Johnny Rustywire: Native youth are curious about their heritage

I was up north of the rez in Denver taking care of some stuff I needed to get done when I ran into an acquaintance whose mother I knew from long ago. She had raised her son in the city. He had recently settled down with his own family off the rez.

His mother is from my home area and she left on the relocation program years ago. Relocation was the government program where they took young Indians and sent them to big cities to get vocational training and learn how to live in a city. A lot of people went and many did not return. She was one of them.

She got married in the city and had a family. She raised two sons and it was one of her sons I ran into and he invited me to eat with his family there in the city. I said ok. When I got there, the father was detained and would be late but had told his wife I would be coming and she invited me in.

By chance his brother was there visiting as well. I had not seen either of them in a while. We had dinner and got to talking about some things I remember about their mother when she was younger, when she lived on the reservation.