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I’m old enough to mourn more and more old friends who’ve died. I remember the late friend who leaned across the powwow picnic table to grab honey for his fry bread then showed me the horsefly and wasp trapped inside the sticky jar. “Man,” he said. “Indians can't have nothing nice.” We laughed. He ate his bread unadorned. I worry that I’ll be the Indian who lives long enough to bury all the Indians he loves. So, Lord, here's my prayer, haphazard and scribbled: Please let me be the Indian who dies somewhere in the middle.
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Life expectancy here is 73 men//77 women for Māori. For Pākehā it's 80/83.
To be the last of your era left would be a lonely honour. The holder of the stories and memories. The ones that are written and the secrets, word of mouth.
Iwi means tribe. Koiwi is human bone remains. We used to put the bones, coloured with red ochre, in caves. In astonishingly carved boxes.
I visited the First People's exhibition yesterday, from Australia. Some of their people's bones were also coloured with ochre, placed inside beautiful painted trees that had been hollowed by termites. I love this reverence for skeletal essence.
Approaching death might be easier, knowing that your bones were held.