Earth Day on Rez

I wasn’t doing community service work ordered by tribal court last night when me and Voncile was picking up trash south of our house, the road by Aaron Hale’s. Oh, first, I’m sure it wasn’t all Aaron’s trash. This was part of the Earth Day events. They scheduled a trash pick-up of roads on the reservation.

The tribe let gave their employees a couple of hours of admin leave to pick up trash but our schedules didn’t allow for that, so we picked up trash after hours. They had a meal cooked up at the park for all the participants, so we went out there yesterday at noon. I got attacked right off the bat telling me “I didn’t see you picking up trash so why are you eating with us.” My mouth dropped and this was repeated one more time, but I’m no stranger to disrespect and I stayed and ate. Usually Indians share their foods but I guess we are in new times. I did say we were going to pick up trash on our own time, not the tribes though and I told them thanks for making me feel welcome.

Outside of this the experience was enjoyable, the food was good, some of the company was good and the picking up trash was a new thing for me. Heck, I’m not even running for election and I was out there. The walking was good and it felt good to do something for the reservation and make it look good. I was probably picking up some of my own trash, which I will stop doing. Don’t throw that paper out the window, please! Now we are going to make this a weekly thing and pick up trash along this same route and the road that goes by our house.