Steve Jobson

Journal #5
Skeletons represent a balance between past and present, a center-point, a now. As
Sherman Alexie wrote in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, You have to keep in
step with your skeletons(22). As a Native American today, where is that balance? How do you
maintain the present while still avoiding the traps and pitfalls of life? We are trapped in the
now(22). Bearing that in mind, how does one keep in step with ones skeletons in todays
society?
To answer that question, I must first ask what it means to be out of step, to try to outrun
the past. Robert Bennetts essay Why Didnt You Teach Me? is, in my opinion, an excellent
answer to that question. When I came to Dartmouth as a young man, I realized that my life was
not well balanced because I had never learned the Lakota language and culture from my
grandmother (137). In this quote, the Lakota traditions represent the skeleton of the past, and
the methods needed to succeed by white standards, to acquire wealth and power in our culture,
represent the skeleton of the future. Because Mr. Bennett was not in touch with his culture, his
past, he was too close to the skeleton of the future. Throughout the essay, he works on getting
back in balance of his past and his future, back in step.
Sherman Alexie wrote a short story in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.
The Trial of Thomas Builds-the-Fire about storytelling, and the impact it has on those who hear
the story. Storytelling is one of those skeletons of the past, one of those things that came before
books and TVs and video games, as a result of imagination and the desire to share it. A brief
synopsis of the story: The title character is arrested, and tried for storytelling. His testimony is
historical events from the native perspective, a tale of slaughter and warfare. In one of his
stories, he describes a youth who killed two soldiers. As he is transported to prison for his
crimes, he sits in the back of a truck with five other men of varying nationalities, who shared his
skin color(103). He dances with the skeleton of the past, and so that story ends, with a man
who went too close to the past, and was punished for it, perhaps unjustly.
Bearing this in mind, how can anyone find balance? If going too close to the future is
betraying your ancestors, and staying too close to the past is a crime, where is the mid-point?
Where can one stay in step? Marianne Chamberlains essay The Web of Life is the final
writing I will explore here. I locked my spirit and heritage away in an effort to fit in (156). This is
reminiscent of Mr. Bennetts story, except she comes from a different background, where her
cultural heritage was very much an open thing to be proud of. She knows her story, and yet she
hides it. Over the course of her education, she becomes more open about it, begins to
advocate, begins to speak up. Working with an on-campus Native American group, she helped
to get rid of a 100-year-old tradition (in which) all the members of the graduating class broke
imitations of sacred pipes against the colleges famous lone pine tree stump (164). She found
her balance, and found her step between the skeletons.
What is the best way to handle the skeletons? Is it better to go forward, shedding the
ways of your ancestors, or to go back, and honor those traditions no matter the cost? Or is the
only real now to be found between the skeletons somewhere between these two ideas? I
believe that to be in the now, one must find the balance. All humans have an innate sense of
balance, a sense of what is and what should be. All these individuals found a way that works for
them. Perhaps, in order to find the now, all anyone must do is be willing to look.