Things need to change...

Being the victim of a shooting isn't bad enough, but my four children, ages 11, 4, 3 and 4-months, as well as my son’s 10-year-old friend who was spending the night, were victims of this as well.

We counted numerous bullet holes that struck both our personal car and his squad car and our house, including one that was 2 feet from my two daughters’ bed, where one lie asleep.

Minutes before the shooting, my 3-year-old daughter walked through the dark, down two flights of stairs to our room to crawl in bed. What makes me ill is one of the bullets entered the house and hit the banister of the first flight of stairs, right above the hand rail. Right where my babies head would've been, had she been just minutes later.

What is wrong with people?

This is my home. This is supposed to be my children’s safe haven. Now, because of this, I have to take my children and leave. Where am I to go? I have no family here. I shouldn't have to be somewhere else because someone endangered my life and the lives of my babies.

I sit back and I listen to what’s going on in this community that my husband and I have chosen to be our home and the future of our children.

I see child abuse, child neglect, animal cruelty and neglect, drug abuse, drug pushers, drunks, drunk drivers, just to name a few. And people just look the other way. This sickens me. Not just because my safe haven was stripped from me and my children, but because there seems to be a lack of love for life–loss of respect for other living beings.

What happened tonight was the last straw for me. I am no better than the people that make me sick, because I know these things and I do not step forward to make a difference for my children or my community. I may not be able to make things happen on my own; I am only but a voice among many.

But...I do want to make a difference.

I look into my children’s eyes and cry for other children that are not so lucky to have both parents with them that protect them from harm, that love them. I cry for those children that endure abuse of some form.

What kind of people are we, what kind of Native Americans are we that we do not have a respect of our elders, for children, for animals?

This is something I kept in my journal, the date on it would be sometime in August or September.

For the last two months, we have been making it a nightly or daily ritual to visit the dumspters in Redby to watch this family of black bears. Myself, Dakotah, Taylor, Trista and Naomi. Everyday, rain or shine, we would park our car down there and watch as momma bear and her four cubs and a male bear (papa bear, I assume) as they rummaged through the trash finding food to eat.

I grew fond of this family. It got to the point where there was a little bit of trust from her and myself (mama bear). Don't get me wrong...I know how vicious she would be if I had seemed a threat to her cubs. I am just saying, we had a silent understanding, her and I. She allowed me to park my car and let my children enjoy nature of her and her family. We had a healthy respect of one another. From one mama to another. Whereas, whenever other vehicles came down to enjoy her, or just to haul trash, she would run with her cubs and hide....she didn't do that for us. She knew we just wanted to watch...to enjoy.

We watched as her cubs would mock their mom...never far behind her as she mozied from one bin to the next. I knew the cubs were still suckling because her breasts were engorged as a mother's would be that had nursing offspring. It was our special time together, the kids and I.

Well, tonight, my husband came home and informed me that someone had shot my mama bear friend. I cried. I cried hard. She never bothered anyone. She just wanted to live and to teach her little ones how to go on and flourish in this world. How can someone be so cruel? No one cares that she had little ones. What's to become of my little cubs?

This isn't the first incident with animal cruelty I've witnessed here either. Last week, someone shot a female dog, who was also nursing pups, and just left her pups there to die. We saw one nursing on the carcass of it's mother. How sad is that? I tried to catch the poor little thing. I was going to bring it home and nurse it back to health...provide a loving home for it. But it was afraid and it evaded me. Couldn't blame him. He probably witnessed the death of his mother and was wary of humans. He was a yellow lab mix. So cute. Two days later, he was lying dead alongside his mother. Probably malnourished. I can still see those big brown puppy eyes, they looked as sad as he did with the way he carried himself.

This is so disturbing to me. How can people be so mean to animals? The worst thing about it is...they do this [just] for fun–just to kill something. They think its funny to watch an animal suffer.

I have counted twice now that a friend of my sons wanted to stay over because he was left at home alone. His mom was out drunk, and he had nowhere else that he felt safe to go. He is 10 years old. This is not old enough for a child to be alone–even by state guidelines. He was clearly afraid.

The last time, he reached his mom by phone and asked her if he could stay here. She told him no and that he had to go home immediately. She told him he dare not ask me to give him a ride home. And she wasn't going to come pick him up. She was going to make him walk home, not dressed properly, in below freezing weather–the distance is probably three or four blocks from here. Not to mention the fact that he had to also endure malicious dogs that run freely around here.

I could not let him walk home, after dark and nearing curfew. I gave him a ride, and he insisted, almost in tears that I drop him off just before his driveway so his mom wouldn't know I gave him a ride. His mother was drunk.

An incident of a very young mother carrying her newborn child (3 weeks old) south on Indian Service 18. With no blanket, and just a onesie, drunk at 3 am.

The list goes on and on. These are just things that stick in the front of my mind right now.

I've got something to say and I just don't know how to say it.

You know, the story about my bear friend...she wasn't only my friend, and I am not the only one who grieved her loss. My son and oldest daughter also cried for her, for her cubs. My son asked me to take him to the dump one last time to put tobacco out and ask the Great Spirit to watch over the cubs. I watched him do this and cried alongside him. I know I have instilled in him a respect for all life, not just human.

I felt guilty after this incident. Looking the other way, I might as well have been the shooter standing outside shooting up our house. Because that's all it takes sometimes to stop someone from doing this is but a voice.

(And it is a very powerful and meaningful voice that we all need to take time to listen to and think about. But not only just think about either, but do something about it to try to make a difference in the future of Red Lake. This isn’t a work of fiction, but a true account of a fraction of one’s life here on the Red Lake Indian Reservation. The longer we, as a people, ignore the way things really are, the more these types of problems escalate. The problems within Red Lake are never going to go away when we continue to look the other way and ignore the real truths...)