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Leo sat through a powwow in Mandan. He had expected to speak in the old State Capitol in Bismarck, but found himself seated on the ground on the banks of the Missouri River in Bismarck’s sister city. He sat through four hours of monotonous music and whirling dancers, neither of which he could understand.
But Leo knew that he was supposed to be respectful, and he was.
There had been thousands gathered at the train station when he arrived, and he addressed them as best he could, but there was no sound system so only a few dozen, at best, even heard him. Even worse, A crane had removed his container/home from its flatcar as soon as he arrived. Leo hadn’t been consulted, so his hopes of a short stay in this relatively small settlement dimmed.
Then the local militia escorted him, by foot, to the Mandan Powwow.
At the end of the long ceremony, Leo was exceedingly grateful to be able to stand. But he found that the smaller conference was, again, conducted outdoors and while squatting on the ground. Leo was not a willing pupil of diplomacy, but he had not, until then, found it physically painful. Nevertheless, he was determined to listen.
The assembled group of local leaders were all Native Americans of both genders, and nearly all of them were in native regalia. Several of them had been among the dancers. As usual, they were nearly all younger than Leo. Unlike most of the conferences Leo had encountered on the campaign trail, this one was all militia. Leo was eager to ask why, but no one invited him to speak. So he listened.
Apparently, oratory was a valued discipline among the tribes. Limits on the length of orations were nonexistent, so the speeches went on until well past dark. The only illumination was from a big campfire that kept shooting dramatic sparks upward and around the assemblage. Nobody indicated that Leo should have a turn, and he realized that each of the twenty-odd militiamen was going to indulge in a long oration before anything else could happen.
The speeches varied in emotional intensity and in the number and types of strong physical gestures, but barely varied in content. Each orator apparently had been selected because they represented a different ancestral tribe. Each of them began with long histories extolling the virtues of their particular ancestry. Each of them talked about their early commitment to the revolutionary process and how much they had contributed to it. Each of them ended with uncompromising demands. The sum of those demands,
Leo realized with desperation, was the restoration of all ancestral lands and extracted mineral resources with compound interest.
This continued all night.
A tiny part of the sky was beginning to lighten when Leo was finally called upon to respond. He rose with as much dignity as he could muster, then unhurriedly circled the campfire once, twice, then three times without speaking. Through silence, hoped to build interest in his oratory, but the main reason for the walkaround was to loosen his aching joints. Also, it gave him just a little bit of time to try to think of something. Whatever he came up with, he realized, it was going to have to be rhetorically satisfactory to this crowd of polished speakers.
As he finished his third circle, Leo began: “I have heard your words. I know that they are not just your own words, but the words of all the people you represent, both among the living and the legions of ancestors before you. I know that you and your people and your ancestors have had many government visitors through the ages, and I know that many of them have lied to you.”
Ah! This was working. Leo thought he detected a few heads slightly nodding. At least they were listening! He took a few steps around the circle and began again:
“You have told me of many great people, deserving people who should have had justice, but instead were ill-treated. You have told me that injustice has rolled downward through the ages and grown worse as it gathered momentum.” Leo was waving his arms in what he hoped were grand gestures. He brought one hand from high and to one side to low and on the other as he explained how injustice rolled downward. For more emphasis, he bent his knees. Then he flattened both hands horizontally and lowered them toward his knees as he went on, “And you have told me that those who have been made to suffer the most are your children.” He was pretty sure there was nodding now. He paused.
“Injustice was at its worst during our own time, during our own lifetimes. When the economic system and our ecology both capsized, the worst of times had finally begun. Millions died, as you know. We are, so far, the survivors, but we are left marked with misery.
‘We have talked of injustices, and more injustices piled upon. We have talked of the suffering brought to us and, especially, to our children. We know that we are coming from many lifetimes of injustices stretching back to the beginning of humanity. We also know that the system we lived under, the system we were born under, was only going to give us even more injustice, even more misery.
‘That system has now broken down, and you and I are talking about making something better. All over the world, people are having this same discussion on how to make things better. One thing that all of us agree on is the injustices of the past and the misery that it brought. What we have not yet agreed on is what we are going to do about it. We have not agreed on what kind of new world we are going to create. That is the task that lies ahead of us. In fact it lies here, among us, around this campfire. What kind of world are we going to create?
‘The world we were born into would never stop dishing out injustice. Injustice was its nature. Inequality was its nature. Exploitation of some people by others was its nature. It did what it did because that was its nature.
‘A better world must have a different nature. It must have a nature of equality and justice, for us in the here and now and for our children and for their children to come. I am here seeking your help in creating that better system with a better nature. I cannot promise that it will end all injustice forever. I cannot promise that it will right all the wrongs of the past. I can only promise that it will not be like the old world and the old nature.
‘I know that I will recount what I have learned here this night from you to the Center and, if we are able to establish a committee to create a just world government, and if I am elected a delegate, I will recount what I have learned here from you this night to them. This I promise you.”
Leo was thinking ahead desperately because he had to have a good ending, but nothing was coming to mind. Maybe if he couldn’t think of the words, he could pull it off with gestures?
As he spoke his last words, Leo worked his way completely around the circle. He bent his knees and swooped his hands from low to the ground on one side to the highest he could reach on the other. He turned completely around several times as he chanted as loudly as possible:
“And ALL of us, TOGETHER, along with all we can learn from others and from our ancestors, must CREATE that WORLD and that JUSTICE! To do that, we must join our MINDS and our HANDS!” As he finished the circle, he grabbed the hand of the nearest listener, then moved quickly to shake the hand of the next, and so on around the circle. Not every hand was proffered eagerly, but in general the whole performance seemed to work, except for the last person in the succession. She had a straight slash of a mouth and steely eyes. She kept her hands at her sides and said, “That was pretty good bullshit, but it’s still bullshit. I didn’t like you when you came here and I still don’t. Puerto Ricans!” She spit a great gob to one side.
With his dignity more or less intact, Leo started on his own to walk back toward the bridge leading to the Bismarck railway station.