the Navajo kids, mostly, who live so far or in such inaccessible places that they have to be in boarding school. Most of the Hopi kids here are on welfare or come from broken homes or some such. These make up ca. 10% of the school populat, tho all the aides, etc. are either white (Bahana<\/u> in Hopi, Bellagona<\/u> in Navajo) or Hopi. Which makes it tougher on the Navajo kids, to have no one of their own tribe in authority. (’Cept the suptdt of the whole Hopi reservation, who is (mostly, I think) Navajo. And a finer person is yet to be found. This is a high<\/u> gov’t job & he’s new & excellent at it. His wife, interestingly, is white.) Anyway, the rest of the Hopi kids go to day schools closer to where they live. (The boarding school (classroom part) also accomodates day schoolers, if they live at Keams. Children of govt employees, et cetera.) These “reservation schools” are also of course under the jurisdict. of the Hopi agency, so we were taken to visit all of them, to see the school & observe in the classrooms. Much of what we saw was frustrating & heartbreaking, but the rest was so bright and hopeful———: to start with, living at home makes all the difference in the world for the children. They aren’t subjected to rules & regimentation & rigidity & discipline for more than 8 hrs a day, and as a result are more alive & open & easier to work with, more responsive to outside stimulation than boarding school kids. They are given a hot lunch & 3 pts of milk each day, showers 2wice a week (no running water on the reservation), & the use of books, art materials (they are exceptionally fine artists) et cetera.<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
That was the first two pages of the letter, handwritten. The rest of the letter, another two pages, is typed:<\/p>\r\n
\r\n\r\nat that point I was permanently interrupted. Am now back at\r\nKeams, frustrated and disappointed with the place as ever.\r\nLike the son of the head of Guidance (my boss) a x snotty\r\nbastard of a kid if I ever saw one, won the school spelling\r\ncontest today, not because he's the best speller but because\r\nhe's so damn cocky and fresh and confident all the Indian\r\nkids know they aren't going to be able to stand up to him,\r\nso they make mistakes as a matter of course.\r\n\r\nlike another one of the asses in the guidance dept (an\r\nimbecilic old maid named Miss Sowerby) took down the\r\nbulletin board she'd xx given me charge of, and I'd given to\r\nthe girls to put up what they liked, which they did, and she\r\nput up a current events board cut out of the National\r\nObserver, which so far no one has looked at. The board the\r\ngirls had put up was, I'm proud to say, nearly in tatters\r\nfrom hard looking (it was about hairstyles) and the one I'd\r\nput up the week before (consistijg of the pamphlets I sent\r\nyou on local sites of interest) had to be stapled back up\r\nabout four times from avid examining. (falling-apart-ness is\r\na mark of success, and one I'm always proud of.)\r\n\r\nfive more weeks here, dammit.\r\n\r\nanyway, I was telling you about the day schools. Some of\r\nthem are large enough to have a special art teacher and one\r\nhas a monthly newspaper....which are things the Keams kids\r\ncouldn't handle. It's hardly believable that they have\r\ncheerleaders and a pep club and a beadwork club here. Alice\r\nand I are xxxxxxxxx allowed to do very little; some things\r\ncan be instigated by the rather inept new recreation\r\ndirector, but he's not permitted much leeway either.\r\n\r\njob consists of this:\r\n\r\nMonday,\r\n 8-5: spent in school, observing a different\r\nclassroom each week. some of which is of inestimable value,\r\nas there is at least one teacherof the highest calibre\r\npossible, the rest is so much agony.\r\n 7:30-8:30 take older girls to gym, struggle with\r\norganizing activities with 80 girls from 4th to 8th grade.\r\n\r\nTuesday, Wednesday, xxxxxx Thursday\r\n 11-5: inspection of details (jobs the girls have done\r\nin the morning), go to postoffice for mail, play with\r\nlittle girls (80 of them too), walk up to school with\r\ngirls, go to clinic or do mending or foliding or putting\r\naway of clothes, laudnry, etc, help supervise baths or\r\nplay with little girls some more, organize (hah) lines to\r\ngo down to dinner.\r\n\r\nTuesday,\r\n 6:30-7:30 long coffeee break with other aides\r\n(gossip, etc) while girls are at \"religious instruction\"\r\n 7:30-9 help with homework, older girls\r\n\r\nWednesday,\r\n 6:20-7 art lesson for about 40-80 beginners, ist,\r\n2nd, 3rd, 4th graders\r\n 7-8:30 find something to do as far as possible from\r\nthe girls (older ones) who are being punished by being\r\nkept home from the big Kids' movie, for such reasons as\r\nmessy locker, brushing teethe when not supposed to,\r\ntalking Navajo, missing roll call\r\n\r\nThursday,\r\n 6:30-8:30 gym and help with homework\r\n\r\nFriday,\r\n 8-5 walk girls to school, inspection, sort, fold,\r\nmend, etc, go for mail, xxxxxxxxx lunch hour, walk girs to\r\nschool in afternoon, clinic or sorting, folding & mending,\r\nplay with little girls till dinner.\r\n\r\nThen there's saturdays (anything over 40 hrs is strictly\r\nextracurricular and without pay) for teaching [me] to speak\r\nNavajo, doing bulletin boards, and anything else I can fit\r\nin.....the thing is, this is a 24-hour-a-day job, always\r\nbeing surrounded by dorm noises and pressures and tensions,\r\nand they quibble about giving us 2 hours leavewithoutpay,\r\nwhich happened the last time we went to Tucson and our ride\r\nleft two hours early. We got told we were doing something\r\nrash and thoughtless and probably irresponsible and most\r\ncertainly Evil, to request that we leave at 3 instead of 5\r\none Friday afternoon and not be paid for it. (actually, they\r\ndidn't really mean it; just a faction fight between Mr. Long\r\n(our boss) & Mr. Russell [handwritten insertion: school\r\nprincipal] and the inept asses on one side, and Mrs. Schmidt\r\n(our ride) and a few other teachers and personnell on the\r\nother side, that of trying to make life tolterable for the\r\nkids. Mr. Long & Mr. Russell decided to make it as difficult\r\nas possible for everyone on our side, and that was one of\r\nthe ways. Russell is an inept incomptetent impotent idiotic\r\nass, and I'm not just name-calling, I'm describing. He's Mr.\r\nLong's boss, which is ridiculous, as xx the latter runs him\r\nhand and foot, a real tragedy. Long is supposed to be in\r\ncharge of guidance in the dorm, but handles everything but.\r\nHe knows no moreabout guidance or helping kids in the bind\r\nthese xxxx poor children are caught in than I do about the\r\n4-wheel drive on his jeep.....god help me if this letter\r\nshould fall into the wrong hands. although that might be\r\nfun, as the suptd of the reservation would probably be able\r\nto do something about it if enough fuss were raised.\r\notherwise, his hands are as xxxx tied as ours.\r\n\r\nenough of that. Needless to say, if I ran the zoo, things\r\nwould be different. Tucson was lovely, refreshing, alive,\r\ninvigorating, et cetera. Mrs. Henderer (who, as I suppose\r\nI've told you before, is one of the lovelist people I've\r\never had the good fortune to know) took us to the Arizona\r\nSonora Desert Museum, a fascinating place, with a zoo-type\r\nexhibit of desert animals, lots of material on water\r\nconservation (a mania with Arizonans), set-ups of animals in\r\nnatural-type habitat (like a prairie-dog colony, bat caves,\r\netc) (even saw some vampire bats, which was kind of scary\r\neven thourhg glass) (no, no, dear, they xxx live entirely on\r\nblood, but generally animal rather than human), desert birds\r\nxx in walk-in cages, exhibits of desert veggetation, like\r\nthe boojum tree, which is most definitely the strangest x\r\ncritter I've ever seen, and so forth. .....rest of the time,\r\nwe sat around and absorbed the college-student-y atmospehre,\r\nlistened to music all night, and had a glorius time....\r\n\r\nAlice is leaving on Friday and a new gal from goddard will\r\nbe here. ought to be interesting. Wish I was x a-goin' back\r\ntoo. but , be that as it may, and since I'm more frustrated\r\nthan downright unhappy, there's still much to look forward\r\nto x. like Kachina dances and more jewelry to buy and the\r\ngrand canyon. which we may get to. in the middle of a\r\nhowling windstorm, no doubt.\r\n\r\nwe are laden with citrus fruit, as Mrs. Schmidt was given a\r\nsmalll ton of grapefruits, oragnes, and tangerines while we\r\nwre in Tucson and she was in Phoenix. She was actually able\r\nto pick most of it herslef. so we are, as the saying goes,\r\nrolling in oranges. (etcetra) tangerines are coming out of\r\nmy ears, and I'm considering roast, stuffed grapefruit for\r\nour next dinner. (mmm. made curried beef tonight, which was\r\nmildly great.)\r\n\r\nre-reading: please remember that it's my typing and not my\r\nspelling that's atroucious. though I come to the conclusion\r\nxxx after trying to explain grammar to incredulous\r\nseventh-graders, x that anyone who can spell such an\r\nidiotioc language as English is something of a fool.\r\n\r\n [handwritten: the end. love, Marcia]\r\n<\/pre>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n <\/p>\r\n
Postmarked Keams Canyon, Ariz, Feb 25, 1965. Written on front of envelope: “Rec\u2019d this Sat. 2\/27” and “Wrote to M 3\/3\/65.”<\/p>\r\n
\r\nFacebook post for this letter<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A detailed description of Marcy\u2019s life and work at Keams Canyon. \u201c[Mr.] Russell is an inept incompetent impotent idiotic ass, and I\u2019m not just name-calling, I\u2019m describing.\u201d","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters-to-parents","category-keams-canyon"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/marcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/marcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/marcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/marcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/marcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15611"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/marcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15955,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/marcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15611\/revisions\/15955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/marcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/marcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/marcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Keams](\"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/marcy\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/1965\/02\/marcy-drawing-reservation-300x117.jpg\")
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