We are more than the worst thing

we have ever done

One afternoon last summer I trekked to Billings for a one-on-one training with the deputy warden of the Montana Women’s Prison. The couple of hours satisfied a requirement for me to teach a small group of inmates who’d signed up for the online Native American Studies course that I provide at Dawson Community College. I was warned against becoming too comfortable with the inmates, offering special treatment or accepting favors, and generally succumbing to manipulation by them. Such a relationship would admittedly have been hard to cultivate, interacting as we did through only the course platform and not even in email. But still: I had been prepped.

I had to create, essentially, two parallel courses, because the inmates and the other DCC students were not permitted to interact with each another. Thus all the assignments required dual tracks. Additionally, the inmates’ internet access was restricted, so any research assignments needed some tweaking to make them feasible for them. In the end the group of four turned out to be some of the most thoughtful, conscientious students I’ve ever taught in that class.

I was curious about what landed them in the prison. I researched them. I wrestled with doing it, and I wish I could say I didn’t. In the end, though, I was able to think of them simply as students, to appreciate their scholarship, and to marvel at their personal resilience in the face of how their lives turned out, certainly not what they envisioned or wanted.

I lifted this from the internet even though I was there last summer. I took no pics.

Native Americans make up a hugely disproportionate number of prisoners in our state’s penal system. According to a 2023 Montana Public Radio story,¹ they top 20% in Montana’s prisons, despite composing just 7% of the state’s population. In the class I taught, two of the four students were Indigenous, a fact they volunteered in the introductory discussion forum.

Indigenous women face particularly difficult circumstances. Check out Luana Ross’ book Inventing the Savage if you want to learn more. During my “training” at the prison, I was reminded of some things I believe I read in that book.² Namely, that women inmates tend to use manipulation to get their needs met because, as the deputy warden pointed out, that’s how they navigated life’s difficulties such as abusive partners, neglectful parents (very much a legacy of boarding schools), and substance abuse. Add to that systemic racism, lack of opportunity, and threats of violence, Native American women experience some of the toughest challenges.

It makes me think of the former female students I have who are incarcerated there or in local jails, what they experienced that led to their crimes. The kinds of pressures, supports and lack of supports, the family dynamics, cultural guidance and gaps which contributed to who they have become.

I know something about one of them, S. She is so young, just barely 21 and serving a 20-year sentence. We’ve had a sparse correspondence over the past year and a half, and I’ve sent a couple of books because I remember that she was quite a reader in school. Her first parole hearing is slated for late this year and I hope so much for her success, not just in that hearing but in her life beyond. She’s asked me for a letter of support, which I’ve been pondering writing, weighing the truthfulness I can bring against what I know.

Yet a friend recently reminded me of Bryan Stevenson’s words from Just Mercy: “Each of us is more than the worst thing we have ever done.” Draw lines where you must, but my longest life’s work as a teacher of adolescents has trained me to be mindful and forgiving of mistakes that are erasable and those that are not, of ways that society punishes those who transgress and the love we must simultaneously extend our students when they do. I haven’t always managed this, but I know I should. And I try. The deputy warden stated as much within the prison context: the inmates are already serving their sentences by being here. We don’t need to punish them further and make their experience unbearable.

Will I write a letter of support for S’s parole hearing? Of course I will. The letter may carry weight. Each word adding heft to the scales that hold the prison door fast may combine with others, by and by providing a counterbalance to slide open that leaden portal. In truth, composing it is a simple task, handwritten in blue or black ink on notebook paper, the letter itself so light, it weighs almost nothing at all.³

---

Dot and I continued to work the last weeks together. Once we weighed baby Jason. We unlatched his little knit suit, heavy as armor, and bundled him in a light, crocheted blanket. Dot went into the shack to adjust the weights. I stood there with Jason. He was such a solid child, he seemed heavy as lead in my arms. I placed him on the ramp between the wheel sights and held him steady for a moment, then took my hands slowly away. He stared calmly into the rough, distant sky. He did not flinch when the wind came from every direction, wrapping us tight enough to squeeze the very breath from a stone. He was so dense with life, such a powerful distillation of Dot and Gerry, it seemed he might weigh about as much as any load. But that was only a thought, of course. For as it turned out, he was too light and did not register at all.

1. This story cites Dr. Desiree Fox, who I’m pleased to report, is also a former student of mine!

2. It’s been a while since I read it, like 15 years probably

3. This ending was inspired by the ending of Louise Erdrich’s short story “Scales,” about a woman who worked the truck scales along an interstate, and the baby conceived while she visited her man (Chippewa, seems important given the context of this essay) in the penitentiary. I taught this story to seniors in my student teaching experience and my supervising teacher told me, “I don’t think I would teach that. It’s so depressing.” I disagree. There might be other compelling reasons not to teach this story in high school, but “depressing” isn’t one of them. People recover from mistakes — or they don’t — and we carry on. And creating new life in spite of (inside of!) a penal system that tends to crush life is pretty inspired, I’d say. I’ve provided the final paragraph of that story below the divider. You can find the whole thing in Love Medicine and decide for yourself.