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He Ran Away From Boarding School. He Was Nine.

by | Being Native American

My Grandfather Ran Away From Boarding School Twice. I Finally Understand Why.

After talking with my grandmother, I realized there was so much I didn’t know about my grandparents’ history.

Not just little details—but big pieces.

So after I spoke with her, I called my grandpa.

He was relaxed, like always. Easy to talk to. I told him I wanted to know more about him—his past, how he grew up. I wanted to document it so the story wouldn’t be lost.

So I pulled out my big old VHS recorder and we started talking.

Before that conversation, I really didn’t know much about his childhood.

I always knew that his mother—my great-grandmother—was full-blooded Indian, and that she had married a white man. And I always loved that I got my blue eyes from him. Apparently when I was born, he said, “There’s my blue-eyed baby, finally.” He had ten children with my full-blooded grandma, and they all had brown eyes.

But that was about the extent of what I knew.

So I was surprised when he told me he had gone to boarding school too.

He had this mischievous look—almost a little twinkle in his eye—when he told me he ran away.
And not just ran away… he made it all the way home.

I remember asking him how he did it.

He said he mostly walked at night, slept in ditches during the day, and sometimes got lucky enough to hitch a ride.

I asked him how old he was.
He said about nine… maybe ten.
Can you even imagine that?

The boarding school was near the Minnesota/Iowa border. The reservation was about forty miles south of the Canadian border.
I was shocked—and honestly impressed—that a child that young could make that kind of journey.
Then he told me they came and got him again the next year.

And he ran away again.

After the third time, they stopped coming for him.

I asked him why he ran away—especially because my grandmother had just told me she liked it there because she was “never hungry.”

That’s when everything shifted.
He got quiet.
Put his head down.

Then he looked up at me and said,
“There are very, very, very bad people there.”

At the time, I didn’t fully understand what he meant.

Years later, as I learned more about what children endured in those schools, I began to understand why a nine-year-old boy would risk everything just to get away.

When I think about that little boy walking that distance—twice—

I can only imagine what he must have been running from.

Watching The Madison Made Me Realize Something About “Indian Tacos”

by | Personal

I was watching The Madison the other night.

There’s a scene where someone brings food to a family. A kind gesture. The kind of thing communities do for each other.

They called it Indian tacos.

The younger girls in the scene got offended. Made a thing of it. Corrected it.

And I’m sitting there on my couch thinking — that’s literally what we’ve always called it.

Indian tacos. Indian fry bread. That’s the name. That’s always been the name. Nobody where I come from ever wrinkled their nose at it. It wasn’t a slur. It was dinner.

I wasn’t offended by the scene. I was just… surprised. By the reaction.

And then I wasn’t surprised at all.

There’s a particular kind of awkwardness that happens when people outside a culture decide what should be offensive to the people inside it.

I’ve seen it more times than I can count.

Someone who has never set foot on a Reservation, never sat at a drum, never riced a lake or eaten frybread off a paper plate at a Pow Wow — deeply concerned about the feelings of Native people. Correcting terminology. On behalf of us.

Meanwhile, the actual Native people are just trying to eat their tacos.

I don’t say that to be dismissive. I understand where the impulse comes from. People want to do right. That matters. But there’s a difference between listening to a community and speaking for it. And sometimes the loudest voices in these conversations are the ones with the least lived experience.

That’s not a political statement. It’s just an observation.

I’ve been deep in research for my next book — Boarding School Indians — and I will tell you, spending time in those real stories has a way of recalibrating your sense of what’s actually painful.

The boarding schools were painful. Children taken from their families. Language beaten out of them. Identity stripped down to nothing.

Indian tacos? That came after the survival. That came from the frybread that families made with commodity flour when there wasn’t much else. It came from resilience and adaptation and a people making something good out of what little they had.

It became a tradition. A food. A memory.

My people named it. We own that name. It’s ours.

I think about my dad a lot when moments like this come up. He grew up at Sugar Bush, seventeen miles from the Rez, in a one-room house on the water. He learned the language, the traditions, the ceremonies — the real ones, the ones that were actually dangerous to practice for a long time in this country.

He knows the difference between something that wounds and something that feeds.

So do I.

The Madison scene wasn’t wrong to raise the question. I’ll give it that.

But the answer they landed on — that the term itself is the problem — missed something.

The problem was never the name.

The problem is when people stop asking the people it belongs to.

Warrior Spirit Rising is available now. Boarding School Indians is in progress — and the real stories deserve to be told right.

She Never Said No

by | Being Native American

My gram had a way of answering questions without answering them at all.

We all knew it.

But I don’t think I understood it… until the day of her funeral.

Years before she passed, I had interviewed her on a VHS tape.

It was when I first learned she was a boarding school survivor, and I wanted to capture her story—her voice—before it was gone.

So I sat with her, camera rolling, asking questions.

Trying to understand.

At one point on the tape, I asked her:

“Do you mind if I smoke?”

She didn’t answer.

So I lit a cigarette.

Fast forward to her funeral.

We were all gathered, watching that same tape together.

And as that moment played—there I was, younger me, sitting in her house, smoking—

my cousins immediately said:

“You know she didn’t like smoking in her house.”

They were laughing… but they were right.

And that’s when it hit me.

She never told me no.

Not then. Not ever.

Not because she didn’t have preferences.

Not because she didn’t have feelings.

But because somewhere along the way…

she had learned not to say them out loud.

I’ve thought about that moment so many times since.

Was it because she was a woman, in a time when women were expected to be agreeable?

Was it because she was Native, and learned that speaking up didn’t always feel safe?

Or was it something even deeper…

something shaped in places like boarding schools,

where voice was taken,

identity was controlled,

and silence became a form of survival?

I don’t have one answer.

But I know this:

Silence doesn’t just happen.

It’s learned.

It’s reinforced.

It’s inherited.

At one point in my life, I was told something that stayed with me.

That I was meant to speak for those who couldn’t.

And at the time… I didn’t fully understand what that meant.

Was it women?

Was it Native people?

Was it both?

Now I think I understand it differently.

It’s not about speaking for anyone.

It’s about giving voice to what was never allowed to be said.

My gram didn’t say no.

But that doesn’t mean she didn’t feel it.

And somewhere between her silence…

and my voice…

there is a responsibility.

To listen more closely.

To understand more deeply.

To say the things that didn’t have space before.

I come from a woman who survived by staying quiet.

And I honor that.

But I also carry something else now.

Not just her silence…

but the choice to speak.

The Role of Storytelling in Indigenous Healing

by | author update

Stories Were Medicine Before They Were Written

Long before books were printed, long before articles were posted online, stories were how Indigenous people survived.

Stories carried law.
Stories carried history.
Stories carried spiritual instruction.
Stories carried identity.

For Native communities, storytelling was never entertainment alone. It was medicine.

As a Native American author and Indigenous storyteller, I do not see writing as separate from that tradition. I see it as a continuation.

The medium may have changed. The responsibility has not.

What Indigenous Storytelling Truly Is

In many Indigenous cultures, oral tradition has always been central to cultural preservation. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian documents how storytelling served as a primary method for passing down knowledge, governance structures, and spiritual teachings across generations. (https://americanindian.si.edu)

Stories were not casual.

They were shared with purpose.
Often seasonally.
Often ceremonially.
Often with great care.

They carried meaning layered beneath metaphor. They taught children how to live without lecturing them directly. They connected individuals to community.

In Ojibwe tradition, storytelling includes migration teachings, clan histories, and moral instruction woven through lived narrative. The Anishinaabe migration west, guided by the miigis shell, was preserved through oral history long before it appeared in academic texts.

That preservation was healing.

Because when you know where your people came from, you understand that you did not appear by accident.

Trauma and the Silence That Followed

When boarding schools removed children from their families and punished them for speaking their language, storytelling was disrupted.

When elders were silenced, stories were interrupted.

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative confirms the widespread effort to suppress Indigenous language and culture through institutional systems. (https://www.doi.gov/priorities/strengthening-indian-country/federal-indian-boarding-school-initiative)

Silence can be inherited just as easily as trauma.

Many Native families grew up not hearing certain stories. Pain was carried quietly. History was softened to protect younger generations.

But when stories disappear, identity can weaken.

And when identity weakens, healing becomes more difficult.

Naming What Happened

Intergenerational trauma in Native American communities has been widely studied by scholars such as Dr. Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, who coined the term “historical trauma” to describe cumulative emotional and psychological wounding across generations. (Referenced through Indian Health Service resources: https://www.ihs.gov)

Storytelling interrupts that cycle.

When we say:

“This happened.”
“This hurt.”
“This shaped us.”

We remove shame.

Shame thrives in silence.

Stories restore context.

When Native families understand that certain struggles are rooted in systemic history rather than personal failure, compassion replaces blame.

That is healing.

Storytelling as Cultural Reclamation

Across the United States and Canada, tribal communities are revitalizing language programs, cultural camps, and storytelling initiatives to strengthen identity among younger generations.

The Indian Health Service and other tribal behavioral health programs increasingly recognize culturally grounded healing practices — including storytelling — as central to recovery and resilience.

Why?

Because storytelling does more than inform.

It reconnects.

When a young Native person hears their migration story, their clan story, their grandmother’s lived experience, something shifts. They see themselves in a longer timeline.

They understand they are not alone.

They understand survival did not begin with them.

Writing as Continuation

As an Ojibwe woman and Native American author, I write not to replace oral tradition, but to support it.

Books reach people who may not have grown up hearing elders speak. Articles reach readers searching for understanding. Written words can travel across distance in ways oral tradition sometimes cannot in modern life.

But the heart of the story remains relational.

I do not write from theory.

I write from lived experience.

From watching how silence affects families.
From witnessing how honesty opens conversation.
From seeing how stories allow people to breathe differently.

When readers tell me they felt seen, what they are really saying is this:

“My experience was not isolated.”

That recognition is medicine.

Indigenous Storytelling and Mental Health

Modern psychology increasingly acknowledges narrative therapy as a tool for healing — allowing individuals to reframe their life stories and separate identity from trauma. Research published through the National Institutes of Health discusses the impact of storytelling and narrative practices in trauma recovery. (https://www.nih.gov)

Indigenous communities understood this long before clinical terminology existed.

Stories allow individuals to move from:

“I am broken.”

To:

“I survived something.”

That shift is transformative.

It does not erase pain.
But it changes relationship to it.

Why This Matters Now

We live in a time when misinformation spreads quickly. Native histories are often simplified. Indigenous identities are reduced to stereotypes.

Storytelling challenges that.

When Native American authors and Indigenous storytellers write from lived truth, we correct narratives without hostility. We educate without abandoning dignity.

We remind readers that Native communities are not relics of the past.

We are present.

We are evolving.

We are healing.

And we are still telling our stories.

Healing Is Not Erasing

Some people believe healing means forgetting.

Indigenous healing does not require erasure.

It requires integration.

It requires remembering migration and boarding schools and service and survival — not to reopen wounds, but to understand resilience.

Stories hold both pain and strength in the same space.

They allow us to say:

“This hurt.”
“And we are still here.”

That dual truth is powerful.

Carrying Stories Forward

When I speak at military installations during Native American History Month, or when I share reflections through writing, I am not only recounting events.

I am continuing a tradition.

Storytelling in Indigenous communities was always intergenerational. Elders spoke. Youth listened. Youth grew into elders and spoke in turn.

Writing allows that circle to extend beyond geography.

It allows someone in another state — or another generation — to hear something that resonates.

If storytelling once preserved identity through migration, perhaps today it preserves identity through digital distance.

The medium changes.

The responsibility does not.

A Living Tradition

Indigenous storytelling is not confined to ceremony or memory.

It is alive in books.
It is alive in classrooms.
It is alive in conversation.
It is alive in homes.

As long as Native voices continue to speak and write, healing continues.

As a Native American author, I do not claim to heal anyone single-handedly.

But I believe that when we speak truthfully, when we honor where we came from, and when we allow stories to surface without shame, something shifts.

And sometimes, that shift is enough to begin.

Intergenerational Trauma in Native American Communities

by | General

The Wounds That Do Not Begin With Us

When people speak about trauma, they often speak in singular terms — a single event, a single experience, a single hardship.

But in many Native American communities, trauma did not begin with one person. It did not begin with one generation. It moved quietly from parent to child, grandparent to grandchild, sometimes without being named.

Intergenerational trauma — sometimes referred to as historical trauma — describes the emotional and psychological wounds passed down through families and communities who have endured collective hardship. Researchers such as Dr. Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, one of the leading scholars on Native American historical trauma, have written extensively about this phenomenon and its impact on Indigenous communities. (See: Brave Heart’s work summarized through the Indian Health Service and related academic publications: https://www.ihs.gov)

For Native Americans, that collective hardship includes forced relocation, boarding schools, land dispossession, cultural suppression, and systemic poverty.

Those events did not simply end when policies changed.

They lingered.

Boarding Schools and Cultural Suppression

From the late 1800s into the 20th century, Native children were taken from their families and sent to boarding schools designed to strip them of language, culture, and identity. The motto often associated with this era — “Kill the Indian, save the man” — reflects the assimilationist intent of federal policy.

The U.S. Department of the Interior has formally acknowledged the scope and damage of the Federal Indian Boarding School system in recent reports documenting widespread abuse and generational impact. (See: https://www.doi.gov/priorities/strengthening-indian-country/federal-indian-boarding-school-initiative)

Children who were punished for speaking their language grew into adults who sometimes did not teach that language to their own children.

Affection was replaced with institutional discipline.
Cultural identity was replaced with enforced conformity.

When those children became parents, they often carried wounds they did not have words for.

And so trauma moved forward.

Poverty and Structural Inequality

The economic realities facing many Native communities today are not disconnected from historical policy.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Native American communities continue to experience poverty rates significantly higher than the national average. (https://www.census.gov)

Limited access to healthcare, education disparities, and underfunded infrastructure contribute to cycles that are difficult to break without structural change.

Poverty alone is not trauma. But poverty layered onto historical displacement and cultural erasure creates stress that affects families across generations.

Children raised in environments shaped by scarcity absorb that stress, even if no one names it.

Alcohol and Coping

It is important to speak carefully here.

Alcohol misuse in Native communities has often been misrepresented or stereotyped. In reality, data from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism shows that while some Native populations experience higher rates of alcohol-related harm, the issue is complex and tied to broader socioeconomic and historical factors. (https://www.niaaa.nih.gov)

When trauma is unaddressed, coping mechanisms can become destructive.

Alcohol did not arrive in Native communities as part of traditional life. It was introduced through colonial contact. Over time, it became both a symptom and a response — a way of numbing pain rooted in historical upheaval.

But trauma is not destiny.

And neither is addiction.

Trauma as Memory in the Body

Research in psychology and epigenetics suggests that trauma can influence stress responses across generations. Studies published through institutions such as the National Institutes of Health discuss how prolonged stress and adverse childhood experiences shape long-term health outcomes. (https://www.nih.gov)

While the science continues to evolve, what many Native families already understood is this:

Pain echoes.

Children raised in environments marked by unresolved trauma often develop hypervigilance, early maturity, and a heightened sense of responsibility. They learn to read rooms. They learn to anticipate tension.

Sometimes they become strong too soon.

That strength is survival.

But survival is not the same as healing.

Healing and Cultural Reclamation

Intergenerational trauma is not the end of the story.

Cultural reclamation has become one of the most powerful tools for healing in Native communities. Language revitalization programs, ceremony, storytelling, and community-led wellness initiatives are helping to reconnect younger generations with identity that was once suppressed.

The Indian Health Service and tribal behavioral health programs increasingly incorporate culturally grounded healing practices into treatment approaches. (https://www.ihs.gov/behavioralhealth)

Storytelling plays a central role in that process.

As an Indigenous storyteller, I believe that naming history honestly is part of breaking cycles. When we understand where pain originated, we can stop blaming ourselves for wounds we did not create.

Strength Passed Down Too

It would be incomplete to speak only of trauma without speaking of resilience.

The same generations that carried hardship also carried knowledge. They carried language. They carried ceremony. They carried survival skills rooted in land and community.

Resilience travels through families just as powerfully as trauma does.

Native communities endured policies designed to erase them. They are still here.

That is not accidental.

It is strength.

Moving From Awareness to Responsibility

Understanding intergenerational trauma in Native American communities requires more than sympathy. It requires responsibility — both within and outside Indigenous communities.

For Native families, it means:

• Seeking healing without shame
• Talking openly about history
• Reconnecting with culture
• Supporting younger generations

For institutions and policymakers, it means:

• Acknowledging historical harm
• Supporting culturally informed healthcare
• Investing in Native education and infrastructure
• Respecting tribal sovereignty

Trauma that was created collectively must be addressed collectively.

Why This Conversation Matters

As a Native American author, I do not write about intergenerational trauma to reopen wounds. I write about it to place pain in context.

When we understand that certain struggles did not begin with personal failure, we create space for compassion — both toward ourselves and toward our elders.

We stop asking, “What is wrong with us?”

And begin asking, “What happened to us?”

That shift changes everything.

Because what happened can be understood.

And what is understood can begin to heal.