Notes for the Medicine Wheels
Published on March 25, 2009
In a circle knotted with fear and confusion, Spokane’s Native American community tries to absorb the shock of a jury’s verdict, and to find ways to heal the wound with the Spokane Police Department.
By Tim Connor
For more than three hours Tuesday night, the city’s mayor, its council president, its police chief and its assistant police chief sat in a crowded Native American prayer circle in West Central Spokane and hoped the room wouldn’t explode.
The fact that the people inside the room at the N.A.T.I.V.E. center on West Maxwell Avenue didn’t erupt was due, in no small part, to Shonto Pete, the still-young, Native American husband and father who sat between his mother and his wife on the south side of the circle. Pete spoke several times during the meeting but only raised his voice once, and that was when he sang a traditional farewell song to end the gathering.
I think the teaching that needs to take place is not for us. It needs to take place among those who are being paid, who are contracted to protect us. They need to be taught. They’re in denial that there’s a problem. That’s my fear.–Gerard Fougere
Pete, of course, is very lucky to be alive. He survived being shot in the head two years ago by a drunken, off-duty Spokane police officer who alleged that Pete tried to steal his truck. A superior court jury acquitted Pete of that charge, but twelve days ago, on March 13th, the police officer, Jay Olsen, was acquitted by another Spokane jury of assault and reckless endangerment. Olsen’s acquittal has ignited
strong passions from across the city but especially in the Spokane Native American community which, judging from last night’s meeting, is still reeling in shock and disbelief even as its leaders and healers work to direct large sums of fear and frustration in fruitful directions.
If it was remarkable that such a meeting could be held so close to Olsen’s acquittal without overt hostility intervening, then the rest of the credit for that should go to N.A.T.I.V.E. Project Director Toni Lodge who hosted the meeting and the two men who facilitated it, Victor David Brown Eagle and Raymond Reyes. Both Brown Eagle and Reyes talked candidly about the “wound” of the Olsen trial even as they asked for calm and respectful discussion.
“We’re not here to unpack blow by blow (the Pete trial),” Reyes said, “not here to replay that tape. What we’re here to do is acknowledge that many of you are frustrated and angry and have a lot of energy inside your heart. At another time we will process that. But for right now, if you can focus that energy and dare to have the courage to believe that you can make lemonade out of lemons and right now, somehow, in your woundedness, in your pain, in your frustration, distill it, like squeezing that lemon, right into this paper.”
The “paper” was in the form of small cards that were used to record short descriptions of problems and solutions, and then taken and affixed to two Medicine Wheels with black, red, yellow and white quadrants that were hanging on the walls near the entrance to the room.
The crowd overflowed onto a balcony above the circle, and it was from there that Deb Abrahamson raised her hand and began to speak after Reyes had asked to hear from people directly. Deb and her daughter Twa-le, who was seated in the room overflowing room below her, are well known throughout the region for their community work and environmental justice activism with the Shawl Society. So, among other things, Deb Abrahamson knows how to talk to a crowd and her voice began to fill the room. What she couldn’t see was that Shonto Pete, right below her, had risen simultaneously such that when he cleared his throat and heard her voice coming down, he looked up, a bit startled.
“See, God is a woman!” came a voice from the crowd.
The resulting gale of laughter was the loudest noise of the evening and it was not the last time people laughed. It was a meeting about what most in the room regarded as an infuriating injustice, but it was also a gathering enriched by the spirit of the people in the room, including the many young children who’d come with their parents and grandparents.
It was wrong what happened to Shonto. It was wrong. It was so wrong that wrong isn’t even the word. Maybe there’s an Indian word for it, that I don’t know.–Shelly Boyd, Colville tribe.
Reyes himself embodied the full range of emotions. At more than one point in the meeting he expressed his own rage and bitterness about the Olsen verdict and his frustration at having lived for 35 years in a town which, he said, can very easily process important problems and controversies to death without actually changing anything. “I feel like I’m in the movie Groundhog Day sometimes,” he confessed.
Deb Abrahamson’s comments were in that spirit. “How do we protect ourselves from our protectors?” she asked. To which she added that she thought it was important to act swiftly on the collective outrage caused by the episode so that there would accountability for people “holding the power over our community.”
Still, much of the discussion during the three and a half hour meeting was about cultural challenges and inter-cultural discrimination and misunderstandings, and how those broad problems affect peoples lives and families. Alcohol abuse came up frequently, in part because both Olsen and Pete had been drinking the night of the shooting. And there were several stories of abusive encounters at the hands of Spokane police that, in the eyes of the people telling the stories, could only be explained by racial discrimination and profiling.
Perhaps the most poignant moment came at 7:35 p.m. when Gerard Fougere rose to speak. Fougere and his wife are Native Americans from opposite ends of the country who met while serving in the Indian Health Service. They have a son and they live in north Spokane. Fougere is an addiction counselor.
“Moved here six years ago,” he said. And then he tried to continue talking but was overcome with emotion. He stopped, the room grew quiet, and he drummed his fingers on the back of the chair in front of him, as he tried to compose himself.
“Because of this feeling,” he continued. “There’s something when those you pay for protection and service don’t do their job. That they have to be the people we fear.”
“The use of AA slogans has been mentioned several times,” Fougere said, referring to Alcoholics Anonymous. “Step one has been mentioned here several times. Step one is about admitting there is a problem. People about this room have admitted there is a problem. I think the teaching that needs to take place is not for us. It needs to take place among those who are being paid, who are contracted to protect us. They need to be taught. They’re in denial that there’s a problem. That’s my fear.”
It was the same fear that many others, including Victor David Brown Eagle, spoke to throughout the meeting, especially the fear that people’s children and grandchildren were not safe in Spokane, because of the Spokane police.
Deb Abrahamson tried to draw the discussion back toward action. Accountability was necessary she again insisted, because it was the lack of accountability that causes fear. She requested an independent investigation into the Pete/Olsen episode and its handling by the judicial system.
“It’s very important that we continue to put forth pressure,” she said, adding that if Spokane officials weren’t willing to be accountable, then native people should consider an economic boycott of the city.
“It was wrong what happened to Shonto,” said Colville tribe member Shelly Boyd. “It was wrong. It was so wrong that wrong isn’t even the word.”
She looked straight across from her to where Shonto Pete was sitting.
“When the not guilty verdict came down what I heard was ‘it doesn’t matter that you got shot in the head.’ That that was okay. And that’s not right. And maybe you felt people in this community didn’t care, or maybe that people didn’t care that that happened. But that’s not true. People care about that.”
When the meeting was in its final hour, Toni Lodge sought to answer several hanging questions about the implausibility of Olsen’s acquittal and how evidence was presented and kept from the jury. She finally turned to Candy Jackson, a health educator on staff at the NATIVE project and a lawyer.
“I guess the short answer is, unfortunately, the legal system is not about justice. That’s one of the first things that you learn in law school.”
A few minutes later, it was time for Mayor Mary Verner to speak.
“I was advised by some of my co-workers at the city when they heard about this meeting who said, ‘don’t go there, it’s going to be an angry mob.’ And I said, you don’t know the people I know. I came here and what I’m experiencing tonight is, with my experience with the native community in Spokane is what I expected and hoped for.”
How do we protect ourselves from our protectors?–Deb Abrahamson
The Mayor spoke eloquently about her education by members of the Spokane tribe about the “sacred ground” upon which the city sits. And then, with a literal nod in the direction of Deb Abrahamson, she addressed what she would be willing to do about what she’d been hearing.
“I have seen tonight what I thought I would see. And that is to take a tragic, very tragic situation and to feel it for what it is and then to find a way to make community out of that. And so that’s a little background. Okay, so then some questions have been raised and Deb you’ve made a suggestion about an independent inquiry. One of my suggestions, and I have a couple for you, is that those of us who have been trained in the law, because we’ve jumped through all those hurdles you’re talking about, made it through law school. For me I was 42 years old when I made it. For those of us who are in the system..that we provide a workshop for people who have not, who don’t understand the jury instructions, the courtroom procedures, who haven’t had a chance to understand the system of prosecutors and judges and police officers and the distinction between a county prosecutor–by the way this was a county prosecutor–and the superior courts and district courts. Could we do a workshop so that we can better understand what we have? We can’t reform it, until we know what it is.”
To this she added two other ideas, the first to look at enhancing media opportunities to “help people understand who our native community is” and, the second, to “rethink” the theme of the Neighborhoods, USA conference the city his hosting in May to include more of a focus on the city’s native population.
Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick waited until the end to speak. Dressed in white, including her sweater, she walked to the middle of the circle.
“I am the chief of police of Spokane,” she said with a slight tremble in her voice. “I’m proud to be the Chief of Police of Spokane. I’m proud to be a police officer. It’s a noble profession I’ve had for 27 years.”
In a chance encounter on Monday, she said, she had run into the meeting’s organizers at a local restaurant.
“Boy, I think they were uncomfortable,” she said. “I know I was uncomfortable. But I came up to them and I said I was prepared to come tonight and I was prepared for it to be a hostile situation. I’ve been a chief for thirteen years. I’ve been in front of the animal groups; I have been in front of almost every community that there is. I have received a lot of negative feedback as a chief throughout my career. This community can be very proud of itself. You have surprised me. You did not have to welcome me. You did not have to treat me with courtesy and respect. But I was here to treat you with courtesy and respect and honesty.”
“It is a tragic event that happened. This investigation is not over. I hold it in my hand. And I cannot be bought. I cannot be compromised. I will not be bullied, by you, by anyone in the department, by no one. I will make the call.”
She went on to say that she had “drunk the Kool-aid” to believe that trust is only available in a relationship and that she hoped her presence “gives the hope of that relationship.”
“I’m going to be the buffalo that faces this storm,” she said.
When the chief returned to her seat, Shonto Pete led the farewell song, gently slapping an eagle feather into the palm of his left hand as his voice filled the room. Then the messages posted on the Medicine Wheels were gathered for what Raymond Reyes had promised would be the next step.
–CFJ