"never been to round up. not even in the 40s. i did try to drive thru pendleton several years back and got caught up with people all walking in the streets. the road wasn't marked off at all. i had to go backwards up the hill and the other way out of town. i learned then not to go down during round up week."
"what i like to go to is those pow wows up in wallowa. i love to watch those indians dance."
"then you get right in the middle of it and circle around like they did at devin's wedding."
"those little boys they have out there dancing are so cute. the pow wow and what's that other dance up there called? i love going to that one. wallowa is great."
the ladies don't want to go to pendleton, but that's where the casino is. and that's where the bus goes. so, they ride, watching out the window, from the second row middle seat, because that's where you get the most open view.
no one wants to go to pendleton. it's a town of seething lawlessness. many drunk beer pongers at thousands of trailers around the city can cause a disturbance. pendleton police uses an obsessive amount of its budget on the week of round up. so much that one wonders how to get busted doing anything the rest of the year.
like the rest of eastern oregon, there is a fair amount of free will. one has to try pretty hard to get into trouble, or be a social misfit. so there are very few social misfits. freedom, as we are told, is not free. that came at a cost. people were murdered and scalped of their free will to guarantee another their own. read about the nez perce indians someday soon. read about the colonies of chinese in eastern oregon someday soon. what other lawlessness than some drunks in the streets do we have to worry about?
pendleton has gambling and prostitution, or at least historically they did. and if there's one thing about history, it always repeats itself. i am gonna go just a step out onto the limb to guess that history repeats itself in pendleton on a annual basis during round up, if not more frequently throughout the year.
a big controversy is the newest statue of the esteemed stella darby. darby was a madame of the cozy inn throughout the war years.
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| photo: kid yoshida's phone |
from my own experience, madame darby has long been considered an appropriate choice for rabble rouser hall of famer, so naturally it was a sight to behold, a shocking surprise in fact to stumble upon, the newly installed work of ms. darby in front of the former cozy inn.
people say she used women for their bodies, to profit. i don't know who is qualified to make that assessment. from all i have heard, stella was very generous and protective of her girls, and it seems a lot better to have a safe place to operate from rather than free lancing the streets. by no means should it be possible to categorize the reasons for which women seek prostitution in the first place. it's going to happen anyway. so shouldn't it be better that stella made sure it happened right?
no matter one's own viewpoint of the politics surrounding of the new statues in pendleton, it had been told to me, though i have yet to confirm, that the east oregonian said to the effect, if you weren't part of the planning, don't be mad about the decision. in eastern oregon, voices count way more in a democratic sense than they do in a more populated place. there are no end to the opportunities to be involved civicly and make a significant and lasting impression on the land in which you occupy. if someone does something you don't like after you didn't try to say anything to stop them, then your protests count toward your own actions as well.
peter walters wrote that the controversy takes away from the fact that this is an amazing piece of work by a local artist, who has done many other things for pendleton arts. randy gundlock has also created the horse head at the arts center and teaches art at the high school. his wife teaches middle school.
in comparison with the hooligan life of pendleton sculptors, indian village doesn't have as many problems to worry about should we look at history and modern life.modern life: indian village does not allow the drunkeness, which is the problem necessitating police reinforcement outside the village. if people want to make round up safer, they could follow a peaceful indian rule to make it a sober city during the week. of course that would come at a great cost and the rapid decline of an eastern oregon tradition built up for 104 years. also, the cops wouldn't look forward to the overtime budget as another christmas bonus. i guess you get what you pay for.
modern life: tribal police enforce the laws of their own land. this must be respected by all denizons and passers by. the need for seperate police on seperate lands is of benefit to indian communities protecting their own law and to hang on to what autonomy they have left. certainly, reservations can do better for themselves than if they hired the ferguson police department. this means that the men in blue creeping down the riverwalk is as close as pendleton's finest get to indian village.
throughout human history: white civilizations have fought with selfish motives and dirty tricks. the result has been the oft mentioned extermination of entire tribes, races, cultures in the name of manifest destiny, ie the selfish confiscation of a country and its resources by white people. go watch the happy canyon night show and notice not only the discrimination that existed, but that which is also still evident in the overtones of the production. the united states is not the only nation to have witnessed encroachment from sea to shining sea. basically, every white inhabitated nation has seen a similar version of events. in the overall scenario, natives were easily exploited because they were benevolent, trusting, giving and rich in resources. indians gave, white people took.
from the outset, the current and historical situation make indian village feel the more pure and welcoming environment as compared to that wicked white world outside. problems there may be, but if the framework supports inclusion, hospitality, wisdom and understanding, fewer problems there are likely to be. plus, indian village residents get to sleep next to many cows and sheep, which will more or less be forced to take part in some activity whereby a white man throws a rope around their neck and slings them to the ground and ties them up to show his might.
indian village is endlessly entertaining. this year i admired the flags from the teepees. the main thing i could think about was to set up my own teepee to fly the cascadia flag. certainly, a flown flag says more than most other measures of a person's outward look. so, i did a little inventory, for what it's worth:there were approximately 130-160 teepees, most of which did not have flags flying from them. presumably people's homes are different enough that they don't need a flag to recognize where they are sleeping. teepees mainly use markers such as the entrance, the materials, designs on fabric, etc, to locate home. most ideally, homes are marked by...you guessed it - location! why does a home need to look different from another? a person knows where they live, right? especially if they haven't been drinking.
55 bright ties flew from the tops of the teepees, most were pink, but a few were yellow, a few were red. some of the pink ones appeared to have been red at one time. several ties presented from individual teepees. (the 55 ties were found on 20-25 teepees.) the good thing about multiple sticks to hold up the canvas, there are more options for flags to fly. still, the ties marking location were the majority of the multiple flag teepees.
8 windsocks, similar in description to the ties, however a few were flags; three american windsocks, two canadian.
3 american flags. there are always a contingent of indians that praise the u.s. government, not that that is what the flag's presence necessarily means. still, it seems a bit odd. it makes me wonder how divided the indian populations are now over white men. certainly, the nez perce tribe was divided in hisotry, and the sides that favored the u.s. government seemed to be the same members benefitting economically from white men's offers. funny how that would work. it makes me take less seriously the praising speeches of the great collaboration with the government.
the presence of the american flag always makes me think of sarcastic europeans who make fun of americans for flying their flag in their own country. europeans tell me that no one flies their national flag within their own nation, except on official buildings. the reason is because people already know what country they are in, they don't need to advertise it with a flag. now if, say, a brit was living in france, it would be acceptible to fly the british flag as a notification of a british national, but in no way would a frenchman need to fly a french flag within the borders of france. also, europeans are not nearly as patriotic as americans. considering american history, patriotism makes a lot of sense. it takes a lot of blind faith by citizens to make a country so freaking huge. there is no way people out west shouldn't want rebel from washington d.c., but nevermind the will of a brainwashed public. regardless of normal americans, i still cannot understand why an indian would be patriotic to a white man's cause. but at the grand total of three (one small, one medium, one tiny, withered, faded and dirty) there weren't as many as probably could have been expected.
2 pendleton round up flags. presumably, the only reason there were not more is because round up flags are relatively hard to come by.
16 sports flags. mostly football. if that statistic doesn't say there is very little difference between indian culture and white culture in the 21st century, i don't know what does. the saving grace in this situation is that most were seattle seahakws flags. there were seven seahakws flags in total; three were the regular modern warhawk logo, two were "12" flags, a third 12th man flag had a number 12 over the stars of a green and blue u.s. flag. there was also one super bowl champion flag. the prevelance of seahawks flags wasn't too shocking, though the lack of any seattle mariners flags was a mystery. sure the seahawks are reigning world champs, but the football season just started. meanwhile, the mariners are in the playoff race still in september. it doesn't get much better than now for mariners fans.
among the other sports flags were several regional universities. (this is taking some liberties since college flags don't necessarily imply a sports team affiliation directly, though every person i have ever known to fly a school's flag was also a huge fan of the atheltic programs.) there were two oregon ducks flags, one rather huge one. there was a small washington huskies flag and an even smaller washington state cougars flag. there were also two notre dame flags, which seemed random, but i didn't investigate the village to ask why the flags existed. funnier still was that one of the notre dame flags was of the fighting irish leprechan. after seeing the few colleges represented, i sort of expected a louisville flag since the schimmel sisters from the umatilla reservation play basketball for the lousiville cardinals (or shoni did play for lousiville and graduated this past year before she was drafted by the atlanta dream of the WNBA, while her sister jude will be a senior at lousiville this season). speaking of basketball, almost as random as a notre dame flag was the sight of a los angeles lakers flag. i want to just assume that person has been flying that flag since the days of kareem and magic. not that that would explain a whole lot more, but still.
my favorite flag to see flying was the atlanta braves. a team named after indians. not quite as good as it would have been to see a washington redskins flag, but somehow i bet that anyone wanting to fly that flag in indian village would be strongly discouraged from doing so. without getting deep into the controversy of sports teams named after indians, the atlanta braves flag is especially fun for me. i was a huge fan and have many autographs from those days with the stellar pitching staffs led by greg maddux. and when the braves burst into the playoffs somewhat unannouced in 1991, the tomahawk chop was a very controversial thing, as were the plastic indian replica tomahawks that were handed out at games. supposedly, that tradition was disrespectful to indian culture. but the fury died down when it was revealed that the cherokee nation manufactured the tomahawks for the atlanta braves. wonder if that makes the act less disrepectful? wonder, for that matter, if the cherokee nation has benefitted from government policy and didn't mind selling out their heritage to corporate interests?
there is always a good amount of controversy on anything, particularly it should be controversial when indians go camping for a week on land owned by white men. they should be charging the round up rent for putting the stadium in indian village. few fans at the rodeo will watch the indian races at intermission, the $5 two-ounce beer lines will be longest during the pageants, but fans will crowd in when former world champion bucking horses (read: old, slow, decrepit horses about to go out to pasture) come out of the chutes without staining the clothes of the cowboys riding them. needless to say, the round up is not my favorite rodeo, but the entertainment of pendleton history surrounding it is one of the best things a person can do in pendleton all year. the indian village leads the way. i just hope a few people besides myself stop to notice, and maybe even ask about, the flags flying from the teepees. start a dialog about something other than how to get into the let 'er buck room.
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