Last Standing Woman by Winona LaDuke

Author:Winona LaDuke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MBI
Published: 2010-04-06T16:00:00+00:00

PART III

The Occupation

THE BEAUTY OF JUNKED CARS

The strange doings of White Earth village were observed with interest from the nearby housing project of Hungry Hill. The people leaned in their doors or perched on porches throughout the spring night, drank coffee, called across to their neighbors, and discussed from the sidelines the reconfiguration of their village.

Most of Selam Big Bear’s junk car lot had been relocated to the perimeters of the tribal government offices during the night. The takeover had been swift and orderly, the logistics of the operation organized by a group of Vietnam veterans led by Moose Hanford. Mesabe’s pipe ceremony to bless the ogichidaaweg, or warriors, earlier that evening had launched the offensive. They moved in at eleven on a Monday night, politely excusing the tribal government’s security guard and borrowing from the maintenance room the keys to the bulldozers and tractors. With the efficiency of a tightly run military maneuver, the heavy equipment hauled the junked cars from Selam’s collection and deposited them at the tribal offices. Like a settler of old circling the wagons for defense, Willie Schneider drove the tribal bulldozer, nudging the old sedans, crashed vans, immobilized pickups, and a few charred remains of unidentifiable war ponies into a circle around the office building to create a perimeter. Moose had theorized that strategically positioned junk cars and pickups would make excellent sentry posts. Selam Big Bear returned with a few truckloads of his winter firewood, and the logs, as well as sandbags, were packed in between the junked cars. The ogichidaaweg had completed a barricade behind which the Indians could now make their stand. Elaine, Lucy St. Clair, and Kway Dole arrived soon after in Elaine’s Nova, the car riding heavy in the rear due to its trunk load of deer hunting rifles and boxes of cartridges happily loaned to them by friends and neighbors across the reservation.

This had been one of the most organized occupations in recent history, although it too had its share of complications. They had come up with a steering council consisting of traditional elders and representatives from the different villages. And, in this instance, they had the luxury of a week or so of prior planning and the benefit of a number of previous takeovers of tribal offices and the BIA building in Washington in the 1970s from which to draw experience. Meetings leading up to the occupation had laid the groundwork for most of the logistics, and this time the White Earth people were prepared.

Moose flipped through his notebook now. His planning map of the site had been largely realized: four sentry posts, junk cars and logs for a border, and two entrances, one large enough for cars and another the back way up to the housing project for people and emergencies. The command center was located in the tribal offices where they inherited the council’s phones with direct WATTS lines, fax, radios, computers, office supplies, television set, and kitchen.

Moose was satisfied. From atop a crashed Chevrolet Impala that served as a sentry post, he radioed Elaine in the command center that all was ready.

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