It quickly became a new dream to share the vocation that I was passionate about with a group of high school students that were the same age I was when I discovered photography. Aaron had been one of the 12 year old kids playing ping-pong and foosball in the after-school youth center I ran in Crow Agency in the 90’s – and now was a rising star in the world of anthropology with a recent masters degree and TEDx talk under his belt. Thanks to a chance encounter the year before with Apsáalooke tribal member and anthropologist Aaron Brien, we had hatched a plan to bring the National Geographic Photo Camp to the Crow Reservation. Against all odds, I had managed fulfill the crazy dream of my younger self, and become a professional photographer. Now, 21 years later, I found myself braced against the wind on the black tarmac parking lot of the Billings airport in search of my rental car with a knot of stress in my stomach. I had fallen in love with this place, I had fallen in love with the Apsáalooke people, and now I too was a branch in this driftwood lodge. As spring turned to summer, Kenneth and Hannah adopted me into the Pretty On Top family. Just as driftwood bands together in turbulent waters, so do the Apsáalooke people. Ashammaliaxxiia is the word for the Apsáalooke clan system and it translates to “Driftwood Lodges.” As the name metaphorically implies, the purpose of the clan system is to provide spiritual and material support to one another. I realized the intangible I had failed to grasp could be summed up in the Apsáalooke word Ashammaliaxxiia. I moved from my house by the tracks into the home of Kenneth and Hannah Pretty On Top where I witnessed this kindness and generosity every day. As the bitter winds of winter raced onto the planes of Montana, I began to understand. I noticed every time I visited a home, no matter the time of day or night, food was pushed into my hands – even when many of the homes seemed to be living meal-to-meal. I noticed when a man tripped and fell on the uneven sidewalk of Makawasha Ave, a complete stranger, handed him a couple dollars. There was something different, something hard to place a finger on, something the Apsáalooke people shared that was incredibly powerful. Within weeks of my residency in a room a hundred yards from the Northern Pacific Railway tracks in Crow Agency, I realized it was much more than the landscape that had taken me captive. To that end I had packed my Minolta Maxxum 8000i and a few rolls of black and white film in the back of my hatchback and this new, strange, big sky landscape captivated me. I had discovered photography two years earlier in high school and had the crazy dream that someday I would be a professional photographer. The rain washed streets and dense green canopy I knew from Virginia couldn’t look more different than eastern Montana’s alfalfa covered hills that looked like massive green ocean swells under an endless sky. As I watched my friends enroll in various universities around the country, I packed my small gold colored Nissan Sentra and drove from Virginia to Montana to volunteer at an after-school youth center filled with ping pong and foosball tables on the Apsáalooke (Crow Indian) reservation. I was a tall and lanky 18 year old filled with wanderlust. On my first trip to Montana twenty one years before I had felt this same knot of anxiety as I pulled off Highway 90 past the hot pink colored Ammaaiisshuuwuua laundry mat that sits on Makawasha Ave across the street from the white and red Teepee gas station in the reservation town of Crow Agency. I didn’t know if the trip would produce the miracle I had just promised, but like a rock climber on a difficult ascent who is past the point of no return – my only option was up. My stomach fell through the trapdoor of anxiety as I tapped the red circular end call button on my phone. “I can be on a plane to Montana tomorrow” I said confidently. This is heaven, This is my land, This is Crow land, This is home. -Icezada Little Light, National Geographic Photo Camp Student
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