Tribal Journey by Gary Robinson Page A

swim meet next month.”
    â€œWhoa,” he said. “I don’t have unlimited use of the family car, remember. I have to ‘earn’ it by doing chores around the house. You know, the point system.”
    â€œOh yeah.” I had to think for a minute. We were both sixteen, but neither of us had a car.
    â€œI’ve got it,” I said finally. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. I can come over. We can work our way through a whole list of chores around your house. Maybe we can earn enough points to use the car all week.”
    A horn honked. We both looked to see his mom’s car waiting at the curb.
    â€œSounds possible,” Ron said. “I’ll text you,” he shouted, as he ran toward the car.
    â€œLater,” I shouted back.
    I caught my usual bus for the ride home. Riding the bus wasn’t fun, because most of the riders were younger kids. But both my parents worked, so the bus was the only way for me to get home. I usually sat in the back and looked out the window. Or just thought about stuff.
    I grew up here in West Seattle. Most people don’t know that this area was the original Seattle. It’s where the white settlers first landed in this region to create their new home. But of course there were people already here. My mother’s people—the Duwamish Indians. Her ancestors were on the shore to greet the settlers when they arrived.
    Anyway, those are things I learned in the tribal culture classes my mother had me take when I was little. I’d been too busy for such things lately.
    My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I’d asked Dad for a smart phone like most of my friends had. But no luck. He said I could have one of those when I could pay for it myself.
    So I flipped the lame phone open to find a text from my friend Amy Chang. “Any l planning a get 2gether during spring break?” she asked.
    I texted back, “That’s what Ron & I r trying to figure out. I’ll let u know.”
    When I became a teenager, my non-Native friends complained that Indians always lived in the past. Without much thought, I decided I agreed with them.
    Of course I wanted to fit in with the other kids at school I hang out with. They’re a mixture of races: whites, Asians, Latinos, blacks—you name it. Most of them had figured out how to ignore their family’s past and live in the now. Track the trends. Merge with the moment.
    So I decided to do likewise and go with the flow. Nothing that my Duwamish mother, grandparents, or uncles tried to teach me from Native culture really applied to life today. They were so behind the times. It was easy to turn my back on all that and go with the flow.
    Another text came in. This time it was from Ben, my Latino friend. “My spring break is messed up. Got 2 go 2 Spokane 2 visit relatives.”
    â€œThat sucks,” I texted back. “Hope u make it thru the week—see u when u get back.” I closed my phone and stuffed it back in my pocket.
    What was I talking about before? Oh yeah. Going with the flow. Seattle was a great place to go with the flow. The home of Mariners baseball, Seahawks football, Starbucks coffee, and Microsoft. Sure, it was cloudy or rainy three hundred days of the year. So what. That’s one of the special things about the Northwest. The weather makes everything so green.
    I’d been swimming since I was little. I loved the water. I had dreams of being like Michael Phelps and winning twenty-two Olympic medals. Making the high school swim team was a step in that direction.
    My cell phone vibrated again. I dug it out of my pocket one more time and flipped itopen. Another text from Ron. “My mom sez chores 2moro will work fine.”
    I texted him back, “Hope my mom sez the same.”
    The bus let me out at the corner of my street. I walked the short two blocks to my house. The neighborhood was made up of little two- story brick houses that had seen better days. My house