warriors

Last week I talked with a Navaho man who has been detained at MDC for 12 months and five days. He had been my classes since September.

At twenty six he seems ageless, his handsome, scarred face and dark eyes showing a kind of seriousness and wisdom I have rarely seen. Perhaps what I am seeing in him is the face of a veteran, a warrior who has fought but is not defeated.

He was placed in a boarding school for Native American kids when he was five, and held in this place till he was nine. There he learned to fight to get food, to defend himself from bigger boys, to steal the money his grandma sent him for food back from the aides. There, he was left by his older brother who went to live with grandma, and his baby brother who went back to live with his mother. There he became a warrior. The person he does not want to be anymore. A person who learned to use his fists to get respect and to survive.

He is a free man today, eager to start life over, to take care of his children and to leave his fighting days behind him.

Yesterday I interviewed another man who was born a crack baby to a woman who stole him back from social services three times. Three sets of foster parents gave him back to social services because he was "too bad." Raging and tearing up the house. I don't quite get a how a baby of 15 months or two years could be "too bad", but that's his story.

Finally at three years old he got adopted by a family that loved him and kept him.

He's been in my class for about six months and he has a super angry demeanor, that absolutely calms down the minute you look him in the eye, and treat him with respect. Over the months he became one of the students who carries the class; keeps it focused, is trustworthy and reliable, and inside that hard shell, a very kind and creative person.

We talked about his youth in the "Bloods" in California, growing with a loving family who supported his athletic career, learning about music from a young age, seeing many of his friends shot to death or going to prison, and deciding to go into the music business.

He talked about what it was like to grow up where gangs originally started to protect the neighborhood and manage the drug trade. And how in time the money and power fuelled increasing violence among the gangs.

I have come to know and respect these two men for their integrity, their creativity, their devotion to their families and their courage. When I get a glimpse of how much culturally ingrained violence they have survived, I am appalled. I hold with them their dream of moving forward, leaving all that violence behind, taking care of their young families, and succeeding in their work.