on their mountain. They didn’t want us on their Mountain either, at first. But, we convinced them that what we were doing would be really cool, and they agreed.

The night before the action, we were on top of a mountain sacred to two cultures for two separate reasons. It was dark, cold and icy. I had to pee. I had to pick a president quick. I sort of like Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln, even though they have their faults, but it was George who received the golden shower.

For hanging the banner, the judge said that I must go and live amongst the Lakota and watch a lot of television for four months in the Pennington County Jail. If he had known how I treated our first president, I would have gotten a year. Living amongst the Lakota, I learned many things. The first thing was that they asked me to quit calling them Native Americans. There were some pretty big guys in there so I did.

One day we were watching the Superbowl in the Rec room. The Redskins were playing the Broncos. Some of the guys in the Rec room were active at one time or another in the American Indian Movement. AIM has been trying to get the Redskins to change their racist name since before John Riggins retired. The Redskins owner refused, saying it was a tradition, and was respectful to Native Americans, and would cost a lot of money, although I do not believe that he actually believed any of this. Most of the African Americans I know in Washington are Redskins fans. Every single Indian was cheering for the Redskins. I was confused and asked my friend Slow Bear why people were cheering. He said it was because they had an Indian on their helmet.

I used to like the Oilers when I worked in the Oil Patch because they had a derrick on their helmet and I was a derrick hand. Not only were the Oilers not even in the Superbowl that year, they were in the cellar, and were losing money. They were kicked out of Texas, and were forced, against their will, to go to Tennessee, and change their name to the Titans. Now they are winning and making money. I guess that would mean oil is not a tradition in Houston any more. The Redskins are now losing games and also much money. I will never understand Indians or Football, but I think if the Redskins want to win another football game, they should change their name to the Hoosiers and move to Gary, Indiana.

 Mike claims that the statute of limitations for peeing on public monument has expired.