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1 " The poverty got to me. Seeing them with so little and struggling day to day. Was doing ‘my part,’ but was it enough? Wished I could be a native Robin Hood. Steal from the rich and give to the poor. The rich had so many loaves of bread they’d go moldy. Would they miss them? "
― Shane Hawk , Anoka
2 " Always loved Halloween, though. The dark, the weird, the spooky. The concept of having at least one night a year to dress up and pretend to be someone or something else intrigued me. Halloween hooked me, even when I had nothing. Aside from the costumes and stuff, you didn’t need much to celebrate, just your imagination and a good spirit. "
3 " face. He always found it funny he chewed a product named Red Man and used an Indian for the logo. He supposed it didn’t matter. Any representation of us gave us significance, gave us weight. Made us not just into some forgotten ghosts of American history. "
4 " Hated how rigid it was, either one or the other, could never be a combination of the two. Daylight dragged and I counted down the minutes. Couldn’t wait to transform again. "
5 " The front side of the nickel featured the side profile of a dead Indian chief, complete with a zombified skull and a full headdress. The word LIBERTY floated near his forehead. The back side showed three Spanish ships making landfall. Above the ships, the words IS DEAD spanned across the sky. When betting, flipping a coin offers someone a fifty-fifty chance of winning and losing. This nickel was a metaphor for the predicament of Indian existence: fucked no matter which side the coin landed on. "
6 " Experiencing the death of others is the deepest pain one can feel. "
― Shane Hawk , Closing Time
7 " Crawford loved that movie. "
― Shane Hawk , Tinkering, Tinkering
8 " Offer yourself, your life, your time, to another person for nine years and they laugh in your face. She spit on the grave of their marriage. A piece of his heart still lies in that cut of earth, that blood-soaked soil. "
9 " Never prayed to a god before. Even in those lodges as a kid, I never connected to those dead spirits. I pretended to, though, to respect my elders. "
10 " I hated the Boy Scouts and their Order of the Arrow. Wasn’t enough to steal our land, but the WASPs also tried to imitate our ceremonies, our regalia, and call it their own. "
11 " Staying hydrated made me feel better overall, and I kicked the bottle down the stairway to hell. An actual battle won by an Indian? Something to celebrate. "
12 " Why did it take my son? Fatherhood kept me going. It was one of the few things that made me get out of bed, to not wish for that darkness to take me. "
13 " Generations before him saw the Ojibwe as enemies for what they did, siding with the French. But he didn’t care about any of that anymore. All Indians were his brothers. "
14 " Chaska never understood why his grandfather ditched polytheism, but chalked it up to his upbringing. Those government-run boarding schools fractured his identity. Should have called them ‘breaking schools. "
15 " They weren’t my tribe, but I believed that legend. Witches and werewolves were real. Why not Windegos? And isn’t that what happened to the Donner Party out in California? Being so desperate for meat, for food. Could relate to that. Pitied any person with nothing to fall back on, enough to eat someone’s heart out. "
16 " His grandfather christened himself as John after absconding from his second wife. He joined the Oak Haven Church posthaste. He died not long after. Philip always wondered about Indians who sought comfort in the white man’s god. "
