This is the fourth article in my series about our changing Earth from interviews with Native Americans shared in We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth, edited by Dahr Jamail and Stan Rushworth (USA 2022). My presentation does not follow the order of the interviews.

#4: Shannon Rivers (Akimel O’otham) – Balance
      (Chapter 10, pp. 140-158)

Shannon Rivers, a member of the Akimel O’otham (River People), talked with Dahr and Stan in October 2020 from his humble office at the Indian Health Center in San Jose, California. Born in 1966 and raised on the Gila River Indian Community in Southern Arizona, he grew up in poverty, typical of Indigenous reservations.

His stepfather, who entered his life when he was about six or seven years old, was a Korean War veteran. He had an ugly hump on his shoulder from a bullet wound in his collarbone, which shattered and never healed correctly. He drank heavily every day, then awakened at 3 a.m. to work in the cotton fields in the Arizona heat, seven days a week. Though he sobered up around the time Shannon was twelve, there were still issues and dysfunction in the family.

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