Bobby Wilson - Kiksuya

 

 

So I'm at this party back home in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The evening's winding down and I'm going to try to sneak out. When this lady stops me. She just shakes my hand and introduces herself and says that my uncle told her to come talk to me. Now, this uncle is not my uncle in the sense of blood relation. He's my uncle Indian way. One of the many men who helped raise me and teach me the things that he knows. Anyways, this lady tells me that a couple friends of hers have fallen in with this older Indian man, and he's performing all these ceremonies and rituals for them, which is fine by me, but he's charging money and that is a big taboo in my community. Now, as she continues to talk, I start to realize exactly why my uncle sent her to me because this man that she's describing, this possible scam artist, is my father. [audience laughter]

 

When I was a kid, my dad was a very traditional Dakota man, devoted to the cultural practices of our people. But over the years, things had started to change. He was charging money for ceremonies and taking advantage of people that were just looking for something spiritual in their lives. At this point, I hadn't actually seen my father in over 10 years. And for good reason. My family had lived in fear of his violent outbursts, afraid that anything that we ever said or did would send him into this rage. So, one night, my mom, my sister, and me, we all snuck out of the house while he slept. And in this quiet, panicked rush, we grabbed what little we could. So, a garbage bag full of clothing, a half-eaten box of Twinkies, and our favorite childhood toys. My sister had always carried around this little Curious George, but I preferred the dashing ladies’ man known as Roger Rabbit. [audience chuckles] So that same uncle stood guard at the front door to make sure that we could escape quietly and safely.

 

But you don't just walk out on a life like that and start over fresh. It was really hard. We bounced around battered women's shelters and slept on people's floors. And as a man, I had been homeless. I couldn't pay my bills. I was really angry and I lashed out and got into trouble with the law. But with the help of my community in Minneapolis, I was able to get on my feet. After all this time went by, I had always wondered, what happened to my father after we left. Where has he been? And now suddenly this ghost is just tumbling back into my life. It was pretty surreal. And I didn't know, honestly, if this was something that I was really ready for. But I decided to call that couple who had been being taken advantage of by my father.

 

They live in a town called Chaska, or as those Minnesotans say, Chaska. [audience chuckles] Now, that's only about an hour drive from my apartment. So, I tell them that I think their spiritual leader is my father, who I haven't seen in over a decade and they tell me that in just a couple days, he'll be driving from his home in South Dakota all the way to their place in Minnesota. Now, bear in mind, these people think that my dad is some kind of Indian Jesus or something crazy like that. And they're talking to me like I'm royalty. They said it would be such an honor if you would allow for us to host your family reunion at our next gathering. Now, after everything that had happened, I'm afraid that my dad's going to chicken out if he knows that I'm going to come meet him. So, I asked him, you know, "I'll come through, but you have to make it a surprise for him." So, they agree.

 

Now, I've only got the weekend to get my head on straight, and I cannot get to sleep. I keep rehearsing all these conversations in my mind with him and I keep asking him questions. “Why? Why did you feel like you could just beat on a small child as if he was a grown man that you hated? How could you be the most terrifying presence in a family that you're supposed to protect?” So the night before our scheduled reunion, I came home to an answering machine full of messages from a family friend. He says it's urgent. So, I call him back. And he tells me that on the drive from South Dakota to Minnesota, my dad was in an accident and he was killed. My whole world just shuts down. I started yelling at that guy on the phone. I was crying. I just-- I didn't believe him. And so-- to this day, I still think that he died on purpose just to avoid having to look me in the eyes. But I have to go see him. I have to see this for myself.

 

So I called up my sister and I told her the news of our father's passing. And I called up that couple who had been so excited to host our family reunion and they are devastated. They say, "Please let us drive you and your sister all the way to South Dakota to retrieve your father's body." Now, I really did not want to involve these guys in our situation, but my car had just broken down. [audience chuckle] I was working a couple odd jobs just to make ends meet. So, with very little resources or options, I grudgingly accept. Now, when you spend so many years bouncing from shelter to shelter, you lose a lot of these Items that represent your personal history. Homelessness isn't a place for nostalgia and yet I had somehow managed to hold on to Roger Rabbit. Now, the Roger Rabbit you guys know is white. But my Roger Rabbit was so old and well-loved that he's a light shade of brown now, just like me. [audience chuckles] So I decided that if I'm going to be traveling back into the past that was so dark for me, that I'm going to bring this little fellow who kept babying me safe in a house full of monsters.

 

So my sister and I walk into this couple's house, and it's so kitschy. There were enough dream catchers on the walls to choke a buffalo. I'm not kidding. [audience laughter] And there's this huge photo of my father hanging up in the same room that it was taken. And in it, he's talking to this room full of white people, but they're all dressed like Indians. [audience chuckles] Honestly, I felt this weird mixture of disgust, but pity. My dad, he was trying to push this sense of quasi-Indianness on these unsuspecting people. But my culture, everything that I believed in, was being appropriated and packaged up into some kind of bargain bin spirituality that was just for people who were missing something in their lives.

 

Now, Dakota people, we believe that it takes the spirit four days to leave the body. And when we get to Spearfish, South Dakota, it's the fourth and final day since my dad's passing. That is not a coincidence to me. My sister and I decide that we're going to take turns being alone with our father to say what we need to say. And so I walked into this room. It's cold and it's quiet except for this hum of a motor that's preserving the dead. I can see my father's body across the room on this metal table. And he's so still. I had so much to say to this bastard all week, but now I'm just at a loss for words. His head was all misshapen from the accident that killed him. These black tattoos of ancient symbols all over his face were now gray and blurry. I could hardly even recognize this face that had torn my family apart. And so, I closed my eyes and I tried to remember all the terrible things that he did to us.

 

But when I look, and I mean really look at him, I can see that life for this man was pain and it was hardship. I can actually see the mental illness that was created by generations of trauma. And so, I leaned down and I told that man, "I'm your son." I told that pitiful man that I came here to forgive. Afterwards, I went to the car and I laughingly and embarrassingly admitted to my sister that I had brought Roger with me. And she just gets this crazy look on her face, grabs her bag, pulls out Curious George. [audience chuckles] So we decided that we're going to go to Bear Butte, which is nearby. It's a sacred site walked on by our ancestors for thousands of years.

 

We pull up and I told that couple to please stay in the car because this is for family. And that night is so beautiful. There are hundreds of tobacco offerings from other Dakota people tied to trees all along this two-mile hike up to the summit of the butte. Standing there, we can see these scattered lights from the town of Sturgis nearby. But right here, it's meditative, dark, and quiet. So, I light my bundle of sage and together we smoked the pipe, making our words visible to each other. And we lay our toys on the ground as an offering. And I looked at my sister and I said, "You want to light him on fire?" [audience laughter] And she said, "I was thinking the same thing." [audience chuckles] So I took that bundle of sage and I cremated our childish past. And in a lot of ways, I think that fire showed us the path to a brighter future. We didn't need protection from monsters anymore because we have each other. It takes a lifetime of work to heal a broken family. But mine is still standing. Thank you.