I realize that I am also dependent on the check that Manie gets from the government. But without it, I wouldn’t be alive. Me, who wants to be a proud Indian, free as the air, a man who only depends on himself — I’m trapped, too.

But will that be me one day, waiting for Pinamen to bring home the damned check on the last Thursday of every month, just so we can survive?

Some say that the government is paying us to use our land. Others say that the money will help us out of our misery, so we can live like the whites. But now I see that it’s all lies and deceit, like decoys. The money they give us only keeps us down even more. We are like cows and sheep that depend on the farmer to come and feed them every day.

The thought makes me feel sick. How did we get to be like this?

We have to find the pride that has been forced back into some deep part of ourselves. The whites abused the age-old patience of the elders, but I know that deep down, our pride has not been extinguished.

It burns there like an ember waiting for a brisk wind to fan the flame.

And I swear, the first chance I get, I will be that wind.

• • •

As soon as we got back from Sam’s camp, old Tom left the reserve. He’s living like a hermit in the pine forest. Several of us went to help him put up his tent.

“I want to end my days living the way my parents and my grandparents lived,” he said. “I feel close to them here.”

He lives in a magnificent forest of tall pines that runs along the side of the reserve, on the slope of the mountain. The ancients liked to be buried here in the shadows of the big branches that stretch overhead like a mother’s arms. There are a lot of graves lining the path. Some of them are marked by old wooden crosses. Others are scarcely visible through the rusty carpet of pine needles. Tom knows where they all are, even the ones you can’t see anymore.

There is a new cemetery behind the chapel. It’s a small square of fenced-off land, completely barren. The priest said it was more practical to have a cemetery near the church, but the old people don’t like the idea of being buried there.

At the beginning, I went to visit Tom to make sure everything was okay. Then Marc, John and Brigitte started going with me. Tom is always happy to see us. We sit around the fire in a circle. The wood crackles and fills the air with the sweet smell of smoke.