Howes Creek Cemetery
I baptized my son in the same place I was baptized, Howes Creek Cemetery. That moment should have felt like a continuation, a thread tying generations together. And in some ways, it was. But over time, that thread began to feel tangled, heavy with questions I didn’t yet know how to answer.
When I try to understand how we got here, how Christianity became part of our lives as Indigenous people, I often tell others to watch or read "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee"(2007 Film). It shows how belief didn’t just arrive, but it was forced, shaped by loss, survival, and adaptation. Then, I urge them to watch "We Were Children"(2012 Film), because it reveals what happened to our children in boarding schools under the authority of the Christian, Catholic system. And later, "Sugarcane"(2024 Film), which shows how those impacts didn’t end, they carried forward onto generations, onto families, onto us... onto me.
One of the window morels inside of the Howes Creek Cemetery Church.
In 2018, after I left my family, I began to feel something I didn’t expect: regret. I regretted baptizing my son. Not because I don’t care about him, but I felt I had placed him into something I no longer believed in, a system whose teachings and practices I struggle to accept.
Still, I cannot speak for him in the end. He will grow up and find his own way. All I can hope is that he learns both sides of who he is. That he understands what it means to be Indigenous. He is rooted in ancestors who fought to keep our identity alive. And also what it means to live in a world shaped by Christian beliefs, whether we accept them or not.
In my own family, belief was never simple. My grandfather, Elmer P. Goodteacher, went every Sunday and on important holidays. We celebrated Easter and Christmas. His father, Oscar Goodteacher, is harder to understand. His life was shaped by the Indian Boarding Schools and by both side effects of both World Wars. Somewhere in all of that, traditions blended. Even in death, you can see our graves marked in ways that reflect both worlds.
I’m grateful the church kept records of our lives. Names, dates, histories because they matter. But I also know that same system tried to erase who we were before it arrived. Before “the white man’s beliefs came.”
Sitting Bull
I find myself relating to Sitting Bull. His words stay with me:
“Inside of me there are two dogs. One is mean and evil and the other is good and they fight each other all the time. When asked which one wins, I answer, the one I feed the most.” ~ Sitting Bull
That is exactly how I feel about the church. How I feel about life.
There is a part of me that wonders if I should follow God’s teachings, adapt, and find a way to exist within this modern world. And there is another part that wants to refuse it. To honor my ancestors by living in the way they fought to preserve.
That struggle doesn’t leave. It lives in me, every day.
Maybe the answer isn’t choosing one side completely. Maybe it’s making sure my son sees both truths clearly without the silence, without the sugarcoating. So when his time comes, he doesn’t inherit confusion… he inherits understanding.
And whatever path he chooses, it will truly be his.