Roots in the Circles
by
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Georges Mehel gets up. “I apologize for my brevity, but I must return to the World Court in less than 23 hours. May I see him?”
“Please use my office. The Head Master walks to the door.
A few minutes later Isaiah enters the room. The door closes behind him with more than average force.
He immediately start talking. “I don’t need one of your shit-ass lectures. Nobody gets to pick where he is born and the baggage that comes with it.”
Pausing for but a second, “Our conversations, if a one sided dialogue can ever be called a conversation, are always lectures about what I should do, who I should be, and my Lakota heritage. Your damn Lakota dreams are a pathway to destruction. Literally, you have been asking me to cross a rope bridge that spans a bottomless canyon. Its ropes are badly frayed. When the bridge loses its ties to your Mother Earth, its pendulum will swing down into nothingness.”
Very calmly, Georges begins. “I understand your anger. I have been touched by similar fires, but when you give into anger, you have lost. Don’t use the conflicts of your birth to justify your actions in this matter. I am truly sorry that you have had to face the harsh north wind alone; but that does not justify your using the power of the Bear instead of the wisdom of the Owl.”
His voice now becomes more severe and his facial expression more resolute. “Ethnocentric racism is a disease to which you must build immunity for it exists, but NEVER tolerance!”
Isaiah explodes. "You're a fucking black hole! You have always been a large figure in the midst. Your persona cuts like a knife, leaving no ragged edges. I can hear you. I can touch you, but there are times I don’t know if you are real.”
The alarm of Georges’ pocket watch sounds. The delays at the airport have cost him precious time.
“At the time arrangements were made, I thought that they were in your best interests. I saw in the underpinnings of the war elements that, if not challenged, could ultimately destroy the Hoop of Nations. If the ropes of the bridge that you speak of do break, destruction will ultimately consume, not just the Lakota, but all within the Hoop of Nations. My life’s journey has been a battle that I could not take you on then for multiple reasons.”
“Time forces me to terminate this so-called “shit-ass” conversation. Your will probably cost you admission to medical school. In the future, when tempted to use the strength of the Bear, do as I have done and channel your anger into a creative force in the service of a Higher Power.”
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About the Book
In the aftermath of the Wounded Knee uprising, a Native American Jurist leaves his position on the World Court and returns to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to defend members of the American Indian Movement from federal prosecution.
Following his assassination, Isaiah, his half-breed son is summoned by tribal elders to be the person who is to release his father’s spirit to the Great Mystery. To fulfill that obligation, Isaiah is forced to revisit his rejected heritage and undertake a perilous journey to a place that no non-Native American had ever been permitted to enter.
About the Author
Author Biography: While a professor at the Creighton University School of Medicine, Dr. Monif served as the medical consultant to the Omaha tribe. The disparity between the richness of Native American spirituality and our ethnocentric self-focus prompted him to re-identify, in part, an ugly incident in our nation’s history.