The Farm

Sara and I have known each other since grade school. She mostly stayed to herself, but seemed to get along with most people. She loved reading and writing but what I remember most is, her kindness, compassion and perseverance. For as long as I can remember, she tried her best to be fair and just. I lost contact with her when she changed to a different school in 7th grade.

We don’t have a lot of opportunity on the Reservation, usually the boys enroll in the military just to get out, follow the traditional ways and help the community and far too many fall through the cracks and succumb to drugs, alcohol or suicide. The women generally go to college while raising children, succumb to drugs, alcohol or suicide, or work endless parttime jobs to support their family. I fell into the “young mother going to college” category. I majored in Human Services.

My job was dry and unsatisfying. I dealt with single parent and abuse cases. We couldn’t provide the real help that was needed to help heal these families. That’s when I heard Sara was back and building a farm that provided unconventional therapy techniques. I didn’t explore these venue because they weren’t conventional and didn’t accept state medical.

Then it happened to my family.

My daughter was 13 and the assaulter was her employer. He was a “great guy” in community. He volunteered, worked at a women’s shelter, had a wife and five children, and taught traditional dance. I, at the time, doubted my daughters claim.

Within a month my daughter was a different person. She wore drab clothing, experienced nightmares, stayed out late, and her grades dropped. I arrived home one day to find her sitting at the kitchen table. Her face was covered by her hair and she was wearing a long sleeve shirt. She spoke in a monotone voice about how she hated her life and how she didn’t want to be here on earth anymore.

Everything I learned in college flew out the window. I rushed her and pushed up her sleeves. I was terrified to see hundreds of cuts upon cuts from her wrist to her elbow. I could not lose my daughter this way. Nothing was helping, counseling, medication, talk therapy, nothing. I couldn’t lose her. That’s when I remembered Sara. It took her over a week to return my call after I left her a voicemail describing every detail of the situation and begging for her help.

Finally she returned my call, asking questions like a cold lawyer. She asked if there was evidence, who and what he was, how did she act in school, who her friends were etc etc. Eventually she said she would accept my daughter into her program pending space and funding. We were to stop by on Monday at 9am.

We arrived at the farm. I was uncomfortable, and unsure. We parked in front of the small building and sat for a minute. A man tapped the window, and said he was there to take my daughter on a tour while l spoke with Sara. She was nothing like I expected. She wore a tank top with well weathered jeans and boots. She looked tired and disheveled. She offered tea or coffee. I politely declined. She mumbled “no matter” and fixed herself a cup of tea.

She sat next to me in another chair, crossed her legs and sipped her tea for a moment. Then it came, “I understand your daughter was raped by her employer” “What do you have to say about that”?

Raped? Raped? My daughter had been raped! I couldn’t bear talking about it again. She reassured me that it was okay. It was the best way possible to help. She pulled out an old, weathered, leather bound black book no bigger than a calculator from her back pocket. She scribbled something in it and put back into her pocket. I felt that I was in some sort of delusion. I couldn’t feel anything as I told my daughter’s story. I was confused, scared, and angry. She reassured me that this wasn’t to build a case against him but to help heal my daughter, his consequences were his own.

My daughter didn’t say much about the tour but she wanted to visit again. I didn’t think much of it as I just wanted her to be okay. I told them that I was willing to participate in any therapy and that I would be there for anything that my daughter needed.

In the weeks that followed we had a few lunch meetings in which Sara would get a phone call and apologized for excusing herself. I always saw her pull the book and a pencil from her back pocket, to jot some notes. I didn’t think much of it at the moment. Seemed like that was her way to take notes quickly as we were constantly interrupted.

At home my paranoias grew, I always heard that once a victim, always a victim. I went to the sex offender’s website. I was appalled on how may offenders there were in my community. I talked to people in the community about sexual assault. They spoke of their children or a relative that had been assaulted, usually by a family member or close relative. Most of the time they were too scared to press charges or made the excuse to not press charges because it was a family member. Most of these sex offenders were never charged, and not listed on the registry They ran free.

I visited with Sara about all these unfiled charges. She said she knew about many of them but encouraged me to keep looking into the matter. I named several that were in the registry but so many that were not. Again, she pulled her notebook and scribbled.

I wasn’t until our third meeting that Sara spoke of cost of enrolling my daughter in the program. For one year it was 20k. I was crushed, there was no way I could afford that on my salary. I started a gofund me, we raised 1,200 dollars. I didn’t have any savings, nor did I have anything valuable to sell. I felt defeated.

It was about 2 week later that I received a message via gofund me. It was an older gent who spoke of his own trials with his daughter. He felt that he had lost her forever. His goal was to help others in the same situation. I never knew his name; he just went by “Justice for Elliana”. He told me that he hadn’t seen or heard from her in 10 years. He didn’t know if she was dead or alive. I cried on the phone with him as we discussed our situations. Three days later he donated 20,000 dollars. It ensured a year of therapy at the farm. I wept at his generosity.

In the months to follow, I visited the farm a lot, sometimes I stayed overnight. The staff was considerate and kind. I always saw people moving about, feeding, cleaning, fixing things. It wasn’t until several months had passed that I heard a couple elderly gents, with their heads bowed, breath in deeply and sigh. I heard it like whispers on the wind, ”It’s time to feed the pigs again”. All night they sang, all night they prayed in inipi.

At home I continued my research. I noticed many didn’t register. How could so many be non-compliant! Where were they?? No official that I contacted could give me an answer. It seems as though they had just disappeared. I couldn’t stand it. I delved deeper and deeper. I used social media to find their friends and relatives. I pretended to be an old schoolmate looking to reconnect. A few hadn’t heard from them in months, some thought they moved, some replied it wasn’t their relative, and others said that they just disappeared. Before too long my daughter’s perp was on this list.

While my daughter was healing and becoming the woman she was meant to be, yet I still raged. I was obsessed. I spent more and more time at the farm. I questioned Sara about all the other children and perpetrators still out there. Something needed to be done. Sara said she was working on it and that I needed to be patient. I couldn’t let it go. I started missing work. I quickly used my leave and was soon fired. I had nowhere to go. Sara offered me a position and

a cabin to stay in. I had only my memories and my clothes. I was given a week to get comfortable and prepare for my job, which I was given no information about. I was anxious, nervous and angry. I was mostly angry at Sara, why didn’t she care about all these cases out there! She acted like she didn’t care! I was thankful for her because of my daughter but I hated her at the same time. Little did I know what I had got myself into. As the months passed, I found out. There were two different parts to the farm. The therapeutic part for victims and the washing.

Soon, Sara’s health deteriorated, I spent more time with her. She seemed to age faster than everyone else. I swear she was only fifty but she looked like she was in her late sixties. I sat with her the last few weeks of her life. She explained how the farmed worked and what it did to her. I found out what “feeding the pigs” meant, which explained the disappearance of the perps. I found out why she hired me in the first place. She said she had been looking for me for a long time to continue her work. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. She told me that helping others would take time off my life. What was she offering me?? A deal to help victims at the expense of my own life!! I was furious! I couldn’t believe this is what I had become a part of!! She whispered how its flows through the generations, how I was my daughters’ mother, as strong as I was, I still passed to her.

I was hit, with a brick to my skull that shattered everything I taught myself to believe in. That it would stop with me, that I broke the cycle. It wasn’t my fault, but I carried it in my genes. Finally, I understood, changing the future for our people doesn’t start or end with me. It was deeper. I wept. I wept for myself, my mother, for all the mothers’ past. I wept for my daughter. I wept for all the daughters. It was then she handed me the book.

If you accept, you will have to be justice. You will have to decide our future as a people. You will condemn those you love, those you trusted. It may be your brother, your uncle, your grandma or your grandpa, maybe even a dear friend. You must stay true. I opened it. First page, just a scribbled name. Second page all the descendants and their life paths. Successes and failures, it was almost like it predicted the lives of those that were victims. I saw. I saw it all. I saw the paths of all of them. I saw my daughter. I saw the purpose of the farm.

We cannot be without this farm, if we were to survive as a people. It’s a fine line, but we are our own nation with our own traditions. We follow what the ancestors knew . She healed my child, she used her methods and her ancestors medicines.

I did not ask questions anymore. I now own the farm. Now I have my own little black book to add to the shelf.