Episode 42

The sting of those words, spoken so long ago but etched in my memory as if yesterday, still brings a flush to my cheeks. It wasn't just the venom of the insult, though that was potent enough. It was the utter, chilling disbelief that such hatred could be so casually delivered, so openly displayed, in a place of commerce, by people who shared the very ground my ancestors had walked for millennia. "We don't want your kind around here. You're nothing but a filthy savage, the only good savage is a dead savage." The exact phrasing still echoes, a cruel refrain that underscores a truth I’ve learned to carry: we were here first, and yet, in so many eyes, we remain outsiders on our own land. My late Apache husband, a man of immense quiet strength and dignity, stood beside me, his own face a mask of stunned hurt. He didn't need to say a word; his presence, his stunned silence, spoke volumes. It was a chilling validation for me, a painful confirmation that the prejudice I had sometimes sensed, sometimes endured, was real, raw, and deeply ingrained.

We had walked into that dry cleaner’s in Tooele, Utah, with the simple need of cleaning clothes, a mundane task in any other circumstance. But for us, it became a stark, humiliating lesson. It wasn't just one establishment; it was all of them. A silent, unspoken agreement that we, as Native Americans, were not welcome. The sheer audacity of it, the unified front of exclusion, was staggering. It felt like stepping back in time, back to an era when such sentiments were openly expressed, not whispered in back rooms, but shouted from the rooftops of prejudice.

It’s a profound irony, isn’t it? We are the original inhabitants, the true inheritors of this vast continent. We are the Americans, the Canadians, the Mexicans. Our blood is woven into the very fabric of this land. Yet, we are often treated as if we are interlopers, as if our presence is an inconvenience, a stain upon a history that, for many, began only with the arrival of ships on distant shores. This blatant disregard for our sovereignty, our history, and our very humanity is a wound that festers, a constant reminder of the deep chasm that still separates us from a society that often forgets, or chooses to ignore, the foundational role our people played. It’s a forgetting that allows for the perpetuation of such venom, a deliberate amnesia that allows for the continued dehumanization of a people who have, against all odds, endured.