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Beng Native Takes Work |
Charles Finn | 7/3/08
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I'm in the tiny town of Moiese on the Flathead Reservation near the National Bison Range. Cloud shadows pass over the nearest hills, traveling in rolling dark patches that look like some kind of herd animals themselves. I slow to a stop on a gravel road between nowhere and nowhere and get out of the truck.
In four directions the land slopes away from me. turning lavender in the late afternoon light. Squatting down, I pick up a handful of Montana and let it run through my fingers. All that famous sky hangs over me as a shiny blue Ford rumbles past with a blue and white "Montana Native" bumper sticker. The white rancher in the front seat turns his head, smiles and waves.
 As far as the eye can see is reservation, and it occurs to me is that I don't have a single Native American friend. I've met a few in passing, and I've picked up a number hitchhiking. I may be guessing, but I think the rancher who just passed by thinks of himself as a native – as native to this remote Montana place as any Indian could be. But to my way of thinking, “native” means more than where you were born. Does the rancher know what day the osprey return in the spring, or where to find the first shoots of wild asparagus?
Some people have the notion that living somewhere for a long period of time finally makes one a native. As a child growing up in a small town on the East Coast, I was half-feral. I knew every inch of the town intimately, including the back alleys, the open fields, the rivers and train tracks. I spent my days wandering the creek -- called a brook in the East -- that ran through the village. I took short cuts adults had no idea existed. I knew where to find nesting great blue herons -- a rarity back then -- and I also knew where the poison ivy grew. I found out the hard way. As I got older, though, I learned to drive and also began spending more time indoors in front of the TV. I might have been considered a local at a handful of bars, but that was the extent of my knowledge. Slowly, my nativeness slipped away.
In “The River Why,” Montana writer David James Duncan observes that Huck Finn had a native intelligence about the Mississippi, Thoreau was native to his pond in Connecticut, and Gandhi had a native's understanding of jails. They had an intimate and working knowledge of these places. They knew the smells, the cast of light at different times of the day, and the creatures that lived in the neighborhood and their habits. They experienced and absorbed their environment.
I believe that it takes more to be a native of a place than just being born there, and that people who choose to move into an area can become just as native as those whose family harks back three generations. This may sound like blasphemy as the latest influx of newcomers to the West snatches up huge parcels of land and then posts No Hunting and No Trespassing signs. These are the folks who arrive knowing little about the land and the place they share their lives with, and what’s worse, they don’t want to learn.
Chances are, most of these newcomers will never stay long enough to become quasi-native, much less local. I have a friend who moved here years ago from Texas. She's a woodblock artist and wildlife illustrator, and she spends her days crouched in a field, beside a creek or on top of a mountain. She knows the names of nearly all the insects, trees and grasses, and she knows their habits and lifecycles. She's the most native person I know.
This afternoon, as I walk back to my truck, another rancher passes. He lifts a single finger from the steering wheel in a classic back-road salute. I wonder how much he knows about what passes outside his window.
As we grow more plugged in and less tuned in, we slowly lose our ability to know where we are or even care about it. It makes clear-cuts and shopping malls and urban sprawl all the more easier to accept because we no longer have a bone-deep connection to our environment. The psychologist Carl Jung once made a surprising prophecy about Americans; he said we will ultimately become Indians -- natives of this place. He also said if that if we don't become natives, we will die, and our place will die as well.
Charles Finn is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High County News. He recently moved from Montana to Bend, Oregon. |
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