The Father Becomes The Son; Does The Son Become The Father?
By Thomas Rodgers
Sojourners.com Feature
I have often wondered when I think about my relationship
with my father whether the philosopher Kierkegaard’s statement: “Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards” was most poignantly about a father and a son.
I am the son of a Blackfoot Native American
woman and a once removed Irish immigrant man who together escaped from the extreme poverty of the Blackfoot Indian reservation of north-
western Montana to the windswept wheat fields of eastern Montana. This landscape generates an emotional stoicism born of sheer adversity and gives deep meaning to the statement “if you tell me where you are from I can tell you who you are.”
LEECH LAKE, Minn. - I am not supposed to be alive. Native Americans were supposed to die off, as endangered species do, a century ago. And so it is with great discomfort that I am forced, in many ways, to live and write as a ghost in this haunted American house.
But perhaps I am not dead after all, despite the coldest wishes of a republic that has wished it so for centuries before I was born. We stubbornly continue to exist. There were just over 200,000 Native Americans alive at the turn of the 20th century; as of the last census, we number more than 2 million. If you discount immigration, we are probably the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population. But even as our populations are growing, something else, I fear, is dying: our cultures.
Raised $31,000 dollars for Christmas gifts for children of less fortunate tribes from the Great Plains Tribes of Montana as part of the 2006 Annual Tribal Christmas Drive
Last year, NIGA and Member Tribes raised approximately $200,000 through a Christmas toy/ clothing/food drive for Indian children in need on Indian reservations in North and South Dakota, Montana, and the Navajo Nation.
For example, through our Christmas drive last year children in court-ordered foster care on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation received at least one article of clothing that they needed and a Christmas toy that they wanted. Without assistance, they would have had very little Christmas cheer because of their difficult family circumstances.
Raised over $200K in charitable contributions for a Native American Tribal Government who was a victim of hurricane Rita.
Charitable contributions to Alcohol Abuse Avoidance and Alcohol Treatment programs in Washington, D.C.: MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) and Clean and Sober Streets
“Awesome!”
- Ernest L. Stevens, Jr., Chairman of the National Indian Gaming Association
Intern Experience
July 21, 2006
"This has been an awesome internship. I really don’t think I could have done anything better. It’s so cool because some of legislation affecting Natives, this committee has jurisdiction over, so I get to see first hand all the different processes that our committee goes through. Right now my boss Richard is starting to write legislation for some different things in education, permanent funding for bison co-op, and some other stuff.
I talked to some other Natives who are out here with different programs like WINS and UDALL, and not to brag but this internship is way better. They have to do reports on issues going on right now such as health care, suicide, meth, and language immersion... (and) I have first hand to all this stuff. Almost in one way or another, these topics fall within the committee. So I feel fortunate to have this experience. All the people I talk to are really impressed with my internship and they all want to know how in the heck I got it."
- Diana Ramos, Barona Band of Mission Indians
Endless Generosity Letter
August 16, 2004
“Tom,
I wanted to extend to you my sincerest “thanks” for giving me the opportunity of a lifetime. My time in Washington D.C. with the great people of the Finance Committee was truly the best experience and most fun six weeks of my life. It was awesome! Without you, this would never have happened.
Since my departure from D.C., I haven’t gone a single day without thinking about the exciting times I had there with the Democratic Finance Staff (“The Dream Team”) and my intern buds. I miss it, and them, so much! I never would have thought that I would have as much fun as I did, and I owe it all to you. I’ll never forget you, Tom, or your endless generosity! Thanks a bunch!
Forever Grateful,
Alex Robles
Excerpts from "Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero"
Frontline, September 2002
A couple leaped from the south tower, hand in hand.
They reached for each other and their hands met, and they jumped.
I try to whisper prayers for the sudden dead and the harrowed families
of the dead and the screaming souls of the murderers, but I keep
coming back to his hand in her hand, nestled in each other with
such extraordinary, ordinary, naked love. It's the most powerful
prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It's
everything we're capable of against horror and loss and tragedy.
It's what makes me believe that we're not fools to believe in God,
to believe that human beings have greatness and holiness within
them, like seeds that open only under great fire, to believe that
who we are persists past what we were, to believe, against evil
evidenced hourly, that love is why we are here. -Brian Doyle
To me, that image is an inescapable provocation. This gesture, this holding of hands in the midst of that horror, it embodies what September 11 was all about. The image confronts us with the need to make a judgement, a choice. Does it show the ultimate hopelessness of human attempts to survive the power of hatred and of death? Or is it an affirmation of a greatness within our humanity itself that somehow shines in the midst of that darkness and contains the hint of a possibility, a power greater than death itself? Which of the two? It's a choice? It's the choice of September 11th. -Monsigner Loranzo Albacete, Catholic Priest
