Episode 61

The sting of those words, spoken with such venom, still burns. Sixteen years ago, it feels like yesterday. My husband, Ny, his Apache heart bruised by the casual cruelty, stood beside me as the dry cleaner owner in Tooele, Utah, spat out the bile: "We don't want your kind around here. You're nothing but a filthy savage, the only good savage is a dead savage." He’d seen it, heard it with his own ears. And even then, my own heart fractured a little more. It’s a wound that never quite heals, a reminder that for all the progress, for all the education, the deep-seated hatred and vile prejudice against Native Americans persist, festering in the shadows of this land we first called home. They forget. They so easily forget that we were here first. We are the true Americans, the true Canadians, the true Mexicans. But to them, we are merely savages, a stain to be scrubbed away. This isn't just about one dry cleaner; it's a symptom of a sickness that runs deep, a sickness that has infected the very soul of this continent. And it’s a sickness they’ve cultivated, nurtured, and perpetuated for generations.