"Until he retired a few years ago, my father earned a living and supported a wife and 14 children as a house painter and small contractor.

Before that he worked as a dish washer, a forest firefighter, snow shoveler, truck driver and shoe shiner. He served as a private in the Army. He has been a cook’s helper on a Great Lakes ship, a truck driver, a laborer and a boxer.

His father, my grandfather, was a scrapyard laborer, a cowboy, a grain shoveler, and, at times, a downtown niijii, one of the many Indians walking the streets of Duluth looking for work, a warm meal, perhaps a cigarette. He traveled for awhile with a circus band playing the trumpet, a skill he learned in Indian boarding school.

My mother worked at the dime store, then at the DECC until she retired.

My brothers and sisters are police officers, retail workers, civil servants, nurses, painters, educators, a plant worker and an advocate for Indian children with special needs.

We are proud of our family, of our Indian-ness, of our working-class heritage."

Get the Story:
Linda LeGarde Grover: Speaking of redneck Indians (The Duluth Budgeteer News 9/5)
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