Jennifer was already angry; the inevitable recollections of what the Bureau had done to every Native Nation only made her angrier. She gripped the steering wheel as if it had become a weapon.

All right, better just let the anger run its course, and not let it fester. She let the associated memories of long-ago wrongs play through.

More often than not, the Bureau read the treaties as an excuse to kidnap Indian children from their parents and lock them up in “boarding schools” where they were forbidden to speak their own language, practice their own customs, or worship anything but the White Christian God The Father Almighty.

And people wonder why so many of us became alcoholics.

The last treaties had been written with the understanding that the Indian was a vanishing creature, to follow after the buffalo, and the Great White Father would simply look after him in his decline and move in to take the little that had been left when he was gone. And in the case of some Nations, that was precisely what had happened. …

O for a time machine, and a gunpowder and rifle factory. …

And registration was a touchy subject now with many Native Americans because it was easy for someone to claim to be a nonregistered Indian, and attempt to cash in on the stipends, and the Native Arts Movement. Or even to claim Medicine Power and set up as a New Age Shaman, crystals and all. There was a life and a spirit to Indian art that was hard to find elsewhere, and an ability to tune into nature that many people wanted.

Just proving how hard we are to kill, either in body or in spirit.

As a result, there was money to be made, in everything from jewelry to fine-arts oil paintings. There were quite a few artists Jennifer knew who resented white people muscling in on that market. And a whole lot more folk who resented the New Age movement hauling their crystal vibrations into traditions that white folks had tried to destroy not that long ago. Rightfully … in many ways.

But not being registered was going to make reporting the desecration a good bit more roundabout than Jennifer liked.

Well, that’s the way it has to be.

Having brought the anger around to the end of its course, she was able to let it go. What was past, was past. It was time to take care of the present.

There was a slightly more direct route to authority … through her father and mother. He was good friends with the Principal Chief on the Osage side.

And Mom used to go to school with Cherokee Principal Chief Wilma Mankiller before Wilma and her folks went off to California. But I’d rather deal with this from the Osage side. It’s our burial site, and besides, Wilma has more than enough on her plate as it is.