Editor’s Note: I heard from my old friend Willy Howell out of the blue this week, and realized his message was actually pretty timely, given it’s almost American Thanksgiving and Willy, an enrolled member of the Olgala Sioux Tribe, has not always had reason to be thankful to the United States of America.
As a Native American man, I’ve endured racism my entire life.
I was born in Rapid City, South Dakota. In elementary school my gym teacher called me and my friend, Dino Iron Eyes, “little girls” because we had long hair and wore earrings, as per our traditional culture.
I got a break from that when my family moved to Los Angeles, where nobody cared about your race, they only cared about what kind of music you listened to. (Metal, I listen to a variety of music but I have always been into Metal most.)
Willow, Oklahoma. (Source: Facebook)
In Europe, where I lived in the 2000s, I was treated like a rock star, I think because they saw “Red Indians” as kind of mythical creatures, so when I moved back to the States and settled in South Dakota, it was a real slap in the face.
There was one store where the cashier wouldn’t sell me a beer and a restaurant where they accused me of giving the waitresses a hard time and leaving without paying. I said, “Ask the waitresses if it was me.” It wasn’t. It was two other guys, one Native and one white, so they assumed it had to be me because my best friend is white.
But those are annoyances, there are far worse things.
My nephew was murdered in a local hotel, shot twice in the back, and the owner responded by banning Natives because, she said, “You can’t tell the good Indians from the bad Indians.”
I had to travel a lot for work—I’m a construction journeyman plumber and sometimes you have to follow the construction booms—and if I never go back to Montana or Utah it will be to soon. Billings, Montana was the worst although Nephi, Utah could give it a run for its money. I was jailed in Nephi for almost a month on a fake charge they ultimately dropped. Lost my truck, my dogs and all my belongings and ended up stranded in a little town with no buses or even a cab to take me to a city where I could catch a bus home.
The correctional officers called me an illegal Mexican the whole time I was in jail.
But I’m focusing too much on the bad. All in all, I’ve had a good life. I play bass and I’ve played with some great musicians. I have a few friends who seem to like me. I live in an incredibly small town, Willow, Oklahoma, population 119. (The photo above shows the entirety of “downtown” Willow, including the City Hall.) Everyone knows me—I’m the only guy with long hair and brown skin. There’s also one Mexican lady and one African American lady, which makes this town pretty diverse for the area.
People here like me—they give me keys to their houses to feed their pets if they go out of town and tell me to hold onto them when they get back, just in case. They’ll ask me at the diner if I’ve finished “doing that job for so-and-so” and if I say, “I’m not doing a job for so-and-so” they’ll say, “Well, he’s looking for you.” (Everyone in town knows my schedule before I do. It’s actually pretty sweet, like living in The Andy Griffith Show).
But I was moved to write this by a racist Facebook post attributed to a teacher in a nearby town. She claimed her account was hacked, but somebody wrote it and the anti-Native sentiment was ugly.
And I guess what I’m trying to say is that life is hard enough for Native people without others going out of their way to make it harder.
William Howell is an enrolled member Oglala Sioux Tribe who prefers “Will” but is called “Willy” by everyone who’s known him for a long time. He lives in Willow, Oklahoma. He loves dogs and a good book.
