Brando_ Songs My Mother Taught Me - Marlon Brando [140]
At dawn, when it was time to leave, I was coughing and hacking and had a high temperature. But the Indians looked at me expectantly, and I knew I had to go. I wrapped myself in a blanket and got in the boat while icy waves whipped up by the wind sprayed everyone, and as we left shore I thought, I’m not going to leave this boat alive. I suspected that I had pneumonia, that I was going to die and that my body would be dumped into the river. Hunched over, I told one of my Indian friends, Hank Adams, how awful I felt, and he said, “You know, my grandmother used to say, ‘If you smile, you’ll feel better.’ ”
I just looked at him and thought, What in this poor, pissed-on world are you talking about? I’m dying, and you’re asking me to smile?
We traveled up and down the river for an hour waiting to be arrested, but no game wardens showed up. I don’t mind dying, I thought, but to die so senselessly on a freezing river without even being arrested seems absurd. Only later did we learn that we’d been on the wrong river. Patrol boats were looking for us somewhere else; I’d faced death—or so my melodrama let me convince myself—for nothing. One of the Indians’ lawyers got me to an airport, and I flew home and entered the hospital with pneumonia, where I swore that someday I would repay Hank Adams.
The fish-ins were important because in many ways they laid the foundation for subsequent Native American campaigns for civil rights. They were important for me as well because they acquainted me with what Indians were up against and how little support they had. I got to know extraordinary people, such as Clyde Warrior, a Ponca Indian with whom I often traveled around the country to Indian Youth Council meetings; he was a man with a sense of dignity I’ll never forget, a wonderful sense of humor and great sense of pride in being Indian, and he taught me as much as anyone how much my own view of life was similar to that of the American Indian. There was Vince Deloria, Jr., a brilliant political scientist, writer and Indian historian, who had devoted his life to their support; and Dennis Banks, Russell Means and other young Indians who would later start AIM, the American Indian Movement. I also got involved with such groups as the Congress for the American Indian, Survival of the American Indian and the National Congress for American Indians, and traveled around the country trying to explain to state officials, congressmen and Attorney General Robert Kennedy that American Indians were being unlawfully mistreated.
I also met with Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. Not many people have intimidated me, but he had such presence and I had such respect for him that when I walked into his office with my briefcase filled with a portfolio of complaints about the treatment of Indians I couldn’t say anything.
Douglas sat behind his desk looking kindly and attentive, and said, “Yes?”
I couldn’t put three words together. After five minutes of my stuttering and stammering, he said, “Well, I have to go on the bench now. It’s been a pleasure to meet you.”
I rose and left, hardly able even to say good-bye to the great man.
54
AS THE NATIVE AMERICANS’ civil rights movement spread and gathered momentum in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I supported it in every way I could—emotionally, spiritually and financially. I was outraged by the injustices they had endured; there is simply no other way I can put it. Our government signed almost four hundred treaties with the Indians and broke every one of them. These agreements almost always include this language: “As long as the river shall run, the sun shall shine and the grass shall grow, this land will be forever yours, and it will never be taken away from you or sold without your express permission.” Yet all of them were broken with the blessing and