Braiding Sweetgrass

Stephen Silver Heels (Oneida), Thomas Medicine Horse (Sioux).
Tom points to show me his uncle’s name. “That’s why we’re doing
this,” he says, “undoing Carlisle.”
My grandfather is in this book too, I know. I run my finger down
the long columns of names and stop at Asa Wall (Potawatomi). A
pecan-picking Oklahoma boy just nine years old sent on the train
across the prairies to Carlisle. His brother’s name comes next,
Uncle Oliver, who ran away back home. But Asa did not. He was
one of the lost generation, one who never could go home again. He
tried, but after Carlisle he didn’t fit anywhere, so he joined the army.
Instead of returning to a life among his family in Indian Territory he
settled in upstate New York, not far from this riverbank, and raised
his children in the immigrant world. At a time when cars were novel
he became a superb mechanic. He was always fixing broken cars,
always mending, seeking to make things whole. I think that same
need, the need to make things whole, propels my work in ecological
restoration. I imagine his knife-nose profile leaning over the hood of
a car, his brown hands wiped on a greasy rag. During the
Depression people flocked to his garage. Payment, if there was
any, was often in eggs or turnips from the garden. But there were
some things he couldn’t make whole.
He didn’t talk much about those days, but I wonder if he thought
of the pecan grove in Shawnee where his family lived without him,
the lost boy. The aunties would send boxes for us grandchildren:
moccasins, a pipe, a buckskin doll. They were boxed away in the
attic until our nana would lovingly take them out to show us, to
whisper, “Remember who you are.”
I suppose he achieved what he had been taught to want, a better
life for his children and grandchildren, the American life he was
taught to honor. My mind thanks him for his sacrifice, but my heart