The Wrong Question
by Rick Sams
<email Rick>

I think I went to Washington asking the wrong questions. I'd been told that I would encounter poverty, but I really think I expected the primary issue I'd face would be that of my culture colliding with Native American culture.

In the weeks heading up to the trip, I'd done a fair bit of reading, familiarizing myself with a lot that I didn't know about modern Native culture, and found much that shamed me. The stories I'd heard in school growing up hadn't really had the same spin. And while I'm aware that no one writes without an agenda, I think it's safe to say that there was a great deal of the history I'd never heard before.

So I think I arrived at the border of the reservation apprehensive about how I should respond to the sordid history of my forebears' dealings with this people. Dealings, incidentally, that are ongoing in many senses. I wondered how I was supposed to approach a people group that looked at the color of my skin and assumed that I was there to lie, cheat, and steal.

I didn't get my question answered. Maybe it's because there's not a real answer. Maybe it's because the answer to that question is less "solution" and more "state of mind." Maybe it's because I realized there was a more important, more pressing question.

I think the question for me, by the time I headed back to K.C. looked a lot more like "How do I respond to the needs of these people right now?" rather than "How do I deal with the fact that my ancestors systematically destroyed the culture and the spirit of the Native Americans?"

Notice the subtle shift there? ... From "me" to "them"?

I came home with my eyes a little more open ... aware that there are people struggling with poverty on the other side of the same block I live on. I am indebted to the Yakama people in a sense that's very "now," very tangible. They taught me something about me - the me that I am, and the me that I hope I am becoming.