Of Office Jobs and Oppression

         Carguy644 and loosegurl57 would like our free informational e-mail, so I type them in the same field I do hundreds of others everyday.
“Why is there so much talk about air pollution these days? We never had that problem five years ago,” said Peggy, a hunched over fiscal worker with whom I am fortunate enough to share opposite sides of the same mock-velcro wall.
“Five years ago?” I thought so hard it nearly came out.
         At least had she picked a number of years large enough to prove a valid generational gap of some kind I wouldn’t associate her red frazzle hair with ignorance, but that’s how it is. As I mentioned, we are on opposite sides of the wall, so what I know has been pieced together with phone conversations and passing in the hallways. From what I can tell, she also works in an auto repair shop as a secretary. I hear sporadic work grievance sessions with a woman named Deb and have come to know a cast of types, with names; Brad, Rob, Gary, and their boss, Craig. There are some intermittent cameos, but those are the ones I can count on.
         Several weeks after the above declaration, another of Peggy’s phone edicts hit my eardrums with the resonance of glass impacting cement. Although, I am unable to quote it as precisely as the above, its meaning could not be mistaken. Essentially, it was that Native Americans have no place contending for retribution, at least in the state of Minnesota, because they are all wealthy from casinos. She continued on to complain that Native Americans can take as much game as they want or can while hunting and fishing.
         The sheer inaccuracies contained in the assertions, carelessly lobbed into my earshot, immediately wrenching into the collection bank where such statements stew. Being of slight native descent, culturally aware, and from Elk River, a slightly northern Minnesota town, it is nothing new. I imagine Peggy staggering in her cerulean-blue blouse and skirt, down a dirt road at any one of the reservations I’ve been to, and seeing unadulterated truth: broken siding, half-dressed native children and their faded toys scattered throughout lawns. What if I, in my business-casual daydream, could even imagine her learning about their culture and modern way of life first-hand? Perhaps discovering that although most tribally registered natives technically could take “as much as they want,” from reservation lakes and streams, (as they are part of a sovereign government) they actually take less than their sportsman counterparts (i.e. Peggy’s husband).
         I have studied the Ojibwe language for most of five years. Throughout both high school and college, I have had to defend, or justify, my choice to study a language so rarely spoken. My current teacher, Dennis Jones (Pebaamibines in Ojibwe), had the language beaten out of him at boarding school as part of this country’s assimilation policies towards natives during his early years. He struggled with alcoholism and heavy drug use before overcoming them out of complete anger towards his oppressors, and obtained a college degree. Teaching the language is a mission for him, as the language is synonymous with his culture, and neither can afford to die. I would like to claim my fight has been as hard, or that I was fighting alongside Dennis on the cultural battlefield; however, this is not the case. Peggy’s decree is only one more random audible thought that slipped through.
         I think, maybe my longing for the Native American struggle to be recognized by people like Peggy comes from a dark grudge. More though, it is the realized consequences of the cultural imperialistic past, consequences both of Peggy’s ignorance and equally dangerous, my pessimistic attitude that Peggy will never learn, and subsequent apathy. Part of me wants to blame carguy644, the unknown, nameless copout, part of me wants to blame Peggy, and part of me wants to blame me.