I'm an observer at the first All-Native Conference. Forerunner for a Native legislature? It's held in an awkward L-shaped room. The tribes of northern Canada are disproportionately represented--especially the large contingent of Ravens. In the elbow-center, where I sit, several teenage girls are counting the empties and discussing the numbers. Not a lot, but most of them are around us, in the middle; both ends are packed. Are things polarized? Well, yeah, there are so many polar delegates...

But they're not telling our story. I am. Here's our story:

An eccentric white woman who wants to live alone way up in elbow-room country buys an old cabin, and moves in. But a Native man, a delegate from the L-Shaped Conference, realizes he can take advantage of her isolation. He dresses up in a green lizard costume and skulks around the house. If he can scare her out, he can claim the house under an old, broken treaty.

Just a cheesy lizard suit, but it works: she panics and flees!

So I show up. As a shaman I have an obligation to keep the balance, and he's tipped it too far in revenge: the tribe has a collective right to reparations from the whites who stole our land, but this woman didn't steal that house; he can't just terrorize her and take it. No better than 19th Century whites!

He doesn't want to listen. So I become like him--a scaly lizard man--and threaten to fight him if he doesn't give the house back. He doesn't think I can win--why, just because I rented the same costume he did?

Only I didn't. I'm the real thing. Real teeth, real claws. He won't believe it. "This is the modern era. No one can do that! It was all a myth..." Says it to me as my tongue flicks out, tasting his fear on the air... But he blusters, trying to cover what I can taste.

In the end I have to show him the painful way. Shred his fake hide, while he scrabbles against my scales with rubber claws. I try not to hurt him too much--but a little. Enough so he'll have a scar or two, so he'll never again deny such things are real. Fierce, ancient, impossible things--like shamans, and dinosaurs, and justice.

I have to go in and confront her, tell her "Look, you have a right to a decent home, but not the right to terrorize innocents." And she mocks me too, refuses to believe me; so I must turn myself into the creature SHE pretends to be... and drive her out.

But three and four never come. The trouble's over, as suddenly as it started. They learned their lessons, and show up the next day as delegates, scratched and limping and very polite delegates, not wearing big rubber animal suits.

The end. I guess. I'm still trying to figure out what the hell this teaching-story was trying to teach me.

NOTES NEXT MORNING

• L-shaped room = still not unity, there's a broad split or kink in the middle. But at least we're talking! Hmm. I think this is about me more than my community--I've been fighting and sabotaging myself less, but I'm still healing the split in my soul.
• Ravens overrepresented = at the time of the dream I was dating a woman named Raven and she was very much on my mind. Am I giving her wants too much weight, ignoring myself? I tend to do that. Puppy bringing you a stick.
• Empties at the center = still issues unacknowledged?
• The harassed woman = my body? I've been feeling jumpy and ill and not sure why.
• Niece tries the family pattern = my mom called and gossiped about MY niece. She's doing stuff to drive her mom crazy... So what else is new? If I lived with my sister I'd try to drive her crazy too...
• The two who act like shits because they were ripped off and deserve reparations = hmmm. "Since the world wronged me, I can rip off everyone I meet." I'm afraid that I have some of that over-entitlement--being ill most of your adult life can cause envy and resentment. So they're sides of me that go too far. Definitely our family pattern...

2000 NOTE

I dreamed this before Nunavut won autonomy, before the Native legislature convened, before there was any coverage of the issue at all way down where I live in California. I did think the dream was from the future, but a future generations ahead. Not months!

Maybe that's the real lesson. Things you're sure will take forever, battles you're sure will come up three or four times, wars you're sure are only half over... sometimes those things can change. Fast.

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