today: meet with Glenn and "Beans"

The two are older Paiute Indians. 

Beans is a bit deaf from his tour in Vietnam, so we shout a bit at him so he can understand us. His beard is an inch thick, his hair, equally gray, is long and flowing beneath a floppy hat with beads around the top. When he mumbles, we tell him to speak up, and when he yells, we tell him to quiet down. The process is devoid of emotional investment: nobody takes offense.


Beans knows everything there is to know about the Paiute traditional and medicinal knowledge: about the plants that surround us in this South Western Utah landscape. He knows the 'Anglo' words (as he calls them) and he knows the Paiute words, which he learned from his Grandma, Mama, and the other elders growing up on the reservation.

Glenn is the more gregarious one, which I've been told is really rare for Native Americans. The hair around his ears is bic-ed clean, smooth and stubble free. He has hair that is black and thick which compliments a thin mustache. His eyes peer out inquisitively from behind slightly polarized glasses. When he speaks, he is long-winded but incredibly eloquent and persuasive. 

A few minutes before, he had paused, kneeling in the cracked mud, where he pointed at a deer track. "Doe, passed through four days ago."


Now we were at the top of a lookout, to our east is the proposed trail network, to the west a small town.

"I'm a Mormon," he says, turning to face us as he speaks.

"No way." Glenn's jokes are frequent and funny; so we laugh along with him.

The exchange continues, until we realize, for once, he isn't kidding.

"Yeah, they baptized me when I was eight, back when I didn't really know what they was doing. When I was a teenager, well, before that, when I was even younger, that's when I really first felt angry.  

'I felt really angry because at that stage of your age, you're young and you don't know how to deal with that anger, and your anger is thrown at the white people of what they did and you're really angry, you're frustrated, and you try to take this anger out in different ways on different Anglo people, um I was angry but as I grew into adult, and as years kept going by, I start understanding that that's history and from then to now we have to work with history in order to make our tribe better, the Shivwits band a better tribe and to deal with these issues that was back then, and you learn how to deal with it... even with the pioneers, of what they did.  I'm still angry. I get angry, but I learn to deal with it.  

When I gave up that chip on my shoulder, I rejoined the Church for a bit, really learned all the teachings of Joe Smith, and Brigham Young. That's how I understood, here's this person here, you have to talk to them like this, you have to understand their side because they understand your side, and they're ignorant about your culture and they don't understand it and so it's better to understand them because they're the dominant and you have to use it within your means to deal with them, the pioneers of what they did of how they killed my people off and how they murdered them, and there's a lot of these things that aren't recorded that they were murdered and the tainted food, the blankets... yes I'm angry, but there's nothing I can do about it.  I'm here and now.  The only way I know how to deal with it is to learn by looking at them and to learn how to deal with them in different ways, not only of retaliation but those can be... the retaliation can be solved in different ways... in different ways than how you are angry, like physical anger, so those things can be dealt with...'

Nowadays, I don't go back to the Church but every once in a while, about once a year I reckon. But now I know their ways, the majority white people around here, I got to know them, I understand them, and I see now.  That right, yeah, Beans?"


Beans peers across the group, with a penetrating, blank, and yet inquisitive, stare. His voice is deep, rumbling. "Yeah."


"It's like what I always say. No group gets everything right." Glenn starts up again. "There's folks that say the Indians couldn't do no wrong. Well thats not totally right either. The Mormons, they have a great outlook on family, such that you really can't disrespect them. Their origin story is a little iffy, but overall you can't totally disrespect them."


Glenn pauses next to a low bush. "Beans whats it called, this here, this is ee’see. The Anglo name for ee'see?"


Beans had paused, totally lost in the stillness of the moment. He chews his lip reflexively, staring at the small bushy plant. Far overhead some hawks were circling a cliff. Time seemed to stop, until a small breeze snaps him back into the moment. 


"Squawbush," he says.
_________


read more!