OKC

Observation:  When wanting to survive in the wilderness, the most consistent way to detect water is to monitor local plant life.  A convergence of trees, bushes, and other type of flora can often signal water to some degree.  That explains why there is always water in desert oases.  Without the water, there would be no oasis.  Pretty simple logic.

Present day Observation:  Looking for an electrical outlet in an airport, always seek out laptop-users.  They converge on outlets like plants do to water in the desert.  This is so common that I am starting to think when we teach our kids etiquette, you should never claim one of the seats or chairs right next to an outlet.  Like offering your seat to the elderly or handicapped on a bus, so too should you offer your seat to anybody carrying a laptop case if said seat is in close proximity to an electrical outlet.  This occurs to me more today at Denver International Airport than at any other time.  I am among the horde of laptop carriers drifting among the gates and giving irritated looks to those who’ve camped out in front of outlets, reading books or daydreaming, oblivious to the fact that we are this close to politely, if tensely, asking them to consider moving over a seat.  In Wolfgang Puck’s one fellow and I quietly rush to the same pillar, in here pillars mean outlets, only to find some clod has rudely stack his luggage right over the source.  It’s so rude to us laptop-philes as to be insulting, like double-parking.

I am flying from to Portland via Denver and Seattle en route from Oklahoma City, where this year’s National Indian Head Start Directors’ Association Annual Conference is being held.  Though I am biased against most of the Midwest for reasons pertaining to college football and the Bowl Championship Series—Big Twelve teams always seem to finagle their way into the major bowls and championship games—I am willing to give credit when credit is due.  Oklahoma City is, by and large, a pretty cool town, and left me wondering what else might be found if I had the time to venture out.

It reminds me of Lincoln, Nebraska, where four years ago I attended the Native American Journalists Association Annual Conference.  Red brick buildings, flat views, wide streets, and an almost religious reverence for the local football team(s), mainly the Oklahoma Sooners.  A Sooner is, if I’ve been accurately informed, somebody who came over prior to the great land-grab some 130 years ago and basically squatted on their plots.  They came sooner, get it?

Being an Oregon Duck inevitably leads to talking about the football game between UO and OU back in 2006, when officials blew a call that let the Ducks rally and win by a single point.  It is pointless to try and point out that the Ducks themselves were robbed back in 2001 when the BCS elected to oversee them for OU’s rival Nebraska in the National Championship game, a game in which the Cornhuskers were destroyed only days after the Ducks destroyed the other Sooner rival, Colorado.

OKC has invested heavily in making its downtown area overly pleasant.  There is a series of canals meant to mimic San Antonio’s, complete with boat tours.  And the entire downtown, named Bricktown, is very little but bars, restaurants, nightclubs, and a baseball stadium.  A former Northwest franchise, the Seattle Supersonics turned Oklahoma City Thunder, is supposedly around, but you wouldn’t know because the Sooners dominate everything sport related.  The town of Norman is twenty-something miles away, close enough for students to flood the streets at night, making me realize how long ago were my own college days.

My first night I am awoken at 5 a.m. by a thunderclap so loud everybody else I spoke to woke up as well.  One of my workshop instructors confesses that, like me, after that and with the constant thunder grumbling, sleep was nigh impossible.  The thunderstorm, in hindsight, was a welcome respite from scorching humid weather that makes your clothes sweat-soaked within minutes of emerging from the air-conditioned hotel.  Wednesday reached 99 degrees.

I found time to eat at country musician Toby Keith’s large bar and grill smack dab in the middle of it all.  Overall, a very cool place, and a very big place.  So big that the plates look small, quite an accomplishment given that they are anything but.  The side dishes are mini-meals themselves.  I get about halfway through mine.  One of my companions, Denise Harvey, doesn’t even get that far.  The baked potato alone on her plate would have been dinner.

Of course Oklahoma has its share of Indians too, and they are everywhere, in the artwork, on the flag, in posters, in the streets, even the Will Rogers Cowboy Museum is seemingly half-Indian.  The residents, from what I can tell after four days, integrate the Indian history and culture nicely into a common state identity.  This may be cowboy country, but plenty of Indians remain.  The Chickasaws play the role of host at this conference.

The conference itself would be a whole other posting.  As in years past, as a man I am a celebrity, more so as a Tribal leader.  There are only two others at this conference, and for whatever reason, the very fact we are bothered to show up elicits comments like “Boy I wish our Council was this involved!”  I don’t know if that is a complement to me or a backhand to their own respective Council.  It doesn’t matter.  This year, as in the past, I get a lot out of the conference.  I am reminded that there are parts of tribes that get lost in the swirl of gaming, economic development, enrollment, Council politics, per capita and other assorted things.