Episode 50

Episode 50

The sting of those words, spoken so long ago, still burned. “We don’t want your kind around here. You’re nothing but a filthy savage, the only good savage is a dead savage.” I could feel the heat rise in my cheeks even now, recounting it. Ny, my late Apache husband, had been with me that day, his quiet strength a balm against the venom. But even he, usually so stoic, had been visibly shaken by the sheer, unadulterated hatred spewed from the mouths of the dry cleaner owners in Tooele, Utah. Sixteen years. Sixteen years since that day, and the memory was as sharp as broken glass. It was a stark, brutal reminder of the deep, insidious prejudice that festered in the hearts of so many non-Native Americans, a prejudice that conveniently forgot who was here first. We were the original inhabitants, the true Americans, Canadians, and Mexicans. Yet, we were treated as outsiders in our own homelands. It was a bitter irony, a cruel twist of fate that these same people who had benefited from our land, our resources, and often, our very survival, now looked upon us with such contempt. It was a lesson I had learned not from dusty textbooks, but from the raw, often painful, lived experience. Episode 26 of this chronicle was a testament to that enduring wound, a wound that spoke volumes about the deep societal sickness that still plagued our nations.