Seasons Greetings

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year from Ani and Jackie.

Photo taken at Waupun Correctional Institution on 12/25/2009.

To all of you who follow this blog and support our efforts to find meaning and relationship under difficult circumstances, we send you and your families our very best wishes for a happy and healthy 2010.

We are grateful for your presence in our lives.

Ani and Jackie

Guest Blog From Jackie – Day of Conception

Ani’s day of conception took place in Chicago, in the early spring of 1966.

The story that I tell now I learned mostly from Ani’s birth father when I met him for the first time in 2002, and from Ani’s birth Aunts and Uncles, and from history books that tell the story of the Indian Relocation Movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s. During that time, people came to the reservations and told wonderful stories and showed pamphlets about life in the Cities for Indians. The pamphlets said that people would be taken care of and they would get wonderful jobs and make lots of money, and that life would be better in the City than on the Reservation. For many reasons, Ani’s family was a prime target for these ads. They were intelligent and ambitious people, and the eldest family male had for generations left the family at an early age to explore the world. And they were not afraid to try new things. Ani’s father said that his family was the first one to have a radio and that they always had a car when he was growing up – in the 30’s and 40’s, when most others did not.
………………………………………………….
(what follows is quoted from PBS.org)

In 1950, the average Native American on a reservation earned $950. The average black person earned $2,000, and the average white person earned almost $4,000 — over four times more than Indians.
So, in 1952, the federal government initiated the Urban Indian Relocation Program. It was designed to entice reservation dwellers to seven major urban cities where the jobs supposedly were plentiful.
Relocation offices were set up in Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Dallas. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) employees were supposed to orient new arrivals and manage financial and job training programs for them. Other BIA officials recruited prospective "Relocatees" from many of the reservations around the country. ….
Relocatees were supposed to receive temporary housing, counseling and guidance in finding a job, permanent housing, community and social resources. The new migrants also were given money to tide them over on a sliding scale based on the number of children in the family. A man, his wife and four children got $80 a week for four weeks.
That's what they were promised. Some found that the promises were not kept. Not every relocatee found a job, and those that did were generally at the lower end of the economic ladder. Others succumbed to alcohol and those who were accustomed to drinking in public on their home reservations got into trouble with the law when they drank on city streets. Many more were simply homesick so far away from their families and familiar landscapes.
Still more decided to return to their reservation. But over the years, it's estimated that as many as 750,000 Native Americans migrated to the cities between 1950 and 1980. Some came through the Relocation Program. Others came on their own.
Those who stayed eventually found other Indians although they usually were members of another tribe. By now inter-tribal marriages created a new generation of Indians who's identity was split between two or more tribes. But still more came.
In the 2000 Census, 79 percent of all Americans were living in cities.
For American Indians, the urban population had risen to 64 percent — a huge increase over the 1940 urban population of 8 percent.
While Indians still lagged behind non-Indians in economic power, in the 1960s urban Indians found a new political activism. They developed a sense of identity that was less tied to the reservation or tribe and more connected to the vast array of tribes in the cities.
2006 Native American Public Telecommunications
http://www.pbs.org/indiancountry/history/relocate.html
……………………..
So Ani’s father went to Chicago, and so did Ani’s Aunt May, Aunt Betty, Aunt Yolanda, and Uncle Mike. In Chicago they looked for jobs, and socialized with other Indians, and became politically active in AIM for a time. A lot of this socializing went on in bars on Chicago’s near north side - Clark Street. It was in a bar that Ani’s father met Ani’s mother, who was from a different reservation and a different tribe. But in Chicago this didn’t matter so much as being Indian was what drew people together.

Ani’s mother, Betty Pierce, came to Chicago from the Menomonee Reservation in Wisconsin in 1966. At first Betty stayed with her sister Shirley and her husband who had come to Chicago to find jobs in 1959. Betty soon started hanging out on Clark Street, which her sister Shirley referred to as "ghetto," and Ben's sister referred to as "skid row." But that was where the action was, even if some of it was on the rough side. That was where you could meet people and that is where Betty Pierce from the Menomonee Reservation met Ben Chosa from Lac du Flambeau. Before long they were living together and about 9 months later Ani - or "Baby Ben" as he was called then - was born.

Ani didn’t know any of this story or who his parents were until a few years ago when he met his father for the first time in 35 years, after losing him at age 7 months. Ani never saw his mother again after he lost her, too, along with his father. By the time we found his father in 2002, his mother had died.

Guest Blog From Jackie – Family

Ani has difficulty talking about the subject of family. So maybe it is premature or inappropriate for me to start with it. Ani lives mostly in the present which is delightful, but family is often about history. Ani mostly likes to talk about things that are fun for him, and family is not one of those things. My goal in talking about family is to create a structure for Ani’s story that is somewhat chronological and thus satisfies my need for linear organization. This is not a better way to tell a story, but I hope it will add a dimension and thus give Ani’s story greater depth and create more understanding in some ways. I have learned more about relationship and family from Ani than I ever dreamed possible and I would like to share some of what I have learned.

What really stands out for me in my 27 years of knowing Ani is how deeply the subject of family is embedded in his story while at the same time Ani cannot bring together any coherent sense of family for himself. “Relationship” is an abstraction of difficult meaning for Ani and “family” has shades and multitudes of meaning and innuendo galore. While many abstractions are frustrating to him, this is even more so. Many of the words that we might take for granted such as “aunt” or “cousin” or “grandfather” or “child” or “parent” leave him confused or frustrated or overwhelmed. Yet in practice, Ani is all about relationship. And in my own way, so am I. Yet often when it comes to family, he and I stand with fists clenched, eyes glaring, squaring off in opposition at opposite corners of the ring. It’s as if we speak a different language.

It’s as if Ani wants to start at the beginning, as if we are talking about learning the times tables before trying to learn algebra. So that’s where I’ll start. Ani and I go over and over the fundamentals of relationship almost every day – consistency, trust, reliability, honesty, respect, listening, understanding the other person’s point of view and taking it into account as much as possible. Ani has always demanded these things of me and been extremely sensitive when they were compromised. Relationship as a concept in practice has always there between us. As Ani and I learn about relationship together, it spills over into all of my relationships: consistency, integrity, non-judgmental listening, openness to the other’s experience, being responsive rather than reactive…all of these lessons benefit my relationships with family, neighbors, colleagues, clients. For Ani, these lessons seem to be about exploring and re-writing his own history. He doesn’t say this in so many words; rather he acts it out. He lives it. I am not saying he is an expert at relationship by any means, only that he is acutely sensitive to it and this sensitivity has been my guide and my teacher.

What is any child’s first knowledge of family? Being inside mom. What’s it like in there? Warm? Squishy? Patterns of light and dark, patterns of sound, patterns of movement? The baby starts to organize his world around these things. It’s what is known, predictable, survivable. Then comes birth and a huge change occurs. All of a sudden the baby is thrust into a topsy-turvy world that must at first seem terrible strange and alien. Before, the baby had to do nothing in order to eat. Now, the baby must find a way to get food. Before, the baby had to do nothing to fill his blood with oxygen and to get rid of waste. Now, the baby must breathe, pee, and poop. Not all babies make this transition, and if they don’t, they die.

The baby must learn to become aware of the sensations within him and then communicate them to his care-takers in order to survive. Hunger, thirst, wet, pain, fright, happy, content, irritated. The baby needs to learn the distinct differences between these internal experiences and then find ways to communicate each of them differently so that another person understands him and then responds to meet the need underneath the communication. Wow. What a huge task. Newborns' brains are working furiously to learn to do this, and good care-takers can do much to help it along by being consistent, listening carefully to another’s experience, responding to their understanding of what is being communicated by another person, and checking to see if their understanding was correct by carefully observing the baby’s reaction.

We never stop learning to do this. If we’ve made it through childhood with some glitches in this process, we continue to go back and re-learn it throughout our lives within all of our relationships. Human beings were built for relationship. We can’t survive without them. We start learning about them from the day of conception.

The Story of My Life...

...zero comments.

Guest Blog From Jackie – Introduction

Ani has invited me to post something on his blog. It has taken me awhile to figure out how to do this, what to say, what to talk about. I am very proud of Ani for going ahead and putting this blog out there. It takes a lot of courage to tell the world one’s story, especially when you know that the reception could very well be negative. I give Ani a lot of credit for doing this.

As Ani says, we have had a somewhat confusing relationship over the last 27 years. It doesn’t fit neatly into any one category. It has always been “friend”, but it has also always been something “more than friend”. It has gone very deep for both of us. It has spanned the generations of his family and mine, of how his family has come to live on a reservation that my family clearly benefits from and what our awareness of that fact means to us on a daily basis. It spans all of the ages and stages between us, from infancy through adulthood, and enriches our understandings of our own make-up as we see some amazing similarities in temperament and values reflected in how we each reacted to things at all of these ages. Knowing Ani has taught me more about my own family, my own history, my own personality than any other relationship I’ve had. Knowing Ani has brought me a steadfast friend. Knowing Ani has enriched my life and made me a better person.

As Ani embarks on this journey to describe himself to the world and in so doing describe himself to himself, I wish him well. I will attempt to bring another perspective to his travels, at times a very different perspective. And we will just let that be what it is without arguing about what’s right or what’s wrong. Every person naturally sees life from a different perspective and there is great richness and wisdom in acknowledging that truth and learning to benefit from it. However, since this is Ani’s blog, anything that I have written here will have been first cleared by him. I encourage him to disagree and to share his own perspective on anything I talk about.

Feasting in Waupun

What is more primitive than cooking? An act both necessary and sublime; filled with survival instinct and the intensely satisfying satisfaction of a well-made meal. As a prisoner, I find myself robbed of an act as dear to me as sex: cooking. I love cooking more than I do eating which I do as quickly as possible.

Institutionalization has conditioned my eating into 20 minute sprints – the exact time afforded inmates to eat a meal in the dining hall. If eating is a sprint, then for me cooking is a marathon, a thing not to be finished quickly. The only opportunity I have to cook is in my cell with items bought from the prison canteen. All the ingredients are either premade (Bushy Creek Chili) or insanely processed (Ramen Noodle), not to mention filled with preservatives and nothing fresh, and expensive.

Despite those limitations, we are creative critters, able to make a meal that’s if not exactly healthy, at least it’s flavorful and more often than not better than the slop ruined and served in the prison cafeteria.

I’ve noticed that people in here cook not so much to feed themselves, as to bond with others. I cook with my cellie because I like him and despite having very little in common with him, cooking built a bridge between us and made the indignities of close quarter living a little more bearable. There is so much value in having a group of friends or an identity group that uses food to make/reinforce bonds in a place that actively seeks to sever/destroy anything that brings more than two people together in bonds of family and commonality. What the overlords of this gulag do better than anything else is divide, never allowing a critical mass of anything form. To be certain, that is their mandate as this place is not populated by well-adjusted, well meaning people striving for the common weal. Fights, rages, and assault do take place here maybe not with cinematic frequency or drama, but in a world of wolves there are the wolves. So while they strive to control every aspect of our waking day, we break the rules to feed ourselves as we see fit.

Homemade hot pots bring us flavors from the home that they would deny us; most dangerous though is how the act cooking reinforces the us versus them mentality. We cook to spite them to show them that despite every indignity thrust upon us, every indifferently state-made meal ingested, that we cook for our pleasure with people we choose. Our middle finger thrust into the face of the despot more often than not takes the form of the burrito.

Behold the Prison Burrito

3 Ramen Noodles (any flavor but avoid the seafood ones)
2 Sevilla Hot Chili flavor Refried Beans & Rice
1 5 oz Sparrer’s Beef Salami
1 3.5 oz Splendore pepperoni (18 slices)
1 4 oz City Cow Nacho Cheese Dip with Jalapenos
1 3.5 oz Cactus Annie Onion Dip
1 Bushy Creek Chili
1 pkg Cactus Annie flour tortillas (6)
Keefe BBQ Sauce and Hot Sauce

Crush the Ramen Noodles as much as possible by hand and combine with the rice and beans in a large plastic bowl that has a good lid. Add as much hot water as you think necessary. Mix in 2 or 3 of the flavoring packs. In another bowl stir together the nacho cheese and onion dip with enough BBQ sauce and hot sauce to make a spread with the consistency of mayonnaise. Set aside. Cut the salami in quarters and then slice the salami into two inch strips; you should get about 16 strips. Pre-heat the cheese mixture. Lay out the six tortillas and equally divide the cheese mixture among them. Spread the cheese on the tortilla in an even layer. Put three slices of pepperoni onto the cheese and split the salami as evenly as possible amongst the six tortillas. Evenly divide the Ramen/Beans and rice mixture, top with the preheated chili, and close the burritos as best as you can. Place 3 rolled burrito into a new Ziploc bag and close. Suck the air out of the Ziploc prior to closing to make cooing in boiling water easier. Makes six burritos.

Those are the basics; there are a lot of variations but most edible prison burritos stick to the basic framework of Ramen Noodles for bulk, salami for meat, and cheese. I personally will use a kimchii-like mix of peppers and pickles that have been seasoned and bottled as a top garnish – it adds a little heat and a nice crunch. You can add refried beans, but I think it’s a bit over-kill with using beans and rice, but I’ve done that, too. There is also some leeway with using white brown, and Kraft spicy/cheesy rice all of which are sold here. Often burritos take the form of potluck especially when there are multiple people throwing in.

A note about the salt content. Everything sold here is prepackaged so it has loads of sodium. Using the ramen noodle spice packs without keeping an eye on the salt could lead to waking up the morning after a meal absolutely parched from salt induced dehydration. Depending on the flavor of the ramen noodle I might only use 2 flavor packets. Just a thought.

Coming Attractions

We are working on posting my artwork and my comments regarding it. Currently we are in the process of photographing my artwork. I hope to have something up by the middle of next week. Stay tuned.

Evolution of Man and the Clamicidal Maniac

Before I begin my usual diatribe against the universe and all things stupid and unfair, a brief word on my recent absence.

For those unfortunates that believe prisons are places of reformation and not asylums, ponder the following tale. I know that what a man goes through while incarcerated will most likely garner little sympathy, yet it seems that some of the odder bits of the prison experience were omitted from the brochure. I was never informed that not only would I be responsible for my own actions here, but that I would also be accountable for the actions of my cellmate. Yeah, it seems that when contraband is found in a shared cell (in this case a lethal sewing needle), both occupants are, in prison parlance, “good to go". Despite the fact that the needle was found in the personal possession of my cellie, despite his stepping forward to claim responsibility for the item, the supervisor on duty took us both to segregation. I guess in their minds where there's smoke - there's fire; or in this instance where there’s a needle there’s illegally hemmed trousers. So I sat in seg for the weekend, which turned out to be the hottest weekend of the year with temperatures in the nineties. And that was another slap from the cosmic clown that runs the universe as I had just received newly repaired fan mere days before this incident. (No fans allowed in seg.) I swear I seem to be petting the wrong end of the dog my entire life. A flatulent incontinent dog. So I went through the rifling of my property, arguing with the property officers about missing items and generally hating life. Oh, not to mention another new cellie. Life doesn’t get much better.

So I’ve been rather disregulated, uncomfortable with my new surroundings. My life has done an ever-so-slow implosion. While there was no major catastrophe, I am getting tired of putting out tiny fires. But then again I can deal with it; and I know that this is nothing compared to the challenges I would face in “the World”.

I feel like I’ve hit this critical stage of evolution; where a species either lives with their adaptations or goes extinct. Here are two new adaptations to report. I’ve come to the conclusion that while I hate saving money and delaying gratification, I am starting to see the benefits. By not raiding my mutual fund profits and doing with less in the short run, I have survived the recent recession having lost not a penny of my capital. That feels pretty good. I also made the intuitive leap of realizing that getting a year-by-year subscription to a magazine has its advantages. Previously, I have sent in my magazine renewals immediately (afraid of losing out even when they sent them to me 6 months in advance) and I always went for the 2-year subscription that the magazine paraded in front of me as an obvious money saver. That appeared to be a no-brainer to me. In the last month I figured out that while costing a wee bit more, renewing a magazine for only 1 year leaves me with more flexibility when the lean times hit. I feel like the first hominid that stood tall.

“Check me out, I am fully erect. Holy crap! Is that a saber-toothed gerbil?”

So where does this leave me? Have I raised the bar permanently; never again to be able to say that stuff is too hard? Another troubling implication is that we are trying to get an assessment for me (some nonsense about childhood trauma and what not). Am I ruining the before picture of me? When I am assessed will I test out as "normal“ – which leaves me with no other explanation for me than being a low-down, dirty, mean son-of-a-bitch?

I also worry about the witch-doctoring and tinkering my friend Jackie is currently doing. She insists on reading up on the best methods currently available for fixing what ails my brain and trying them out on me! I know that she means well and that if we were to be judged by our peers as to who was more of a success in life it would be no contest; yet, I can't help but wonder about a woman who seems to base her decisions to purchase a sweater solely because the buttons are mother-of-pearl. She is the Clamicidal Maniac. Nothing seems to grab her attention like the shiny nacre of a clam shell button. How many mollusks must pay the price before her button lust is sated?

I've been informed by the powers that be in the prison matrix that due to my having "[Several] major conduct reports in the last year" I am being denied a job in the prison food service. It is the free world equivalent of being told by McDonalds, "Thanks, but no thanks". I admit that my ego is suffering the most although I am irritated that if I am going to be denied employment then at least try to make an honest evaluation of the facts. In the past 35 months I've had TWO major conduct reports. Both stemmed from the same incident. So I've decided to appeal the decision to his superior. Not that I enjoy this process as all of my life I have hated the appearance of being seen as begging these functionaries for anything, but right now I have nothing better to do than deliver an eye poke to the proverbial institutional eye. Jab, jab, jab.

While I'm on the subject of rejection I will relate another stinging slight I recently received. I recently wrote an old friend, lets call her LISA. Admittedly I was never the best at writing; forming connections with people was never my best trait. I guess that I have my mother to thank for that. But I reached out to Lisa and invited her to get in touch with me. Seeing that I've known her since I was twenty, I thought that she might be willing to write. I guess that I was WAY off on that. While I don’t care that she doesn’t want to write or reconnect, I am left to wonder just how much my past is going to haunt me? Seems to me that some folks are far too comfortable simply making their minds up without even finding out the truth of the matter. The media is now the arbiter of what we think and how we feel about any given subject. So why should anyone get to know me, or listen to what I have to say? Maybe we are all too content to allow our minds to be hi-jacked by some viperous talking head that has discovered that the greatest ratings lie in the hands of the lowest common denominator. For those brave souls that are not afraid to find themselves alone with their own brains, please don’t be afraid to contact me at the following address: Scott C. Kieson 127174, WCI Box 351, Waupun, WI 53963.

Pardon my absence

Dear Readers:

Ani asked me to check in with you and explain that he has been away for awhile due to events beyond his control in the prison. He is getting re-organized and will be back soon with a new blog entry and some photos of his artwork. Thanks for your patience.

Jackie

With Friends Like These

I've come to this having no idea what I'm going to talk about. Can I be blocked already - do I have nothing to share? Okay, if I'm too self-conscious then I'll get nothing written. After considering my options, I think that I'll introduce a couple of the most influential people in my life. This is of course in no order of magnitude, significance, or a complete list. It is simply who came to mind.

My best friend is Jackie W. I met her when I was 14 or 15. Oh, one of the things you will come to realize is that one of my many disabilities is not being able to accurately place chronological events. If time is like a train, and events are box cars, then my box cars don't connect to each other. They just sort of bang up against each other and will move and shift their place in line. If my brain is the locomotive, let's just say that this train moves kind of s-l-o-w-l-y. I'm just saying. I met Jackie when I was locked up. Having pretty much nothing in common, we nevertheless sort of clicked. She has her version of what attracted her to me. What I remember the most about her was a pair of white shorts she would wear. In my defense, I was a 15 year old boy and none too sophisticated. One of the things that sticks out in my brain is that the woman always told me the truth. I was always acutely aware of the lies that adults told children. Call it an adoptee's sixth sense. One of the more insidious lies I was told by my adoptive parents is that "we chose you". The implication is that my birth parents simply did not want me. I could get into how my adoptive parents were no prizes, but that would be a bit off topic; yet, I knew that I wasn't some sort of item left in the bargain bin at the adoption agency.

Jackie always tried to give me some control over my life. Not that my being in control is always a good thing, but her heart has always been in the right place. Even from the start, we had a complex relationship. By the time she met me, the Kiesons had all but given up on me. She would smoothly transfer from role to role as needed. She was a confident, a friend, and even a mother figure, even though she had 3 children of her own. Even now, she from time to time still acts in those roles. While its a bit confusing to me, it seems to work, for the most part. I can say with some sense of certainty (and a little embarrassment) that I seem to have gotten more out of this relationship than she has. Not only has she been with me in my darkest hours, she has withstood my most outrageous and chaotic behavior. I am not the easiest child/man to know. I have lied to her, stolen $7000 and shot it up my arm, been unfaithful to her, and generally been an insensitive bastard. I can't blame my misdeeds on me simply being an untrusting, unreachable, deeply flawed human. I am all of that, but sometimes I just can't stand the closeness, the intimacy of another person. Now, I am working every day to change those things and right what I can. I am repaying the money I stole, and while the truth and I have a nodding acquaintance, I try to avoid the big fat bald-faced lie. The problem with that is that, not only does she know me so well, I have discovered that I don't have a poker face. My deceptions tend to be fairly transparent to her. She will also ask the most pointed questions, that leave me no room to wiggle. She has taught me that with her, truth really is the best policy.

For example, recently I had to take a piss test that I knew I was going to fail, since I was high when I took the god-damned thing. In the past, I would not have told her that not only was I going to go to segregation, I would most likely have denied my guilt, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. It's a convict thing: You never admit anything, even if they bust you with a bag of weed and the pipe in your mouth. But the truth always does have a way of coming out - so I've learned. This time, I told her ahead of time that not only was I smoking the ganja, but I was too stupid to get away with it. (It's ridiculously easy to avoid detection in prison, unless you're careless, or in my case, too stupid.) While being far from thrilled with this news, we dealt with it pretty quickly and moved on. So while admittedly, they can train bears to ride tiny bicycles faster than teaching me that not everybody is my enemy and thus deserves to know the truth, I have proven that I can learn and change. Some things just take longer than others.

Now let me tell you about Sally. I met Sally through Jackie, who met her through an online parents of adoptees' organization. I tend to cast a jaundiced eye upon some of the people Jackie finds online. Most fall into the category of quacks and cranks. However, like I said, I'm evolving. I now give the benefit of the doubt to people. I am so glad that I did because, I then met Sally. Even though she lives in Australia, half-way around the world, she has had a large influence upon me. So often people will instantly write off people like me as beneath contempt. Being someone who would dismiss another human being without thought myself, I understood the dynamic. I like to believe that Sally looked beyond my obvious flaws as a human being, and saw the spark of good within me. I'm a far more humble man when I think that a human half way around the world finds enough value in me to include me in her life. Holy crap. I just made her sound like a saint. I know Sally is human, imperfect like everyone else, but she works hard to make the world a better place for her family. If she can do that, then I can face my own short-comings and be a better man.

That's a fairly small circle of humanity, eh? I believe that a person is pretty lucky if they can find one or two good friends in a lifetime. At least that's what I used to believe. It was fairly naive. I had surrounded myself with junkies and criminals and was somehow shocked that my life was empty. I had closed myself off from the world. I never connected with people; a legacy of being born to a woman who was ill-equipped to deal with her own losses. Her inability to attach to me as an infant resulted in me never fully attaching to others in my life. This understanding of that process shakes me to the core of my being. Since I was never able to emotionally connect with people, I never learned how to empathize. I could cause pain in others, but not feel that pain. Never once during any of my crimes did I feel the damage I was inflicting. Even today, I struggle with my past by not being as emotionally available as I want to be, as I can be. I am also overwhelmed by the trail of devastation I left behind me. I can't undo that, ignore it, or wish it away. All I can do is accept my responsibility in causing that pain, face it every day, and work to never be the same man I was then. It's a small restitution, but it's all I can do right now. Maybe tomorrow will allow me to do more.

In the beginning....

I'm not sure what I'm doing here. I'm talking more than the metaphysical; I'm talking practical. I have a forum. I'm just confused about the purpose. Considering the possibilities makes me dizzy(er). This is most certainly some sort of mid-life crisis. I seem to somehow have reached this crossroads unsure of how I got here or where to go next. So let's start with the facts because they seem to be immutable (even if we know they aren't.) I'm 42 years old, incarcerated, Native American, no children (wish I had them), essentially unattached (complicated). Those facts won't change in the near future. So I won't spend too much time talking about that. I'd rather talk about what I can affect. In no particular order, I'd like to put context to some of the following subjects:

• I want to meet normal people. I finally learned that most of my life has been spent with the crazy, the flawed, the profoundly abnormal. I was born to people who survived genocide, adopted by christian monsters. I spent most of my life with drug addicts and criminals. And, while all of this was normal to my frame of reference, I think I knew at that deep primordial level, that this really wasn't the life experience of everyone else. Now I need to change that dynamic. I've begun to evolve. I'm working hard to lay the ghosts of my messed up life to rest. I no longer desire the company of people whom I want to have nothing in common with. And yes, the irony of being in prison, and wanting to be around normal people, is not lost on me.
• I want my best friend's children to understand me. While I've given up on them actually liking me, I hope hope hope some sort of understanding is possible. These writings won't be confessional and I won't justify my life. I've lived a life no one would sanely have chosen for themselves. And I can deal with the consequences. Yet, I need to show my scars: both self-inflicted and those inflicted upon me. It's not as if I sprung up one day completed formed, in perfection, as life doesn't work that way. I'm a complex problem, formed by some weird alchemy of failed social policy, religious brain-washing, greed, and pharmaceuticals. I have been my own worst enemy, although I'm trying to change that. I know that I've done damage to their (my best friend's children's) lives, even if it was unintentional, I would like to be responsible and do no further harm.
• I have a ton of documents I want to share with the world. As a child I was taken by the State of WI Department of Health and Social Services, given to the Lutheran Social Services, and sold to monsters. My experiences might be nothing more than a cautionary tale of what not to do with adopted children. I'm grateful to have met a wonderful group of people who are trying a new way of healing the wounds of the process of adoption. So I invite everyone to look at my life on paper.
• This is also a place to display my art. I'm neither a trained artist nor am I all that good. Yet, what I create I like. I do pin-up art mostly because it's what sells in prison, not to mention that drawing beautiful women isn't a bad way to spend a few hours. I work exclusively in pencil; color mystifies me - I can't work it. I'm also aware that there are people who would psychoanalyze me through my art. To those I say: Have at it. I can take it. However, like the man said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
• I also want to share the prison experience. I've seen one episode of Oz and was kind of shocked to see a maximum security prison depicted falsely. Maybe years ago, or in another state, prisons were/are like that. However, for the most part, Wisconsin prisons are deadly dull. The officers are professional, and while there are staff who will lie and go out of their way to screw a convict over, they are in the minority. So I won't spend a lot of time or effort talking about people trying to learn an honest living. What I will talk about is what I do from day to day and some insight into my thought processes.

My Name is Legion

So this is it. Not so much a beginning as a re-imagining. I won't address that which has already been written about Scott Kieson. There's nothing more to be said about that. I want to talk about my other incarnations.


The name on my birth certificate is Ben Chosa Jr. I like its brevity; no middle name or even an initial. The "Jr." is misleading as I am actually the third in my family with that name. I kept that name for the first few years of my life. Like so many Native Americans from northern Wisconsin, destiny would soon drag me far from my family, reservation, and culture. Destiny took the form of social policy and christianity. I then became Scott Carl Kieson, the stolen child of Gary and Barbara Kieson, unwilling brother to Cindy and Tammy Kieson. I never really fit in with them. I was a dark, short boy in the land of tall, willowy, blond Germans. I was chosen to be the standard-bearer for the Kiesons who to that point were unable to produce a natural male heir. And while that plan didn't really work out for them, I find myself stuck with this name. I call this name my "government" name, thrust upon me when I was adopted. More on that to come.

I'm fond of the saying, "all things by the will of the Creator." Not that I'm always in agreement with the Creator. But then again, he saw fit to bring me home to my people even if it was 30 years later, addicted, convicted, filled with confusion and anger, but at least metaphorically home if not physically. One of the first things I asked my father for was a name. I wanted a name I could use when I was at ceremonies. I'm not sure the ancestors knew who the hell Scott Kieson was. So my newly re-found father made arrangements with a medicine man who drove from the White Earth reservation to hold a naming ceremony. The medicine man prayed for many days for the Spirits to send a name, but nothing came to him. As he left Minnesota for the long drive to my rez in Lac du Flambeau, a storm began to form behind him and would follow him as he drove East. The storm was all black clouds, thunder, and lightening and would chase the medicine man to the borders of my reservation where it broke up and dissipated. I guess a medicine man's main quality is being observant because he then knew my spirit name: Animikiigiizhig (Thunderbird Sky). A thunderbird sky occurs during a thunderstorm where lightening arcs from cloud to cloud as opposed to striking the ground. The lightning is said to take the form of a thunderbird. It's a good name, a name of power, a name I have my doubts that I can live up to. But if it's all the same to you, I think I'll try.

So this brings me to the last name I have which is the diminutive of Animikiigiizhig. Admittedly, Animikiigiizhig is a big old Ojibwe mouthful, not only for thick white tongues, but for most natives too. Thus, all my friends and loved ones call me Ani. Just like my enemies, and the white people who run these iron houses, know me as Scott Kieson, just like my family knows me as Ben Chosa Jr., just like my ancestors know me as Animikiigiizhig, whatever you choose to call me is your choice, but I hope you would call me Ani.