stories about family
Book #3 begins a graphical experiment by juxtaposing photos of the Blackfeet Reservation with each contributor’s blood quantum, which passes through the page and disrupts a sketch of their current residence and their own story of home. This book sees all eight young people answer the question “where’s home?” in the same way: “here.” They, like so many others in Indian Country, are contending with the impossibility of conclusive processes of dispossession. These processes are increasingly visible both in Indian Country and in the settler states above it. Standing Rock has created a moment of unprecedented outsider awareness and insider unity around resisting extractive industry and land theft that consistently target indigenous peoples around the world. Yet, even in this critical political time, we tend to stay silent about one of American dispossession’s primary tools: blood quantum.
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Home is, the simplest way is, home is here. Ecologically, psychologically, spiritually grounded on this place that is, this geographic landscape. The collision between the mountains and the plains. With all of our landmarks here it’s very place-centric and grounded. Like you can feel it when you’re here, and when you’re not here, it doesn’t feel like you’re here and you can tell that you’re not. Geographically, the aesthetics of this place are so unique and so dominant that it’s hard to mistake anywhere else for being here. On the Rocky Mountain Front, right outside of Glacier National Park, near the Badger Two-Med., that’s home. But broader, of course, Montana is home. It’s connected to so many other places outside of just the reservation that are still part of that world. And part of the psychology of being here, I mean, when you’re in Washington it’s nothing like here, so that Greater Montana ecology is more reminiscent of home. I think it has to do with land use as well. The open landscape here, the limited population, the intact grasslands, just all of those components make this place so familiar. That intact native ecosystem contributes to that identification with this place. In another way I would also call Missoula home, because I spent seven and a half years there. In a different way, in a more social and community type of way; less of an emotional, historical, psychological, spiritual connection. -ddr 4
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Obviously home is the rez. More specifically, it was Boarding School but now it’s Hallville because my auntie, my grandpa, my cousin, my dad and mom, me and my brother: we’re all there within 360 degrees. Now that I’ve met William (his mentor and language teacher) up in Canada, in Brocket I’m comfortable up there. As long as I can see Chief Mountain, I’m good. -rh
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Badger Creek. That’s where I grew up, by my mom and dad’s house. Even though I work in Cut Bank I’d live out there and do the drive. It’d be maybe 55 miles to Cut Bank from my mom and dad’s, and there’s that gravel road that’s really bad; it’s about 18 miles of gravel road. But I would definitely live out there. I grew up with privacy where my nearest neighbor is my uncle maybe a quarter mile down the road. So where I live, it’s a four-mile stretch of gravel road and there’s brother-brother-niecebrother-brother-brother and their kids are scattered throughout there. When my cousin rents his house out to somebody people get mad because you know, oh that’s my family out there I don’t want somebody who’s rotten or steals or parties too much—not that my cousin doesn’t party, he parties all the time…Everybody has horses and cows…we actually have a meth dealer though who lives across the bridge who isn’t related to us, so people get kind of upset because weird cars drive on our road sometimes. -jt
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Here…here. -kh
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Here. The simplest way to say it is because this is the place that made me. Part of it is my family— and by family I mean hundreds and hundreds of people—is here. Part of it is there’s something powerful about this place and these mountains. There’s something about knowing this is where at least some of your ancestors have been for millennia. It’s not abstract though, it exists somewhere in yourself not like an idea, but something else. The other part of it, too, after you grow up here, other places are visually, aesthetically, and viscerally dull. The weather here is really dramatic, the sky is extremely dramatic, and especially when I was a kid the shifts in season were borderline violent. The visual aesthetic of the vast space of the plains…I’ve never found that anywhere. In Iowa I just could not connect to the land. Michigan was the same. Wisconsin was a little different because the wind blew a lot; when you live here and the wind blows all the time and you go somewhere else…it takes you a long time to figure out. It’s the specificity of every single reservation, because every reservation, by now, has developed a distinct culture regardless of whether those were tribes forced to move there from elsewhere, or in our case a single tribe here. I feel more comfortable on reservations—like I’m more comfortable on Rosebud than I am in Missoula—so if I had to live somewhere I’d live on a reservation but if I had to live on a specific one it’d be here. -shwm
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Here. Probably my mom’s Boarding School, the trailer
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house out towards house. -hrc
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Home is on the reservation so I feel at home now where I live in Two-Medicine, and Browning feels like home, and where I grew up outside Starr School feels like home. I live with my family: my two kids and my boyfriend. I had my daughter in Missoula so that’s where she was born and we moved back home because we have a support system here. Plus, we have a place to stay: my mom doesn’t live here so we’re care-taking for her right now. She lives out of state and wanted someone to watch her place. So that’s where we’ve come to live for a year or two now. I don’t have any plans to move away. Me and my boyfriend, we know this is where we want to be. He’s lived in other places as well for shorter amounts of time; I’ve gone off for a couple years for school. We came back and we know we want to live here; this is where our home is. I think part of establishing ourselves is building a permanent home. -ke
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Here, this area definitely. It would be hard to live anywhere else. It was hard to move to Bozeman because it felt like it wasn’t home. After the first year or two I decided I was just going to feel like the West was home, like the mountains. That let me feel comfortable and not fight it and not feel like I had to get home—I mean this area— right away. Now that I’m back here that’s harder to do. You know, I had to be in Bozeman because Scarlett was growing up there and that’s where she needed to be at that time. I wasn’t going to compromise not being in her life to be here. Now that I’m home that’s harder to see. I’m hoping that it pans out in a way that’ll allow me to stay here as long as I want to. Maybe I’m blinded by my optimism; I want it to work out here and I think that it can. -nr
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