native to place
My grandfather, Dante Valentino Pricco served his entire life. Not in the army. He made bread for a lot of people. His father made bread, and his father’s father made bread. I was told that my grandpa’s great, great, great grandpa was the only one in the village in Italy with a hearth. His people left the village of San Giovanni Canavese, and planted themselves in the village of Bessemer, Michigan, in the Gogebic Iron Range. They spoke a language, native to their place, and brought this with them. My grandfather was the last American born-carrier in my lineage, of this native language, indigenous to N. Italy.
My grandpa sang Italian folksongs and danced most of his life. He told stories about the history of his people, the wine and bread making, the bakery, and the past with a nostalgic and bittersweet twinkle. He would sometimes sigh and say, “Those were the good ole days; things sure have changed.”
He took good care of his people as they aged and died. He lovingly served his wife for over 75 years. He fed her lunch every day at the nursing home while she was declining from Alzheimer’s. He visited the first generation immigrants in the nursing homes and popped chocolates in their mouths.
The Gogebic Range, named by the Anishinabe, meaning, "where trout rising to the surface make rings in the water”, is the region where I grew up, where my grandpa grew up, and to where his grandpa immigrated from San Giovanni Canavese in Italy.
When I was younger, if you asked someone the meaning of the name, ‘Gogebic,’ they’d say, ‘I don’t know,’ or ‘ain’t that some Finlander name?’, or ‘maybe it is a mining word?’
The original people of the region, Anishinabe, ‘original people’, have been hidden, mostly forgotten and live nearby in tribal communities facing many challenging issues including extreme poverty, youth suicide, domestic violence, diabetes, meth addiction, gang bangs, murder and rape.
Over a decade ago, while doing a choose your own writes of passage adventure, I met some Ojibway/Anishinabe folks near Cass Lake, on the Cass Lake reservation in northern Minnesota’s iron range. My grandfather used to deliver bread near there, back in the day. They were nervous around me and I was nervous around them. It takes time to get to know strangers and build trust anywhere. It takes time for people to share their stories. The stories I heard form the people I met were devastating to me. They splintered my heart.
In reservations along the iron range, I murder and suicide is high among youths. Even ten year olds commit suicide. They don’t want to live in homes dealing with the unresolved trauma of the past by perpetuating alcohol, meth abuse and domestic violence. Also in communities across the iron range, many non-native youth are really, really lost. However, the native stories I heard were extreme. The family I met was grieving the loss of their sixteen year old son, who had been murdered by a gang, scalped, and had his tattoos scraped off his body. I learned another kid not long after being murdered, had his tattoos burned off his body. In this bioregion, there are holes in the earth from mining and holes in the people. The holes of the earth are filled with swamp water, and the holes in many of the lost people are filled with alcohol water. Go figure. What we do to the earth, we do to ourselves.
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