She spoke to her animals in these languages. She told me that the goat likes to live in the trailer home but that she can’t get up on the porch because she is old, but she can still lift whole piles of hay so the goat can eat when it wants to. In a hushed voice and with her hand over her mouth, this woman told me this of her animals: “The duck gets sexually abused by the peacock and when this happens the chicken makes all kinds of noise.” She told me that she does not like the store-bought bread because it just melts away too fast; doesn’t stick to the stomach. She prefers to make her own bread.

I always wanted to go back to her home with groceries of good flour and sugar so she could make more of her own bread, but I never had enough money to do this, and the federal-grant people would not be happy if I used their money to pay for people’s food. The old Native American tribal people are dying off. Indian Country is dying off. We are selling our blood. Gas, oil and coal mining, casinos and all these other “economic enterprises” are just signs of how desperate tribal people now are. All we have left are our stories – stories of life, living and, now, stories of our people dying. It’s as if that’s all we tribal people have left of ourselves.

Julie C. Abril

Durango