Why are you here? He asked, a thug kicks commissioner Gordon.

Answer him as thug looks down.

as thug looks up Bane turns around and with a mask like a tarantula on his face in deep voice with a build of a circus strongman was from the leaking ceiling below, faces into the thug.

I was asking you!

A powerful entrance to establish a villain. But this is a movie one that echoes some tropes but not many.

I start here because like many of us movies inform our relationship and sped up vehicle for information. Few of us glance back at the long list of names behind them but if you are part of it you do. I remember when I had just enough to get into the ticket cost and be there I’d go with my friend Brooke and wait at the end credits and wait to just call out names as if we knew them to think we were attached to something bigger than ourselves.

Those were simple times when I was just a boy shuffling boxes around in a warehouse but I was working for a Native woman who gave a chance to me to afford the ticket to sit at times with my friends and have fun. Her name was Gloria Bean. She said things I wish I had written down but in memory when a storm was heavy and my friend of Japanese heritage was with me stood outside she said as the winds poured down a heat mist only understood if you grow up on the Pacific Northwest, she said “the spirits are moving”. Most would judge in way of what is considered ‘normal’. Because social norms of the time were what they were they are not that now from great efforts of defiance and a point where it took sacrifice.

Gloria’s efforts were not without sacrifice and although it took what felt a lifetime the inspiration of what she said became the page of an article that acknowledged this land and connection.

At that time I was assigned by my English teacher to write about the Great Depression and interview the oldest person I knew which at the time was my grandfather, not by blood but the one who was living and had been the one I knew my whole life. Nez Perce.

As I drove up to prepare myself to open the floor and well up with feelings of my mentors as family figures who shape my life. I went through the many songs I learned and I reached down to my roots to get into what song is appropriate. A song came on from Alert Bay, Namgis singers, heroes of mine from canoe journey. The only journey Grandma Jane went on I welled up deeply behind my eyes as the smoke and haze of the day felt unreal. My father said to me, like Bladerunner 2049.

I faced a house I knew I didn’t want to enter but knew I had to. I know I can only go in if I have the backing to do so, to speak my heart. At the opening I left out the thanks of Kwakala language with this explanation. In all preparation for that moment I lost myself in memory of my grandmother, my connection to the Holm family and was lost for the word because I had the connection of dxwsq'ius connected to me I knew it wasn’t a place I could lose my composure with.

As the night closed and the moon was full. Singing with my once called enemies gave me reflection to see my treasured elder dance as I held the rattle I planned for in honor of Tea-qwa-supp, dxwsq'ius, and George David I could rest.

As the next day follows I met the Nez Perce man who held recordings of the paternal grandfather who raised me. Reminding me that time will heal such wounds. Before our houses had levels and stairs we weren’t always enemies. A song that has long reach has power and comes back.

I share modern songs here to identify how we live and relate to this time and aren’t oblivious to the time we live in and share when I am compelled to. This really began with the encouragement of Tsawayuus.

To put ears on this…if one of you can see me from years before from a ride not on our land and still recognize my work is aligned with yours, we can work together to see ourselves through to better days. I realize if I am reduced to working away in what feels like a bat cave, the iron of a heart forged. In iron folded over, with devotion we are folded into something that can never break. Like old tapes of our elders we hold onto these things there are fires that can never be put out. Our roots are deeply proven by the distance we travel for one another.

When I lost dxwsq'ius, my grandfather figure they filled the void with my family and became family.

I’f I’m given anything in between, I play songs as my uncle Cy did and I can feel these things only because my friend I was taught by. In between imagination and this time leaves this ember. I know there is a fire that never goes out and I got to see that today with Nathan and his heart driven into the work we do. If I didn’t put this into words I would lose this moment so I do what I have to so I know my name is earned.

at the end of the day our lives are not movies. They are complicated and the villain you thought you wrote off was a friend.

Bill had the foresight to see beyond these things from, maybe a place of privilege but nonetheless devoted to giving back to people of this land. I will stand ground for that conviction. I wanted him to see that the house he went into years ago where we don’t wear the art itself can be beautiful even if temporary. My expression for him and my relations go beyond time but like a wolf without a collar it is unruly.

My father has made himself a good man now with great endurance only with patience of my mother and family beside him. I wear this on the outside today because Nathan gave me the strength to ask those who ask us as carvers, what do you do when you make mistakes? I ask them what do you do?

When we carve we put our knives and blades into years and years before us. Every line of grain a year grown so cutting into that means making a decision in the story. It’s not a comedian on a stage who can shrug off humility or a performance. It is a commitment to ancestor and pressure like nothing else. I value so much his words today to help me give some alleviation to the pressure and weight we carry literally and I hold him up for holding this so long as a veteran.

In loss of my mentors mentor, someone who was a guide on the side steps in to fill the space I need.

my wounds are so deep this year and past but I have nothing in comparison of his conversation as a veteran and it gives me humility needed to translate to anyone who read my work. If you draw our people on a map of NWC there would be no bigger division, but I listened to what he had to say and write it down with sense of urgency. Not to meet in the middle, not to do as we do but take away the words you need to if you take time to read this.

In loss of my grandmother Ramona Bennett took time for me. She said Bill was woven into us as the creator needed something for our story to continue. I value that very much. She and my grandfather were enemies within one tribe but like Nathan and myself committed to the same vision of guarding our cultures and learning. At the end of the day we are all human.

I wanted to open the floor for Bill with Chief Dan George’s song but I knew I didn’t have rights to it and at the gathering it came back to me. Know your boundaries but not your way. When I say this mean your way, it means you can only go there if you’ve been there before.

Innovation in our way only happens when you have a leg to stand on and when you haven’t been in whatever you are going to talk about the people know. In our world. I’m grateful for that because I think it brings me back full circle of embers. You take a breath before you put your hand into the art or the songs. Unless you have willingness to go under and commit, you won’t last long.

To be initiated,

you think darkness is your ally

When I said names that go back over a hundred years handed to me and I meet a brother from over the mountains who knows, it is not because Bill was the reason but he brought us together.

because that brother sang a warrior song and I shared it to my father. Names came back that I pushed down so long I didn’t think I had within me but it’s only because they are true. There was a time Haida would not look at us but from endurance and need we are in the same canoe that gets smaller but even so I reach out to my brother from far away if I am lost I am found. No matter the place we are in the world, if we know where we come from as good people we help each other.

The conversations of the evening into the next day onto the next give me hope to potlatch someday. Give me spark in my heart. As the sun rises I think back to my uncles and the generation I derive my name from to not think about the time of day but the work we do until we can not do it anymore. See into the small works or big of your hands and know I look forward to what the next day will bring.