I don’t know how many Sioux live in Seattle. Maybe twenty. Maybe thirty. Maybe one hundred. I have no clue. We don’t have a mythical Sioux club that meets every Monday night. But I do play noon basketball at the YMCA and there are two Sioux lawyers who are regulars. They’re good players. They pass the ball, always looking for the assist. They’re unselfish gym rats, the rarest type of player.
I was born in Seattle because my father, a Lakota, came here for college over four decades ago. He fell in love with my mother, a white woman, and they conceived me out of wedlock. They never married. Never even lived together. But they were still good if very separate parents.
My father grew up poor on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and only goes back for funerals and weddings. I’ve only visited there three times. My mother grew up poor in a failed logging town that was basically a white reservation. I’ve never been there at all.
I grew up upper middle-class in Seattle. My father is a retired Boeing engineer. My mother is a retired ICU nurse. I never wanted for anything material. I’m a private school Indian. So I don’t feel much connection to my poor white or reservation ancestors. I’m an urban Indian, meaning I’m like a satellite orbiting the Sioux people who are daily immersed in the culture, theology, and economics of our tribe.
But I’m certainly invested in Native politics in general. I always join the marches when Indians decide to march. I believe that tribes should be sovereign but I also know that kind of political and economic sovereignty doesn’t really apply to disconnected urban Indians like me. Urban Indian sovereignty sometimes feels like an oxymoron.
I’m giving you my short bio to let you know that, back in 1990, I was outlandishly excited to be standing in line to see the Seattle premiere of Dances with Wolves. I think some part of me believed that I’d feel more connection to my tribe if I watched a movie about Sioux people—even a flick directed by a white man that was based on a novel written by another white man. But it wasn’t just me. Pretty much every Indian was excited to see Dances with Wolves. I’d bet that more than half of Indian families still have a battered VHS copy of Dances somewhere in their house. But, these days, every proper progressive Indian must decry Kevin Costner’s cultural appropriation. It’s just another loincloth movie, they say. And they’re right. But, in 1990, it was a magical loincloth movie for most Indians, especially rez Indians.
So there were a few dozen Indians waiting in line with me to see Dances With Wolves at the Egyptian Theatre in Seattle. And there were at least two other Sioux in the queue. One of them worked at the Seattle Indian Health Board. Her name was Saundra but everybody called her Squeaky. She was Lakota. Grew up in Rapid City, South Dakota. We dated for a year before she left me for the white guy who became her husband. I was okay with her leaving me for a Caucasian American. It would’ve hurt more if she’d left me for another Indian guy, especially another Sioux boy. That would’ve been direct competition.
There was another Sioux guy waiting in line for the movie. He was a Professor of Native Studies. Barely Indian, though. I called him Tom Thumb, PhD, because all his Indian blood could fit in one finger.
In line, I silently nodded at the Indians I knew by name and sight. They all looked eager.
That’s when I noticed two white people—a man and woman—interviewing some of the waiting Indians. They were a brother-sister documentary team that wanted to capture the Native American reaction to the film.
"I haven’t seen the movie yet," I said when they pointed the microphone and camera at me. “So how can I have a reaction?"
"What do you predict your reaction to the film will be?" the brother asked. He was a small and slender dude. A pretty boy. His sister, a blue-eyed blonde, was prettier.
They were in love with Indians. I knew the type. Absent of their own theologies, they were secular white liberals who saw every Indian as a holy person. And they were on a racism scavenger hunt, searching for evidence of hatred in every nook and cranny of American culture. But no matter what people think, racism is not ubiquitous. Racism is more like a series of landmines in a vast field of wild flowers. Anti-Indian sentiment is frightening but rare.
“I hear the Sioux characters actually speak the tribal language in the film,” I said to the brother-sister documentary team. “That seems like a positive step.”
“Do you speak the language?” the brother asked me.
“A little, yeah,” I said. But that wasn’t quite true. It was just too embarrassing to admit that I only knew a word or two. But then, for some reason, I decided to tell the truth.
“Thing is,” I said. “I’m pretty much a tourist in my own language. I only know how to count to ten. And a few dirty words.”
“But maybe you’ll feel the language in your heart,” the sister said. It was the first time she spoke. I was charmed by her earnestness.
“Maybe I’ll feel the language in my soul,” I said. Such a foolish and romantic thing to say. Such a cliché. I was playing Indian for them. No. I was playing Indian for her.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Meredith.”
“I’m Jack,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”
We shook hands. Her palm was sweaty. That made me happy. A small human flaw. A humbleness.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “My hands are always damp dish rags.”
"Give me your number," I said directly to her. "And I'll call you later to tell you what I think of the movie."
"Why don't you come to our house afterward?" the brother said. “And we'll get you on tape there."
A few hours later, I walked through their open front door to see them dancing together to a Joy Division song. You know the one. “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” It was weird to see siblings spinning together to a beautiful romantic dirge. I was instantly uncomfortable and thought to leave, but she saw me standing in their foyer and called me over.
Soon enough, Meredith and I were dancing while the brother filmed us. They were the kind of people who filmed everything in their lives. They were Internet exhibitionists long before there was a mainstream Internet.
“So what did you think of the movie?” the brother asked me.
“I thought it was beautiful and goofy in equal measure,” I said. “That kidnapped white woman. Stands with a Fist. It looked like she got her hair blow-dried at Supercuts.”
I remembered a white woman I’d dated when I still wore long Indian braids. In bed, she once unbraided me and said it was like opening a Christmas present. I think she was more in love with my hair than she was with me.
Meredith and I danced all night. She was a good dancer. As was I. So I assumed we looked good on video. She sometimes moved so close to me that I caught her heat and scent. Sometimes she pressed her hand to my chest, as if to check my vital signs, but then she’d push me away. It felt like courtship. I never stopped feeling weird about the situation—about our flirtations being recorded by her brother—but I was also feeling more and more of that ineffable, immediate, and biochemical love for Meredith—for a total stranger.
But she and I didn’t go beyond the flirtation. We just danced. She hugged me good night and disappeared upstairs. Her brother fell asleep on one couch and I fell asleep on the other.
I woke before dawn and left without waking them. I thought I'd been in a PG-rated David Lynch movie and figured I'd never see them again. But a week later, the brother called and asked me to come to a party. I assumed there’d be other guests but it was just the two siblings and me. And once again, the brother filmed me dancing with his sister. For the next six months, once or twice a week, we'd repeat the ceremony. And then, in September, she kissed me good night. She aimed for my cheek and hit my neck instead. Right on the jugular. Directly at the source of the blood that flowed to my brain—to the frontal lobe. The dopamine flowed.
"Hey," I said. "I got tickets for the Melissa Etheridge concert. Do you want to go?”
She looked at her brother.
"You want to fuck my sister! You want to fuck my sister! You want to fuck my sister," he screamed. I was shocked by his outburst. By his sudden rage. Before that moment, the dude had been a whispering white liberal.
“Do you want to fuck my sister?” he screamed at me and pumped his hips back and forth. An obscene gesture made even worse because he was talking about his sister.
“Do you want to fuck my sister?” he screamed again.
I know I should’ve just walked away. He was obviously mentally ill. Damaged. It was like I’d removed his mask and revealed a phantom. I should’ve just turned and left their house. But I was angry, and yes, I was also afraid. I felt like an asshole whose masculinity had been challenged. So I had to respond. But I didn’t yell. I tried to sound reasonable.
“I think your sister is awesome,” I said. “And, yeah, maybe, if she feels the same way about me then maybe we’ll make love at some point in the future.”
My calm voice pissed him off even more. He ran at me and took a swing, but I dodged it and pushed him away. He kept screaming at me as I finally walked away. I was trembling with adrenaline. People are mysterious, all of us. I felt unclean but I also departed with a great story to tell at parties.
Exactly one year later, at 3 a.m., my phone rang, but I let it go to the message machine.
"Hello, it's me. Are you there? Can you please pick up the phone?"
It was Meredith, the sister, drunk and weeping.
"Please talk to me," she said. "Pick up the phone. Okay, either you’re not home or just not answering. So I’ll just say it on your machine. I’m sorry for what happened last year. You were our friend. And I liked you. And maybe we could’ve had something. But you have to understand my brother. You see, our parents died in a car wreck when I was only twelve. My brother was just eighteen but he became my guardian. He raised me. He was my big brother and he also became like a father. And a guardian angel. He was just protecting me when he yelled at you. He shouldn’t have done that. But you have to forgive him. And he misses you. Really, he does. And I miss you, too.”
I didn't pick up the phone. And I never heard from her again.
As for Dances with Wolves, I hate it now because the white man flees at the end and leaves the Indians to be slaughtered. But the movie pretends that he was doing something admirable. And I can’t think of the film without thinking about those crazy siblings. I know that fleeing them was a healthy decision. But I still feel somehow responsible for her. I know that I left her to that uncertain dysfunction with her brother. I fled her pain. I was the Indian who saved himself but I don’t feel anything like a hero.
I'm embarrassed to say that I always wondered what authentic Native Americans thought of Dances with Wolves. I was enamored with that movie. Not because of Kevin Costner, but because of wolves and because of Indians. Thanks for one answer to that question.