Native American Day

I work in the downtown public library in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The city is named after the Sioux tribe, and many Native American live here. Many are also homeless or in rehab or on work release from prison, which brings them all to the library when it's cold.

The white people in South Dakota are constantly trying to make up for the sins of the fathers against the brown people. To make up for the looming white faces in Mount Rushmore, we are now carving Chief Crazy Horse out of rock. The library was closed on what most states call Columbus Day but South Dakota changed to Native American Day. The Native Americans wished it had stayed open, (and prefer the name Indian).

I also have a lot of white guilt and uncertainty when it comes to communicating with Native Americans, and want to try to show that I respect their heritage and I'm sorry about the state of the reservations and I don't judge the alcohol on their breath or the prison address, but it's hard to do that just checking out books. So when a tall, brown, middle aged man in a flannel and jeans named Leon Kills Small starting chatting with me while I was helping him, I let my curiosity override my timidity.

"What does your last name mean?"
He stared at me, then smiled and I exhaled and was immediately glad I asked. "My grandfather was a small game hunter- killed rabbits and stuff. I have an Indian name for my first name, too."
"How did you get it?"
"I'm a rain dancer, and at a tribe meeting in Idaho we were all dancing around the fire. It started storming bad and everyone sat down but I kept dancing. The medicine man came over to me and asked if I had an Indian name. I told him I didn't so he said it was White Thunder."
I said something dumb like "wow, interesting! Uh... your movies are due back next Tuesday, inauguration day."
He said he was looking forward to it and I asked if he voted for Obama.
"Yes I did. My grandfather prophecied about him when I was little"
"Oh, really?"
"He told me that there would come a day when they would sell water in stores and white people would buy it, and one day white man would be brought down and brown man would be brought up."
"They didn't sell bottled water when you were a kid?"
"No, and I thought that was crazy. Why would they sell water in a store? There's so much water everywhere! And now they're selling water in the stores and a brown man is going to be president."

At this point, there was a white lady with a lot of makeup and glasses about half his size standing in line. She kept stepping forward and backward like she was trying to stand close enough to listen but was kind of scared of him. I was disappointed that I had to cut the conversation off to help her.

The ridiculous part about the conversation was that I felt a little offended when he talked about white man being brought down. I felt almost like he should have said, "no offense to your people, but" or something polite. The second I put words to those feelings I brushed them off as ironic at best.