Cheyenne Nation
Life On the Reservation
By Steven Horn

My name is Steven Horn, living in Lame Deer, Montana, Northern Cheyenne Tribe. I am a sixteen year old Native American, a junior in high school now, and have grown up on the reservation all my life.

As I grew up, the reservation was always boring for me. It always felt like folks were too poor to buy anything in town. People live off of food stamps, which are kind of like checks, and there were also free food for the tribe. And there are always homeless drunks that walk back and forth, up and down the street asking for money, food and shelter. If there were no shelter, they would walk all night and day. If they didn't find shelter, they would end up frozen to death in the ditch or on someone's porch. ThereÕs a homeless shelter but it is by the jail where homeless don't like to be.

I remember how in cities you have to be sixteen or eighteen to drive. On the rez you can drive when you're in grade school on up, and the cops don't care as long as you know how to drive and know the rules. The only thing the cops do is catch people drinking or fighting, but they don't catch middle school kids driving under age.

Around here, cops and ambulances are the slowest vehicles. After accidents happens, or if like someone has a heart attack, they show up half an hour later.

We got are own kind of slang on the res too. In my school, we have slang like "aaayy" that we use on the end of sentences. Or we say "ghost" or "spirit" too each other when saying goodbye. Also in school you'll mess around and teachers don't do anything but just sit there and don't do their job. Kids still pass the grades though.

My family is very good at teaching us about our culture. My uncle is two-time PRCA horse riding champion and a performer at the rodeo. He tells stories to people and shows them how grass dance. He teaches kids how to ride a horse and how to break a horse by using his medicine wheel model. He also takes people to spiritual sites like the Medicine Deer Rock where Armstrong Custer (of "Custer's Last Stand") and his soldiers camped.

We have sweat lodges to purify our souls and we also have different kinds of ceremonies which I haven't learn yet from my grandma who was the last warrior woman of the society. She teaches the Cheyenne language to the tribe in Dull Knife Memorial College. I know a few words or two in my language, but I don't know all. My grandma always wanted me to do something good and be somebody good that would teach our Indian ways and culture. And that is what I am going for -- to make her happy.