For years John Dall had been mystified by a recurring vision. He didn’t know whether it was a childhood incident, a story he’d been told long ago, or an illusion. During the day it seemed like a memory playing out in disconnected fragments. At night it came as a dream, more vivid but less real. He was a small boy standing alone in a shallow gully, surrounded by a vast burning field. Men and women were running around him, trying to put out the fire with blankets and coats. Suddenly he was swept up by a pair of strong arms, whisked away to a nearby road, and told not to move. Through a white haze he watched people run, and he listened to voices yelling in terror.
In the 1950s Chicago was one of five cities chosen by the federal government as a relocation spot for Native Americans under a plan to end the culture of poverty on the reservations. As an incentive to relocate, Native Americans were offered onetime payments of a few thousand dollars.
John was immediately separated from his brothers, and over the next two years he lived in eight different foster homes. He liked a few of the foster parents, but many were abusive. He remembers that one set of parents had obsessive rules for the children they’d taken in, among them a limitation on the amount of toilet paper each child could use. “We were allowed to use four squares–that was it,” he says. “If they found out we were using more than that we were punished.”
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Punishment came in a variety of forms. The most disturbing, he says, was being made to drink a concoction intended to make them vomit. He remembers watching his foster mother mix hot water with mustard power and pepper. “It had a hideous smell–it would fill the entire room,” he says. “But we had to drink it. The goal was to drink it without throwing up–because if you did throw up, you would then have to lick it up off the floor.”
Dall had finally found a supportive home, but he struggled outside of it. As he reached adolescence, he felt intensely isolated from his peers. He knew he was Native American, but he didn’t know what that meant, didn’t know which tribe he was from or what his cultural heritage was.
Dall was stunned by the call. He’d long suspected that his mother, whom he barely remembered, was dead. And suddenly he had a critical key to his identity. He called a few of the tribal elders, then decided to make a trip to see them.
Dall quickly learned the importance of showing humility and deference. “If you come into the community asking too many questions, if you come in with too many opinions, you come in with too many ideas, they’ll have the tendency to freeze you out, because you are imposing yourself on them,” he says. “In a traditional way of thinking, that isn’t what you are supposed to do. You’re supposed to come in and be a part of the community–make decisions with the community, move along with the community. You’re not supposed to advance yourself beyond that. The community will advance itself, but it will do it as a whole. Indian people have never done anything for the sprint. They do it for the long haul–generation after generation. It’s about sustainability.”
