Researching Pamela Clare's I-Team...

There are still about six weeks before NAKED EDGE, the next novel in my I-Team series, is released, but I’ve had several e-mails from people asking me how I researched the American Indian aspects of the story.  As with my other I-Team novels, the research occurred long before the novel was a spark in my imagination.

I first began covering Native issues as a journalist in 1995. I’m one of those who believe that the job of the journalist is to give a voice to the voiceless. Very rarely do we read anything of substance about contemporary American Indian issues in our newspapers. Most people know very little about reservation life — or about the lives of Native people who live off the reservation, by far the more numerous group. I wanted to do something about that.

I dug around and learned that some Navajo families were being forced off their traditional homesites for a variety of reasons far too complex and controversial to explain here. I asked permission to come to the Navajo Reservation—the dinetah—to report on the conflict. The elders, who didn’t trust journalists, said, “No.”

Respecting their wishes, I covered the issue as best I could from a distance for a few years before I received a call asking me to please come to the reservation now. So, with a verbal map that included things like, “I think there’s a cornfield planted near there,” and, “When you come to this pile of tires, keep to the left for a while,” I drove down to the rez by myself to cover a sacred ceremony that was on the brink of being interrupted by law enforcement. There were no road signs and no paved roads. Some of the ruts were big enough to swallow my little car.

The experience was transformative. After that, I was asked to come back again and again, covering a range of issues. Over the years, I spent nights sleeping under the stars in the desert, eating frybread with honey in the morning and mutton stew at night. I discovered that the beating of a single drum can make you feel more alive than anything you’ve ever known, that you don’t have to know the words to sing, and that you don’t have to speak to communicate.

My reporting on Navajo issues led to my being asked by the Lakota to come to the Pine Ridge and Cheyenne River reservations, where I covered a variety of topics, including the Si Tanka ride and the conflict between paleontologists and “looters” near Stronghold. By 2001, I had been charged by three recognized traditional Native leaders from three different nations—Lakota, Diné and Hopi—to act as a bridge between the Indian world and the world of mainstream America. I’ve tried to take that charge seriously as a journalist and now as a novelist.

It was at about that time that my own life unraveled. I was still dealing with some of my climbing injuries. I was recently divorced. The newspaper where I’d worked for the better part of a decade was forced into bankruptcy by embezzlement, and I lost my job. I felt defeated and deeply depressed.

Then Raymond James, a traditional Navajo spiritual leader whose family had been forced off its land many years back, held a special ceremony for me that enabled me to start my life over again. Ray’s wife, Kathleen Kozell-James, was incredibly supportive during that time, playing a major role in the ceremony and becoming a close friend.

And so it came to pass that the people I had hoped to help turned around and helped me. Prayers came in from the dinetah from people who lived in traditional hogaans without water or electricity, offering me comfort and strength. People who owned a single chicken offered to slaughter it and hold a feast for me. I can’t tell you how deeply their generosity touched me.

When one is feeling sorry for one’s self and those who have so little offer to give everything, it puts one’s struggles into perspective.

I have tried to the best of my ability to create in Kat James a true Diné character, a young woman who, like so many contemporary American Indians, is caught between tradition and the modern world. It has given me a chance to honor a deep and abiding friendship that grew out of my work as a reporter. Any mistakes with regard to Diné culture or language are mine alone. I offer this story respectfully and with gratitude.

Mitakuye Oyasin.  We are all one.

Pamela Clare
January 2010