After returning from a visit to my home reservation I was troubled by intense feelings of despair, and a sense of never wanting to go back again. What I had seen and heard while there triggered a pessimistic attitude that things are never going to change nor can they. I am certain I am not the only person with feelings of frustration toward my home land and my people. A lady recently shared a vision she had received from God; that people were driving aimlessly up and down the streets, including Christian people, and gigantic birds, looking like pelicans, would swoop down and devour individuals from off the streets. People die every week in my home town but even more tragic are the living who have lost their souls to prolonged overwhelming depression. Empty eyes stare straight ahead hoping to score some fry bread. Iron bars strangled grip enclose with grief, despair, and overwhelming depression. It is a cycle of fatalistic abandonment due to historical experience of continuous disappointment and prolonged overwhelming depression that has become a prison to our reservation people. Its more serious than you think. We are Jack Pine people. The Jack Pine never grows straight and tall because of the continual beating of hurricane force winds and frigid weather. Jack Pines stays close to the ground, crooked and twisted. Jack Pine may be very ancient in age but has never reached a state of maturity. What's worse is that we think it is normal! That's the way it is and we have settled for a life of abuse and misuse at the hands of our dysfunctional leaders, whether they be secular or religious. The problem with fatalistic abandonment and accepting dysfunction as normal is that unresolved issues such as grief, stress, and trauma manifest in ways that are harmful to a person's and societies' well being. It is a downward spiral that only lends itself to infestation of demons and devils and all sorts of oppression. Unfortunately, long term abuse and misuse experienced at the hands of historic leadership, both tribal and federal, has eroded hope into a state of disappointment and faithlessness. Indian people have fallen into the web of iniquity and idolatry by creating a baseless hope that the state will be their ultimate agent of redemption. We have been beaten down like an abused wife until we think we deserve a good beating and that we are unworthy of anything more than what we have. Until the people throw off the blind mans mantle and abandon themselves to Jesus and take personal ownership of their futures I am afraid there is little hope for recovery. However, in spite of my pessimism I still hold on to hope; not in the government, not in the tribal council, but in the hope that God has created my people for His purposes, that there is a redeeming value in the Blackfeet people that is worth saving. God created us for a purposes and for His pleasure.
