I am not an Indian

Di Giovanni Bertini

Le nazioni degli indiani d'America riunite nel Festival nazionale PowWow devono decidere come fermare il lento e secolare "genocidio" del loro popolo.

Sarà la guerra o il dialogo che fino ad oggi non ha fermato il saccheggio delle loro terre e della loro cultura?

John, il narratore italiano, viene coinvolto nella faida indiana indagata dall'FBI.

Gli estremisti vogliono fondare il 51esimo stato americano: lo Stato degli Indiani Uniti.

Nella riserva indiana il misterioso e codificato tam-tam risuona continuamente

giorno e notte.

OKICIZA OKICIZA OKICIZA

GUERRA GUERRA GUERRA

• Lingua: Italiano
• Editore: Youcanprint
• Data di uscita: 24 gen 2024
• ISBN: 9791222710235

Anteprima del libro

CHAPTER 1: ROSE ‘N’ BUD INN

I'm not an Indian, he told me, looking disconcerted.

So, what are you?

He shook his head.

A Native American? I tried.

Nothing.

A red Indian, an aboriginal, an indigenous person? What are you, Wise Nimogero?

He made a face that meant everything and nothing before saying, We are here on Turtle Island. Do you know what Turtle Island is?

I said, The United States.

We’ve been here for over ten thousand years, he continued. Columbus discovered nothing; in fact, he only began the massacre of our people.

But do you know your origins?

He shook his head. No. Without writing, oral history is scarce and unreliable. Universities do research, but there is little evidence.

Despite everything, you have an identity.

Maybe, but I never knew. Maybe we Sioux, all of us, Native Americans, never knew it. We never really asked ourselves that. The palefaces have confined us here.

I knew he meant the Rosebud Indian Reservation, South Dakota.

But you ask yourself where you come from?

If we ask ourselves, we resort to our animism, essentially to fatalism. He spread his arms.

How many natives were there?

At the time of the discovery, we were seventy-eighty million. They managed to reduce all the natives to a few million; today there are perhaps ten million of us. We will vanish ‘integrated. He waved his index and middle fingers in air quotes. Among the over 300 million Yankees. It was a massacre."

I searched for the most suitable, direct words then asked, And how did the decimation happen?

Wars, but above all diseases imported accidentally and deliberately. Often our children were kidnapped and adopted by Whites. My father had two brothers and a sister who had lighter skin than he did, and they were taken from their parents. Adoptive families preferred children who were more like Whites.

Even integration is negative for natives, I said.

Yes, that’s what happens today.

Are you also referring to the natives of the Amazon?

There it’s a discussion of wars but mainly of the destruction of the forests, you know, to convert them to intensive agriculture given to the Whites.

We both sought a moment of silence. We needed a little break.

And the Jewish Holocaust? I asked.

Stop, he raised his hand. The Holocaust was predestined.

I didn’t understand what he meant, but I didn’t interrupt.

During the Second World War, the extermination was planned by Hitler, and the Jews rightly call it the Shoah, a devastating storm, he said.

In the Shoah there were around six million deaths, I noted.

Yes, John, and in Europe the other deaths must also be added: civilians and soldiers.

But from a current calculation it seems that the violent deaths of the Native Americans are in the tens of millions, I commented.

Yes. Maybe over a hundred million. The greatest genocide of humanity was finally carried out by the palefaces.

Wise Nimogero, your languages, those of the main Indian nations, are taught in your schools. The commissioners of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, almost all of them, today in 2020 are native.

Augh, Brother Giovanni, a moment. My tepee is your tepee. Enter my tent, cross your legs, and sit on the sacred carpet. From the bag of the Dance of the Sun I extract the sacred calumet of peace. Let’s smoke the sacred herbs.

And let’s talk, I thought. Let’s talk; tell me.

I wanted to console him, give him hope. But I felt ashamed.

This is what we said to each other during our first meeting.

We spoke in English, his native language. Nimogero Wise Fox had learned the Lakota Sioux language in school as a second language. His parents didn’t know it. Now only a third of the Indians knew the language of their ancestors.

* * *

I left Italy for the holiday depressed and unsure whether to write this new book. I took early retirement unwillingly, and to make matters worse, my wife left me.

If I have one certainty in life, it is this: when you are hit by misfortune, you must take a trip. So, I opened the PC and wrote the beginning of the story; it’s an Indian story, and I got the ticket for a flight to the New World. I wrote what my teacher calls an incipit. The rest will follow onsite.

I am going to see the Indians, I said to myself, the heroes of my adolescence, the protagonists of the comic book Tex Willer together with the cowboys.

At Rosebud Indian Reservation on the first days of March, there was a large annual festival, a powwow, but unlike previous years it would last a week instead of the usual two or three days. The organizers wanted to attract many Indian nations, and they would succeed; bookings were already record-breaking.

In the Rosebud Independent newspaper of Rapid City, however, I read that in Washington, DC, in the Department of Indian Affairs, there was concern. The CIA had informed the Bureau of Indian Affairs that many rebels scattered throughout the United States were fighting to obtain a fifty-first state, the "United Indians State." During the week of the powwow, the great Indian gathering, the principal groups of American rebels would meet in Rosebud to organize the most important national demonstration ever. But the CIA suspected that the real purpose went beyond demonstration. There could be attacks, conspiracies, and more.

I felt involved, so I decided to follow my instincts.

On the plane that took me to the United States and then to Rapid City, I refreshed my memory of the history of the American Indians. In my suitcase were three books on their history and spirituality.

As soon as deplaned, I said to myself, John, from now on you’ll think and speak only in English. OK, get yourself a bloody secondhand covered pickup and move on.

I was lucky: the Ford 4x4, despite being used, never let me down. On the cargo bed, I secured a tin box to the cab, and inside I placed a blanket, some books, and some personal effects. I ate there, slept there, got desperate there, cursed myself there, and did other things too, but I never prayed. Let’s say I was a layman, an atheist.

I was not superstitious, and I knew Indians didn’t profess any institutionalized religion. They had a strong spirituality; they can probably be defined as animists. Calumet was also sacred to them, as are many herbs. If you understand it, or at least try to do so, there are many things that are found in many religions, if not in all.

In a nutshell, for them everything, or almost everything, is sacred. How could anyone ever disagree?

However, from the Rapid City Regional Airport, instead of choosing State Route 90, I took the Provincial Highway and arrived at the Rosebud Indian Reservation after four and a half hours and after avoiding the flat and monotonous state road. It was worth it.

I saw dense pine forests, hills covered in greenery, and lush prairies. The streets were lined with vegetation. I would have gladly stopped to take a walk and see the details, but I knew I would have the opportunity later to breathe in the balms of the boundless prairies. I didn’t see any buffalo or Indian tents. For the most part, Indians do not live in tepees, the famous conical tents held up by crossed poles, but in comfortable houses or condominiums. However, many people kept a tepee in the garden that they used as a living room or to host friends.

So, on Sunday, March 1, 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I stayed in an inn in the center of the Indian reservation at Rosebud.

Two days earlier, on February 28, the World Health Organization had declared the Coronavirus epidemic very high risk globally. In the US in those days, the population was not yet very worried, and I found myself involved in completely different matters.

The owners of Rose ‘n’ Bud Inn were two Indian twin sisters, neither young nor old, with faces neither very beautiful nor ugly—in short, two spinsters. I say this with affection because they had a sweet character, always smiling even when they though they were alone. They were dressed traditionally in moccasins, skirts, and shirts made of very light buffalo skin all of which was embroidered with many colored beads. In winter, under the skirt, they wore leather trousers decorated with colored beads. Being tall and thin, they had very beautiful and elegant figures.

Even if they were not particularly attractive, they would have made a good impression as models. Their magnificent black hair was collected in two long and robust braids.

They welcomed me warmly. They told me that their parents had died in a car accident. They collided head-on with an articulated lorry that had skidded into the opposite lane.

We bonded, probably because I was the only Italian in the large inn, so they had a natural curiosity about me. Furthermore, as a foreigner from another continent, I was basically neutral on political topics and similar issues.

I told the sisters that I would like to write a book about the powwow. I showed them the blog with my books and the covers that I designed with my graphic designer. They treated me with respect and certainly reported my information to the other guests who were mostly natives.

The powwow would begin the next day, Monday, March 2. Before going to bed, I called Rose to my table.

John, tell me, she said. What impression did you have on your first day here on the reserve?

I thought about it. Well, it’s strange. I was a little confused, but at the same time, I felt at ease as if I had been here before. But there is one thing that struck me. In the people I meet there is an expectation, a high tension.

She agreed but dismissed it. She called her sister over and laughed and talked about the party, the races, and the horses.

Bud asked me, Did you hear anything particular?

Well, people occasionally mention the rivalry between hawks and doves. They speak of Nimogero, the Indian chief, who should become a secretary in Congress. They say he is against extremism and violence. He is a dove and wants a dialogue. I understand that among his opponents are Kuna Flies High and Crazy Cat.

She nodded. "Yes, you hit the nail on the head. This has always been our problem: who we are, where we come from, but above all where we want to go. We have the perception that we are becoming extinct.

"You named Shaman Kuna Flies High, who is highly esteemed. He is the grandson of Black Elk, a great warrior and shaman who was a second cousin of the war leader Great Horse and fought with him in the battle of Little Big Horn. He survived the massacre of Wounded Knee in 1890 and toured and performed in Europe as part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.

Rose. I looked into her wide black eyes. This feeling of becoming extinct also exists in my family. I didn’t have a father but two mothers, twin sisters, and they were Jewish.

Twins like me and Bud.

Exactly. My mother, Piera, was tall and beautiful. She was a milliner who made hats for ladies. When she handed over one of her hats, she accompanied it with one of her poems.

And what was her sister like?

Strangely, Bianca was small and plump with thinning black hair. They were fraternal twins. Self-taught, she played the violin and was an opera chorister. Since she was very good, when she signed her contracts, she imposed a particular clause: they also had to take my mother, who was out of tune even when she coughed.

Come on, John, it’s not possible.

I smiled too. No? I’ll explain; the guys they signed with were very happy because they did it that way. Choristers usually sing in two or three rows. Since my aunt wasn’t, let’s say, attractive, she sang in the second row, while my mother, a real beauty, pretended to sing and stood in front of her. The whole city knew about it, and some went to the theatre just to see the ‘mismatched sisters.’

Rose touched her braid. Now I understand why you seemed strange to me and why you understand us.

It was easy for me to answer her. Being of Jewish origin, they sometimes spoke of relatives who had died during WWII in bombings or concentration camps. Even though they didn’t talk much about it, I perceived a sense of isolation, uncertainty, and fear that the tragedy could happen again. They feared that Jews ran the risk of becoming extinct.

Rose said, Well, here in America we have the problem of minorities: people of color, natives, Jews, and others.

Maybe that’s why I felt good on the reserve. Could you introduce me to an Indian chief in the morning?

She smiled and showed her deep beauty. She was really charming and sensual.

Of course, there is my cousin, Nimogero Wise Fox; he will be a congressman. I’ll take the opportunity to run errands in the surrounding area. What time are you coming down for breakfast?

Is seven o’clock OK?

Yes, I’ll call him now. Bud informed him of your arrival, and he showed interest in meeting you. She took out her cell phone.

I was a little nervous.

Hi, Alawa. It’s Rose. Are you at home early tomorrow morning? . . . I understand, but is Nimo there? She listened for a moment. OK, goodbye.

She told me that Nimogero wasn’t there then, but he would meet me the next morning at eight. In the meantime, Alawa would be in Circus Square for the start of the races. "She is the leader of