catch we did not fully grasp at the time, that congressional actions could terminate the reservation and leave the constitution without a native venue, domain, or territory to practice governance.
Plenary power was absolute, but not comparable to the elusive traces and turns of demons in native trickster stories. The conversion of reservations and state counties to federal sectors was actually ironic because we had been weakened by our own vitality, gentle conceit, and hearty determination to create a constitutional government. We were convinced at the time that the honor of a democratic constitution would never be denied in the modern world.
Savage Love avowed that the word “abandonment is an absence, a passive accusation, inactive, and the words oust, banish, evict, exile, and chase were active, but neither the post nor promises were more than a tentative intention, and with no actual sense or significance, none.” She was always casual, and seemed to understate the philosophy of existential absence over presence, and yet repeated the point that the ratified articles in the constitution were mere intentions, autonomous in practice, and we were the natives who created the actual substance with each word, and the most recent recitation was in the sentiments of exile.
“The constitution is more active in exile than it was bound to the territory of a federal treaty,” Gichi Noodin shouted, “so, our exile made perfect sense, a constitution of new continental liberty.”
“No, no, abandoned children and mongrels are actual, real, a heartbeat, a presence, not the same as moored boats and empty houses,” moaned Moby Dick.
“The words have no meaning or native story,” declared Savage Love. “The notions of abandon and renounce were never states of gravity because words were always stranded in emotion and nostalgia, and the tease of the next listener or reader, the word was never an actual person, mongrel, or totem, the words are naught but a crease of sound.”
“Right, the meaning of the words in the constitution change with the users, and in the same way that stories on Panic Radio were never, never the same,” said Gichi Noodin. “Why would natives listen day after day if the stories were always the same?”
“Children and animals, abandoned or not, have real names and legal standing in the world court of justice, but repossessed cars and foreclosed houses do not,” said Justice Molly Crèche.
“Cars and abandoned machines were never sincere,” said Hole in the Storm, “but the great spirit of animals have standing in art and any serious native court of stories.”
“The bat and animal totems double the standing of humans,” said Waasese. “The totems were envisioned and animals and bats have always been the reserved traces in our stories and the precedent of courts.”
“Names, machines, death, empty, no meaning, nothing, death nothing, names nothing, words are not an absence and not a salvation or memory, words are created and last only in the moment of a tease or shout,” said Savage Love.
Maybe, but the stories of the exiles in Treaty Shirts were eternal, and in the same way the articles in our constitution have always had meaning. The words were in the clouds that love to hear a native dream song. We were banished, seven constitutioneers with exile nicknames, outside of the federal sectors, and yet the ironic stories of our names, and posted notices of our exile, have meaning and significance.
“Nothing more than native nostalgia, no significance,” declared Savage Love. She smiled, and raised one hand in silence, a gesture of patience and respect as one of the seven exiles, and then turned and walked away with five great exiled irony mongrels, Wild Rice, Sardine, Mother Teresa, Mutiny, and White Favor.
Savage Love earned her nickname as a tribute to the crusty mother of the poet and novelist Samuel Beckett of Dublin and Paris. Savage Love was an innovative novelist, and actually better suited to exile than a commune. She was the direct descendant of Chance, the sensitive and honorable native healer who taught dozens of mongrels how to detect the absence of irony. That has been an eminent practice, and more significant than any prayers for deliverance or the promissory politics of the federal government.
Chance and Savage Love were born on treaty land, but were never connected to a community. They lived with the artist Dogroy Beaulieu and several mongrel healers on the Pale of the White Earth Reservation and were ridiculed in stories. Chance, Savage Love, and the mongrels moved with Dogroy to the Gallery of Irony Dogs in Minneapolis.
Chewy and the seven exiles were banished along with sex criminals, dogs, and domestic pets. The federal sector banned the mere possession of dog food, and imposed work fines for those who were caught feeding birds, cats, or dogs. Mongrels, the great healers of natives, were abandoned in the hundreds on the sector, and were driven to search the overnight casino trash for food with the rowdy crows. The mature mongrels truly protected the weaker and dependent designer breeds on the sector. Three abandoned and dirty white Bichon Frisé, and several other catchy named terriers, learned how to carry on with the pure mongrels, and with the tricky manners of sector survivors.
The abandoned mongrels ran in packs and rehearsed their lonely nightly howls near the treelines. The timber wolves disregarded the mongrel howls. The wild distance of so many domestic generations could not be overcome even with a practiced bay. The renounced miniature sleeve dogs were thwarted with the genes of insider pedigrees, but they ran happily with the pure mongrels, forever burdened with a shallow, anxious, and inane yelp, yelp, yelp.
“Mongrels never abandon their young, or any young dogs, pedigree or not, deformed or not,” said Moby Dick.
Mongrels have never forgotten their origins and easily grasped the meaning of irony and abandonment on the sector. The mongrels were healers, and have endured the curses, sorrow, and endearment of humans for thousands of years.
Savage Love worried that the five mongrels at her side would only appreciate the words abandonment and rescue in ironic stories, and bark at the absence of irony. Mongrels at casino dumpsters, and the creepy poses and declarations of sector toadies and politicians, were obtuse and truly ironic and the absence deserved a bark, but mongrel barks were banned and dangerous.
Savage Love declared that “only a cruel and benighted separatist would abandon our healers and great pointers of the absence of irony, or name a mongrel Cracker, Custer, Cur, Crud, Abandon, or Renounce, without a native tease and astute sense of irony.”
The mission priests created mundane and descriptive nicknames of mongrels in the early years of the reservation, White Paws, Big Spot, Bud, Joe, Kim, Gordy, Catch, Pickle, Manypenny, and Bear Heart. The mission sisters shunned the mongrels and wild animals, but demonstrated their love of native children and tolerated the redeemed mongrels, the shy mongrels that never nosed a holy crotch. Luckily the ecclesiastic nicknames of mongrels on the reservation were never Vice, Shame, Salvation, or Black Devil.
I was a novelist in the generous literary shadow of my great-uncle who wrote the constitution, and more than thirty books about natives. Most of the natives who returned to the reservation that first year of the constitution were trained and experienced teachers, lawyers, athletes, medical doctors, corporate accountants, an electronic engineer, a pirate radio broadcaster, an artist, fireman, musician, and a holographic artist and scientist. Rightly, we were always teased as constitutional newcomers and earned our nicknames based on manner, habits, diversions, and we sometimes earned more than one. The newcomers were commonly known on the reservation by their nicknames.
Surely our loyalties and constitutional allegiance were not cultural crimes that deserved banishment or termination. The principles of governance were abused and discredited by sleazy sector autocrats, and yet we could not deny that arbitrary decisions and policies were common for more than a century and sometimes celebrated in the modern
