Stories and a White Man: An Open Letter to My Navaho Students

by Rex L. Veeder

Some of your Elders encourage you to leave the university and return to the reservation. They tell you that the university is not for you. I respect your Elders because I understand that they wish the best for you, but I cannot agree with them. Come here. Let's share a place together, here on this page, as real as Second Mesa where the wind makes its own stories and all of us must listen to the language of Crow in order to find our way home. Right now let's share a place where we wait trustingly and where storytellers are never victims because they have their stories to protect them. Let our moment together be a home of stories, and let us agree to live in a world where such a place as this one exists.

My Uncle Mace was Native American. I'm not sure what nation he came from, but I understand it was one of those "civilized" tribes because unlike the Apache they did not tell jokes that ended with "White men are stupid." So White men called them "civilized."

Uncle Mace told me stories. He would start with, "Now, everything I tell you is true." Then he would tell me something confusing and crazy and wonderful, something about bears or ants or giants. Some of his favorite stories were about a race of great ones who were men but did things men could not do. Anyway, I believed they were true stories, and I have to admit that I probably still do. There's a place in me where Uncle Mace still lives.

My great grandfather used to take me along when he went to visit sick animals. He was a homemade veterinarian, and the farmers loved him because they never got around to paying him. His specialty was to cure bloated cattle. He would walk up beside the animal and stick a knife into its belly. Anyway, he always drank whisky as we drove along, and he always made up songs. He had a voice filtered through gravel and tar, but the songs were stories, and I believed them like the stories of my Uncle Mace. One song went something like this:

When I was a young man

I had long green pants.

I wore them all day

but they were full of ants.

Sometimes at night I would wonder how he was able to get along with his green-ant pants. Maybe being bitten by all those green ants made him start to drink. Now that I am almost as old as he was then, I almost believe it was me who grew up with ants in my pants.

My grandfather and grandmother also told me stories. I don't think they made them up. They were histories about how my parents got into trouble and were whipped for doing things I did every day. My father got caught chasing chickens and got whipped. I always believed chickens were meant to be chased, and I still believe they even like it. I know now that the story they told me about my father was to warn me not to chase chickens. It seems that when grandparents don't want to whip their grandchildren, they tell them stories and remember what it was like to whip their kids. That way they feel better. When my grandparents got very sick and were about to die, I sued to sit with them and tell them the stories they had told me and then I felt better.

When the old ones in the family died, the stories stopped. At least no one took the time to say "Everything I am going to tell you is true." There were stories, of course, but they were usually told to explain why things couldn't get better or why the day had been so hard. They were sad stories because they always stopped with what had happened that day and didn't connect the teller with the past or future or other stories. Someone would say, "I went to work and had lunch and came home. It was a hard day," and that would be the end of it. The stories were fast stories. I guess everyone expected everyone else to tell slow stories for them. I may be too hard on my family in this. It may be that I grew too old to listen, but I began to miss the stories that were meant to make things better--to heal--to comfort.

After I graduated from high school, I went to a university. I lived in a dorm, attended crowded classes, and thought I didn't belong there. I wasn't used to attending a school larger than my town. The crowds began to take something from me so that where once I had a body with ears to hear with and eyes to see I now felt like a ghost among the living. No--more like a spirit that wants to speak but speaks only silence.

Then, I began to find classes where teachers told stories. Sometimes those classes were about foreign people and places and times. I couldn't understand them because I had never been there, but when the storytellers taught the classes I began to believe I had been there after all. Not all the teachers told stories, but I found myself going to the classes where stories were honored--even if it was a story about physics or chemistry. There were storytelling classes where the teacher believed what was being said was true but also knew it was a story. I found that even at a university there was a family of storytellers. Let me tell you a story.

Listen. I promise that everything I say is true. When things started, some great one decided that what was being said would be. If men and women wanted to live a certain life, they just had to say so and the life would happen as it was told. The great one was all spirit and could join in any story that was told. In this way the great one became a part of every storyteller and connected one story to the next. The plan was to join the whole earth into one great story, and the storytelling family grew. But that kind of world could not last for long. Sometimes people told stories that were good for them and sometimes they did not. When something bad would come from a story, the teller decided not to tell stories anymore. Each story that was not told divided the people of the earth, and the family of storytellers shrunk.

The great one though about this for a long time and decided things would have to change. There would be a storytelling family and there would be others, but the only thing one of the others had to do to become a part of the family was to tell a story or to listen to one. The important thing the great one decided was that the listener and the storyteller would agree that the story was true. There is magic in agreeing to believe in each other, if only for the moment the story is told, and the magic is that the storyteller and the listener sit in the same place together. They are family for the time it takes to tell the story, to hear the story, to read the story, or to remember the story.

The great one told his story of storytelling to everyone, but people forgot it. They forgot it because they were hungry or cold or frightened. I can't blame them, and I figure the great one didn't either. Still, everyone began to argue about which story was real and which story was not true instead of honoring each other's stories. The world got in a very bad way. When one person would say the moon is blue, another would doubt that could be true, and so the doubter could not be in the place with the person and the blue moon. Soon everyone was telling stories, but no one was listening. It may be that this became the way of the white man, and as the jokes say, "White men are stupid." I hope not.

There is a family that goes beyond the limits of disbelief and stupidity. There is a family of storytellers who heal and comfort and inspire and share. I say this not because some book says so or because it seems to be something a white man should say when faced with the isolation and lonely landscape offered by disbelief. I say this simply because it is true.

What is left after such a story? Perhaps we can agree that there is much to be done. There must be those who will risk telling their story. A storyteller risks much because what is offered is a personal gift, and any story that gets told happens to the storyteller during the telling and happens to the story listener during the listening. We have to love a story to tell it. We have to be risk takers to listen to a story as well. All good stories wrap us in their arms. They are offerings of a quiet and curious love. When we offer something we love to someone else, we take the risk that the great one may want us to take. Some may think we are crazy. Some will not honor our story. Some will say we say cute things and treat us like puppies. Some may want to use our story to make themselves look better. Some may want to buy us since that seems to be the only story they know.

There will be times when we want to be so alone no one can hear our story. There will be times when we can't find the words and will have to let silence speak for us. Even in silence we can tell a story if there is someone listening. There will be times when we speak a language that is not our own in order to encourage others to hear something at all.

Believe. Someone listens. Someone hears a story and believes, and they storyteller and the listener become one for a moment and are healed. Because of this, it is the storyteller who holds the magic to make the world happen--to make the world family. I will keep telling my story because someone will listen. You tell your story too. I promise every word is true.

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Last update: 15 July 1998

URL: http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/kaleidoscope/volume4/stories.html

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