Latest / Upcoming Trial of Nathan Chasing Horse April 14, 2025 / Never giving up in the face of adversity
Transcript
- Marina Crane: Okay, you heard that? I did hear that, but let me get my microphone because I believe this is better when it comes to recording. Yes, and I have to buy a microphone too. Yeah. once I get a little more financially like... like just able to get it because I know what it is. just I just I know I can get it up at the Apple Store. Yep. Yeah. So the reason like I like I think this is a significant jump in and people listening to my podcast because like, you know, other times I I don't talk about my personal life, but I've usually been saying, ⁓ like my personal life around Nathan chasing horse, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then now I'm just like. talking about like the things I've had to live through in my community like policies, like I said, I helped do the first proposals for the first daycare and the first detox treatment center, all voluntary, all under the premise that if I finished it, not that anybody told me, I just thought, I'll be creative and do this. then once I get the money, once the money comes into the the nation then I could ask to see if I could be the janitor and stay in the homes. You know the basement as the janitor looking after facilities and each time they said no because I was a single female and then I think after I think I was 25 when I did the one for the detox treatment center and then they created a policy that ⁓ a woman who had no children and single could not apply for a house in her community, in housing, because we don't own our own homes, right? Until we're until we're 55 years old child with no children. Yeah. And that's I go ahead anyway, I've lost to say about that, because like in the urban setting, I've I've seen a lot of the moms who were my daughter's, my demographic, but my daughter's age. Yeah, as soon as my daughter and their kids turned 18, their rents went up immediately. cause there is an expectation that somehow an 18 year old who may still be in high school is somehow going to be making, you know, an extra $500 a month or something. And in some cases, the moms lost the housing because the kid turned 18. So like that really upsets me because I don't understand how know, cruel the system is to get rid of people like that. And that's just the urban ⁓ experience. I can't imagine on the res what they're doing. Yeah, I didn't know that. ⁓ And again, too, when we're talking about ⁓ children who age out, too, that's in the same realm, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, that's why, ⁓ like, how prepared... Well, let me put it this way. I'm not comparing apples and oranges. It may sound like it. But I do know when my brother was in prison and he was released... ⁓ They give hardly anything for prisoners who are released to pay rent, to find a place where they're going to stay. he made a comment, like he was in a partner with a company. So he had income, but he made a comment that if he didn't have that, he would have been homeless. Yeah, not wild. Yes, and even, because you're homeless? I mean, when I ran away to Vancouver, I was 17 and I turned 18 in Vancouver. And I just happened, I don't know how the hell, I swear, a creator's been watching me and guiding me. I walked into an Indian Friendship Center and the lady there just met the executive, didn't even know who, what, where, and anything. They were moving into this new building on Vine Street and forth. She, you know, I must've looked so pitiful and homeless. She says, I can help you out. Sit down, fill out the form, drove me to a halfway house where there were women, like young women like myself. I think the youngest was 15 and the head mother was like 25 or 30. And she'd been on the streets and you know, these girls had been lived quite rough lives. And I'd only been in Vancouver, I'll say maybe five months by then. Yeah. And, uh, you know, it it was really scary because the 15 year old was like eight months pregnant. The older woman who was 24, she'd been, um, she'd had many children that she had given up for adoption. It, and the head woman, she was, uh, uh, like a former prostitute and one of the ladies, she, she was like, these were good looking, attractive women, girls. Okay. I, I, the one of them said, I'm going to go visit my boyfriend. Uh, do you want to come with me? Didn't know nothing about Hastings. Nothing went with her, went up this crick, this stairwell that, you know, was creepy. Like, like I'm talking about Halloween creepy knocks on the door and this guy opens the door and he's this, he's this, he's the Sasquatch of a man. Like I'm just going, what? Like scared the bejesus out of me and she says do you want to come in and I'm going no I'm going I just thought ⁓ my goodness ⁓ You know, in hindsight, going, ⁓ my goodness. Like, like, like these girls were, I can't, know, I even as an elder, I remember meeting one lady and I won't say her name. Okay. Because I know, you know her and she, she committed suicide. ⁓ you know, ⁓ she, she, I think she'd be, she became, ⁓ two spirited. She, she'd had a child and business woman. And I had an opportunity to sit down with her and talk to her. And she was talking about the violence of her, that her dad and her brother inflicted on both her and her mother. Like, like, like you're being chased down the stairs in their home. Just like the, the, just the threat of it. Like sometimes when people talk to me about their violent experience, it just takes my breath away because, because they've lived through it and, and that's part of their memory. That's part of their history. So, you know, when I look back and I look back at those young women that I met in Vancouver, ⁓ you know, I am years later, I saw one of them at Calgary, the 24 year old, and she, she looked just spent to just, she had put on maybe a hundred pounds, just, was hitchhiking to Vancouver, Toronto, I think, like very lost. Sure. And, you know, had, when I came back from Vancouver, my cousins, like in what you call them, in white man's words, my second cousins, were my dad's first cousins' children, ⁓ they took off to Vancouver. But they got in trouble with the law. And when they came back, they were talking about welfare fraud. I swear I was so naive about crime. Well, that's kind of how it works is that, you know, when you're young and you don't know anything, and you're like in object poverty, it's really easy to fall into it and not know. So I don't know, it's, it's very interesting to me, because like, you try to do the right thing and you, you know, apply for the jobs, etc, etc. And the white people go, ⁓ we don't like natives. And, you know, lose your resume. ⁓ was disappointing. then where do you get, like my cousins had children too. The older one had five kids and the rest didn't have any children. But it was the scam and how they cheated the welfare system. They ended up serving time. mean, I'm just telling the story like so that people know like crime doesn't, there's no benefit in crime. But like I remember too, I had run away with high risk teenagers from Calgary. See again, my parents, like when I talk about high risk teenagers, parents, like for me, my parents, because they were raised in residential school and because we're right by the city, you know, I think it was that, what do think? Not fawning, maybe it's fawning where you don't want to cause any problems, but for my parents, even when it came to white friends, It was like they were untouchable, like they're holy, they're that privilege or like they're better off. Even if they're high risk teenagers. See, that's the mythology of it too, right? Because you you don't think that white people have the, you know, some behavioral problems with their kids or that they've committed incest with their children. Cause I'm pretty sure that the one of the lady that I'm, she was high risk, met her in high school at Lord Beaver Brook. I'm pretty sure she was a victim of incest and she had been ⁓ living at William Roper Hall home. See, again too, I didn't know about high risk behavior. And even like when I got a job in Utah with high risk teenagers, it wasn't the same as ⁓ William Roper Hall home. The youth that I was looking after were under lock and key. They were under psychiatric and psychologists and therapists, teachers, everything. They had trained professionals. They were under lock and key for their own, know, for their, so they wouldn't kill themselves. Yeah. And, and there were also like different units. This was at the state hospital where they had units that were there for people who had addiction problems. There was also one house unit that was there for the criminally insane like this, the diversity of people. and also working with other people like some like that were working in different units. Yeah. You know, just that in itself, especially like, you know, here I am a little country bumpkin from a small one million million, you know, back in the day, it wasn't a million population, but I go smack dam in the middle of Utah, you know, with a high dense population, just it was a cultural shock. And but but again, I survived, I survived it. But for me, the reality of what I saw and who I saw and even taking courses, like learning about ⁓ multiple personality disorders, ⁓ just things in general, because, you know, at the point of the mountain, is ⁓ like Salt Lake City was an hour north of where I lived. And there was a penitentiary there. Like it was notorious. I I worked in a dorm. don't know. I don't, I can't remember the guy's name. He was a serial. He was a serial killer that in 1976 when I was there, a couple of blocks away, he went to a motel, executed, execute, killed the night attendant in front of his wife and children, per shot him like he had him kneeled down and shot him in the back of the head, took off up state street to Oram Utah. went to a service station, got the service station attendant out. The service station attendant was a student. He was in law school, executed, killed him, executed style. They caught him, put him at the point of the mountain. ⁓ so I was living like in the area. And ⁓ so it was all like, ⁓ my goodness, there's a serial killer. Like in Canada, in Calgary, like, hey. The news isn't as dynamic as it was then. This was like in the 70s. So here I am. went back to Utah and I got a job, like I said, at the state hospital. the history, apparently the fellow who had done all this killing, he had been given the death penalty. And so he chose to be executed by firing squad. We're talking about Gary Gilmore. I'm looking it up. Gary Gilmore is his name. Yes, yes. You're right. And you're right about he being executed by a firing squad. Yes. So while he was there, he had his girlfriend come and she'd visit him and she brought stuff in for him to commit suicide. don't know, was pills or what. but they caught her and because she was a minor, get this, like she was a minor, they put her in the state hospital on the ward where I was going to work years later. So that was like, was this history of the dorm that I was working on, that this young woman who had been the the girlfriend, the partner of Gary Gilmore had been housed there for treatment. because again, she became suicidal. Because I mean, nobody on that dorm would be in there, say for alcohol or drug abuse or depression. Well, of course, part of it could be depression too, but I'm talking about extreme behavior that, that, how did one psychologist put it? says, when you're talking about, when you're self analyzing yourself as being borderline or schizophrenic or bipolar, she says, no, no, no, no, don't ever self analyze yourself. And she gave examples of how extreme behavior is. So that's what I'm talking about. The teenagers had extreme behavior that I supervised. But apparently she ended, see when somebody is successful in killing themselves, Like nobody talks about it. You know, it's not published, nothing. But I don't even know that young woman's name, but she ended up killing herself on that dorm. Wow. See, and for me, that was really ⁓ like a very stressful job. You know, I had to make sure, you know, those girls, ⁓ like even if they tried hurting themselves, it was constant, you know, constant watching them. And, but that, yeah, that, that, there was also While I was working there, was a young woman. was, I shouldn't say young woman. She was a child. was, she was. just say, I think her name is Nicole Baker. Oh, the one who, his girlfriend, his partner, his. Yeah. Yeah. Because it says here, so it's an article from the LA times and it's 10 years later. Yeah. And it says that a friend found Nicole Baker comatose in her apartment. She was committed to a mental. hospital after the execution. Gilmore, more easily revived, tried suicide again a month before his execution. Anyway, so I think they named her. Okay. And I think her name was Nicole Baker. Well, that's where she was institutionalized on the dorm where I eventually ended up working on. There you go. History. And people wonder what kind of life did I live? Oh yes, yes. No, there was one. I go. Go ahead. No, no, go ahead. I was going to say I should watch one who flew over the Cuckoo's Nest because back in the 70s, it was not a nice time. And I know Stanley Kubrick like tried to encapsulate that ugliness. But, you know, I was talking to another elder who I won't name. because I don't have their permission, but they were saying that they were at a prison in the States and they had a lockdown. So although she was scheduled to go in, they told her she can't right now. So she went to a nearby museum and this museum was filled with all of the things and this was in Canada, by the way, a Canadian museum that was showed all of the ⁓ ways that they ⁓ tortured prisoners before. And she said this was as early as 1972. And this is really graphic, so trigger warning for everybody, including you, Marina, if you don't want to listen to this, I won't. like they had a leather strap with a hole in the middle that they would use. They would tie the people down and hit them until the chunks of skin would come out. And that was as early as the 1970s. And that's not a mental institution. And I know that they were even worse in mental institutions because I know what they did to my mom in the 80s here in Calgary. But that's a story for another time. See, that's that's again, too. When I talk about gender apartheid or gender, just like indigenous women, like just the the crisis out there. You know, people don't think like like there's a crisis because again, you know, as soon as it's a trigger, like there's that trigger warning, you know, it seems like like colonial or white establishment just go, oh, no, no, no. They sort of hum away. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. None of my business. You know, like la-di-da. yet... As if they weren't the perpetrators. Exactly. You know, I mean, this brings to mind when I was in residential school, ⁓ like I was always an advocate. I always spoke my mind, everything. And, you know, I tried to get compensation for being psychologically abused for two years and for speaking out. And the last year that I was there, they had forbid me from even leaving... ⁓ well, we'll call it campus or the residence because it was just a residence. We weren't going to school. They were bused into Portage. And so on the weekends, everybody else could go into this little town, do R &R. But for me, I had to stay in the residence for punishment for a whole school semester, a whole school year. On top of that, I used to belong to a glee club and they banished me from singing with the glee club, which I think that year they went to Texas, so I wasn't allowed to even travel with them. But the way I could escape was there was a volunteer program for anybody who wanted to work at a home for the mentally, like at that time they called them retarded, which isn't appropriate. I worked in cottages and they were supposed to be progressive cottages. And so every weekend, that was my escape was to mix and observe and supervise. ⁓ like children ⁓ and teenagers and you know like I'd feed them, clothe them, bathe them, whatever I needed to do. But I do remember them telling me the horror stories before they were moved into the cottages where these children were put into just like the ⁓ hallway of a basement, in a dark hallway in a basement. Can you imagine that? And they're sitting, there's no activity, they're just sitting. in the hallway and the one teenager, I think she was 18, but she was in the teenage housing that I was looking after, she would sit and she'd be just sort of like in comatose or we'll call it psychosis or something and she'd be just mumbling darkness, darkness, darkness. to this day, like when I think about, you know, like these, who took care of them? who cleansed them, who fed them in that hallway that was dark. And these are children that were in manor in Portage where their parents just didn't want to take care of them because they weren't born with high IQs or the ability to function. was so disturbing. You know, because I have like my one brother didn't talk until he was five. You know, there's some autism in my family, but and I guess anything else with indigenous people like even my mother, ⁓ like when she went to residential school, I think they took her when she was five. ⁓ Just her fawning, like she didn't want to say anything, cause any trouble because she knew the consequences of being vocal. So lot of times when I think the majority of why I'm vocal is because my mother wasn't allowed that. My father tried and there was lateral violence towards him, but all this psychological ⁓ emotional abuse that indigenous children went through and then they become adults and then again too there's that lateral violence of jealousy. ⁓ I say when I was eight and 10, my parents traveled to South American India. And I'm a kid, I don't know nothing about jealousy. I don't know nothing about it, but the legacy within my parents. My mother spoke, she was literate in Sioux, she could read and write in Sioux. And this is before anybody even thought about restoring languages and creating dictionaries. In my like the Sioux people were already had a dictionary in the mid 1800s. So, you know, the Sioux people were already quite advanced in maintaining and trying to retain their language. But but that pride, like it's just like you have nothing to be proud of. And even like to in Sioux Valley, I think they're having like their 80th anniversary of the what what what what cheapy that's a powwow. Yeah, you know, they were doing powwow. way before anybody in Alberta was. It's just part of the culture, the indigenous culture of the Sioux people. And people get annoyed for me when I say I'm from Sioux, Tena, but my bloodline is Sioux. They're annoyed because they think I'm not proud to be Sioux, Tena. And I'm going, no, I was raised, I didn't get married into Sioux, Tena, I was raised here. And even then the lateral violence towards women who grew up here. See, that's the irony, I think, because, like I said, my podcast was talking about my childhood or my life in Sudhena and just the amount of people who were listening to my podcast. Because the reality of it is, like, a lot of the women who married into Sudhena, had more advantage than me, because, you know, women like me, like my cousins, my own siblings, like, if you chose not to have a partner, then... You don't have a leg to stand on. Yeah, exactly. You know, so a lot of times, a lot of times, ⁓ a lot of things that that say people in general would get. ⁓ my goodness. ⁓ hold, hold on, Michelle. gotta I gotta problem. I don't know how I'm going to stop this here. Let's see if I can put it on pause.