Intertribal Life Newspaper -

"When I wake every morning, I am surprised I'm still alive. I don't do anything. I don't produce anything. I don't add anything to society. Each day I ask God why He let me live one more day."

These were the words my father told me just two months before he died.

When I was a child, every evening brought fearful anticipation of my father's drunken arrival home. Paydays were the worst. My family stacked tin cans inside of the front door to the house. We thought this crude alarm system could warn us of his imminent return, and we could somehow hide from his raging abuses. Some nights we wer...