Street roots., September 22, 2017, Page 6, Image 6

Street Roots • September 22-28, 2017
Vendors
Page 6
PR
Morning and Night
on the Street
Harold
by Maddy Brown-Clark
Early morning on the streets
Sometimes the silence is too much
People rising early
From their concrete beds
Quietly moving before
They’re asked to
From the sanctuary
Of the front of the closed buildings
But when evening falls
With night like a shadow moving
It comes down on them
And it covers them like a blanket
Then the stars are visible
And they wish but it’s no secret
For someplace else to live.
BY LEONORA KO
S T A F F W R IT E R
treet Roots vendor Harold wants his
profile to focus on two things: “that
I’m Native American and my
heritage.”
When Harold was 3 years old, he was
part of an assimilation program that moved
him and his adopted mother from their
reservation in South Dakota to Los Angeles
The program was part of the Indian
Relocation Act of 1956, and the federal
government wanted to encourage Native
Americans to leave reservations, gain job
skills and blend into the general population.
However, researchers found that away
from the reservations, the relocated
families had increased problems with
alcohol, depression and family dysfunction
that rippled through three generations.
His family eventually moved back to
South Dakota.
“I’m from Sisseton-Wahpeton. The
reservation is called Lake Traverse,”
Harold said. “(My tribe is) the
Dakotas. We used to live all
over. We even had people
that were in Nebraska.
We were a big tribe.
That’s the way it
was, way back
then. Our
ancestors had
everything.”
Harold
served two
years in
prison for
drunk
driving.
After his
S
Answers to Page 15 Puzzles
adopted mother died, Harold decided to
travel.
“I got to see every state when I was in
my 30s,” Harold said. “Whatever state I was
in, I’d do work for a while there and then I’d
just leave. I know how to do street
construction, roofing; I can even build
houses, and I know landscaping. That’s
when I was younger, you know.”
Once, Harold walked all the way from
Texas to South Dakota. He found the wild
areas in Oregon, New Jersey and North
Carolina especially beautiful.
Now he divides his time between South
Dakota and Oregon. When in Portland,
Harold sells Street Roots newspapers near
Salt & Straw at
Northwest 23rd
Avenue and
Kearney Street.
A
“It’s beautiful country up this way. But
right now, what I’ve seen in the paper, it
doesn’t look good with that fire,” Harold
said about the Eagle Creek fire in the
Columbia River Gorge.
Harold mused: “It will grow back. My
people, what we call Earth, she’s our
mother, and she’ll provide. She’ll put
everything back again what the fire
destroyed.
“I’m used to the smoke because I’ve been
in a lot of sweat lodges. I’ve done them
when I was in prison. We built our own fires
where we put our rocks with a tarp over it.
We got to practice our own religion.”
Now Harold is clean and sober, and his
son tells him that he has 18 grandchildren.
“They always say in the history books
that they tried to exterminate the Indian
people,” Harold said. “But we’re going to be
here. We were the first ones here, and we
will always be here. Our
generations are just
going to keep
going.
Sheeptoast
by Elizabeth Considine
a s am A merican clim ate scientist , ecna orai semsw
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A U A W W & V t O A R P FOR HER RESEARCH---