Status Updates From There There

“we know the sound of the freeway better than we do rivers, the howl of distant trains better than wolf howls”

“nothing is original, everything comes from something that came before, which was once nothing. everything is new and doomed. we ride buses, trains, and cars across, over, and under concrete plains. being indian has never been about returning to the land. the land is everywhere or nowhere.”

“we are the memories we don’t remember, which live in us, which we feel, which make us sing and dance and pray the way we do, feelings from memories that flare and bloom unexpectedly in our lives like blood”

“they did more than kill us. they tore us up. mutilated us. broke our fingers to take our rings, cut off our ears to take our silver, scalped us for our hair. […] then they took our body parts as trophies”

“our heads are on flags, jerseys, and coins. our heads were on the penny first, of course, the indian cent, and then on the buffalo nickel, both before we could even vote as a people — which, like the truth of what happened in history all over the world, and like all that spilled blood from slaughter, are now out of circulation.”