Today's Reading

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EXETER, RHODE ISLAND

Fifteen Years Later

TUESDAY, MAY 6, 2008

I brush wet dirt from the skull's damaged eye socket and wonder if my sister is dead.

The thought is an old habit. Normally, I barely notice; the fear is like a clear film that floats past my eye to be blinked away and forgotten.

Footsteps crunch to draw me away from worries about my only sister, Emma Lou, in rural Oklahoma. My focus returns to this hilltop near the Sandy Brook hiking loop in Rhode Island. Where I stand is not an area for hikers. I am on Narragansett Native land, which means I need to hurry to preserve the scene from whoever is headed this way.

I drop the toothbrush caked in mud and hustle to my backpack. I open the bag as I hear the snap of someone moving past the yellow caution tape I used to lock down the site yesterday evening.

Grabbing a soft cotton sheet from my bag, I fling it into the air to cover the entire skeleton I excavated from the earth this morning. An air pocket floats beneath the sheet as if the bones are trying to rise and leave the shallow grave.

I narrow my eyes to see who's coming over the hill. I half wave, relieved, at the sight of a familiar too-thin face with neat brown hair. He's in his usual loose jeans and starched yellow polo with a tribal seal stitched on the pocket.

"You pretty far along, Syd?" asks Ellis Reed, the Narragansett Tribal Historic Preservation Officer I work with the most. "Coroner won't like it."

"They're short-staffed and sending an intern." I don't hide my annoyance as I toss him a can of bug spray. "Starting before dawn means some college kid won't screw up our chances of an ID on the remains." I pause and decide to stick to this half-truth. Sharing that I'm in a hurry and meeting my wife in a couple of hours for an appointment will only lead to more questions.

"Kutaputush." Ellis says thanks in Narragansett, then coats himself with a thick layer of spray. These damp woods will have mosquitoes already out for blood. He tosses the can onto the ground and then crosses his arms as he stares down at what brought us here. "Appreciate the sheet."

Not that I need to explain as much to Ellis, but it should be common practice to cover remains. To treat the dead with respect and not as a spectacle. Especially bones like these, uncovered by accident, because they were never meant to be found.

"Can I take a look?" he asks.

"I didn't wait. I'm almost done," I warn as I retie my short black hair at the nape of my neck.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs, or BIA, says I shouldn't have excavated until Ellis, as the tribal representative, and the coroner showed. But my new boss works from the BIA headquarters, one thousand miles away, and from what I've heard about her, she wouldn't let an intern screw up her dig site either. Not that I asked.

I lift the sheet straight into the air and ball the fabric into my arms with a sniff of the fancy detergent my wife likes. She was softly snoring this morning when I gave up on sleep and came back here with my headlamp and excavation equipment. After two days of finding nothing of significance in my geological survey of the area, I was shocked to strike bone. With the last rays of sunlight at my back, I made the call to Ellis.

He blows out a long breath. "I'm glad you found her."

I nod once and follow his gaze to where I've brushed away the layers of earth around the delicate bones still wearing a dirty white dress. The arms and legs are fanned out like she was making a snow angel.

I'm lucky to work with Ellis because he treats me with respect, something the BIA hasn't traditionally given to tribal leaders like him. He could see me as just the BIA, the oldest bureau in the government. Created by the Department of War to exterminate Native people, culture, and ways of life across this "new" country "discovered" by men like Columbus and colonized by Pilgrims and founding fathers, despite the tens of thousands of years of Native life that preceded them.

The modern charge of the BIA is different, of course, but the bad blood rightfully remains. The culture at the BIA is changing, so there are more of us who see our job in a new way, especially since it's personal to me. I've never shared this with Ellis, but I'm Native, too. Cherokee from Oklahoma out here on Narragansett land in Rhode Island. But I look white, and I refuse to be the white woman who brings up her Cherokee heritage when it's convenient, selectively dropping it into a conversation with people who live Native life every day.

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