SKODEN The chronicles of Native Men

I salute the light within your eyes...

I salute the light within your eyes where the whole Universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am that place within me, we shall be one.

- Crazy Horse, Oglala Lakota Sioux (circa 1840-1877)

My father was a healer and a teacher.  A healer... well, because he healed himself.  He spent time in the institution, sojourning from grade seven through grade twelve at the age of forty, for what seemed eternity and then graduated college as a teacher. He was an incredible man much like his father and his father before. He married a story-teller, she was strong and beautiful ... they were destined to fail. She came from a royal blood line, top of the hierarchy of all Indian Nations. He drank his shame away, shame of who he was and shame of the last name given to his grandfather when the white man came to our land. 

My name is Alexander Christian. This is our story.

The Last Meal

Fry-bread was given in remberance of His body,

Fire smoked tea in remberence of His blood,

but it did the trick, 

sorta.

Fucking God's juxtaposition...  in the local Starbucks, dad and I sat and sat and sat. We knew we wouldn't get served but we also knew they couldn't kick us out.

"Dad. What's new?"

"Son. Not much." He flipped through his tablet looking for juicy gossip on FB. I sat amused, his nonchalance was funny, his brevity of being himself spread contagion, at least to me.

"Dad. When you gonna shave that pirate beard off? It's summer time, it is too hot... Dad.. what the hell. What is that shit hanging from your face?"

Ignored.

"Dad?"

Father was enchanted by the goings-on in this crazy world we live in. He was always talking about Trump. Trump this, Trump that.