Your Worst Day? Or Luckiest Day? 101
Depends on how you look at things whether you are having the most unlucky day possible or you are lucky beyond all chance and happenstance. If you see yourself as unlucky, you are a victim and you see no way out. The universe has conspired to take a big dump on you.
If, even in the middle of a massive struggle, facing obstacles that are overwhelming, you find a way to see even one fortunate aspect, chances are you are going to not only overcome that which is challenging you, but you’re going to be able to overcome the next and the next.
The Trick to all of this is to never EVER ask: “What else can go wrong?” Because it seems the Universe does have a ready answer for that and it will immediately appear on top of the pile you are currently facing. That’s just one of my cosmic observations.
What follows is an absolutely true story.
I was on Highway 101 on my way south to LA or San Diego... this was in 1980 or so, and the sun was just getting low on the horizon. I was on a long stretch between Santa Maria and Santa Barbara. There was nothing, no gas stations, no houses, nothing on this stretch for at least 20 miles. This stretch had a bad reputation. It’s where people went missing, mostly girls and women. I knew that because I had done work related to various law enforcement in the region. Stuff that never makes the news or even the papers because they were ‘nobodies’ and probably led a lifestyle that made their disappearance, rape or murder, a known risk. An attitude that sadly, persists today in too many regions.
It was early fall from what I recall, and I had my dog in the back of my truck when I saw it. A black car, in the opposite lanes (northbound), completely wrecked and planted into the side of the ditch. I could tell by its trail of destruction that either the front axle or the A-Frame had broken. Debris trailed behind it to tell the tale.
It had happened awhile earlier because no one was around. If there had been any injuries, they were already scooped up and gone. I wondered why no one called for a tow truck yet.
And then I saw her, walking back to the direction she had come from. A woman on foot. She had made it already about 2 miles. She would have to go another twenty in that direction, my direction, if she was going to make it. If the sun went down, and it almost was, she would not make it.
I drove a little further until I came to a cut across that the Highway Patrol uses to flip a U-turn and chase speeders. (Don’t ask me how I knew where that was, ok?)
I knew someone had to pick her up, or someone WOULD pick her up. I had seen too many police reports and I knew, I had to be the one to pick her up. I flipped the U-turn and headed back to where she was walking. I pulled over and got out so she could see I was a woman, not a threat. Hell, I only weighed 110 pounds soaking wet with my boots on.
She was crying, tired and yes, that was her car. This was the worst day of her life.
I told her that the direction she was walking was another 20 miles, but northbound was only 15 miles to Santa Maria and we could get help for her there. Ok, Santa Maria it was. She told me her name (can’t remember now) and how her car crashed. She had no injuries. Just really mad and upset.
She said she had a friend in Santa Maria who was a mechanic and he had a tow truck, but that he was sick, running a high fever. Maybe she could call him and he’d know someone who could come and rescue her and her car?
She had no money. Not a dime. Her last dollar had gone into her gas tank.
She had a lot of complaints about her life in general and I listened. It’s what you do when someone just escaped a traumatic event. We got to the truck stop and I bought her a meal. She made a phone call from the pay phone (remember those?) on the quarter that I gave her. Her friend who was really sick had agreed to come and get her himself. What a guy!
Still complaining as she picked up her French fries and dunked them into the gravy, she was on a downward pity spiral about how unlucky she was.
“Today is the luckiest Day of your LIFE.” I told her.
“You don’t know…” she started to get back into the pity parade of woes.
“No, m’dear, YOU don’t know. Let me explain to you your good fortune.”
And I began: “Your car is poorly maintained but it is the best you can do and it wrecked, but you are completely uninjured. This happened on a stretch of road we call “Blood Alley” because women and girls disappear from here all the time. Sometimes we find their remains, sometimes we never know what happened to them. You got picked up, as the sun was going down, by a woman who altered her travel southward to do a U-turn and get you before something bad got you. You have no money, but you are eating a full meal. You have no money, but you have a friend who, sick as he is, is coming to your rescue and will tow your car and fix your car for you. This is the luckiest day of your life and if you can’t see that, you will never be able to see your way out of any problem, and trust me, there are more problems ahead. Life builds us one problem at a time.”
She stopped, stared for a minute at that fry dripping with gravy, the vegetables and the chicken on her plate… and she looked up at me. It was like a light washed over her. Her shoulders squared up, her chin lifted.
“I see it now,” she said. “I have so much going for me.” And then the part that told me she got it: “It took something like this for me to realize I’m not an accident.”
She was connecting. We were strangers to one another, but I was able to toss her a lifeline and get her into a place of safety. I knew she was truly safe when I saw she realized it. That told me she was going to solve her problem(s) by seeing what was around her that was helping her, and how she could help herself.
That’s when I felt good about it. Yes, I would be late getting to my destination, but that wasn’t the most important thing in front of me in that moment when I saw a stranger who was in danger, and I did what I could to change that. I was there and I was able, and I chose to help. And it mattered.
We both got something out of that meeting. She learned to quit amplifying the negative and find a way to help herself. I got to connect to another Human Being in a world where we are too often told to only look out for ourself, and that deprives us of the rush of energy that comes when instead of ignoring others, we connect and that sense of being fully Human and part of this world, with a purpose to other Human Beings… a feeling that is hard to describe but which is far and away better than any high from any drug.
We both felt better about the day by the time dinner was finished. Her friend came in and sat across the table. “Well, considering what happened, you look pretty good!” he said.
“I’m lucky to have friends like you.” She said to him. “And I caught a break today.”
I left as they left. I again went North. I was going to be soooo late.
The End
I never kept in touch. We didn’t exchange information. I got to vanish into the setting sun, counting my blessings that I had a reliable vehicle, a good dog, and I had within me, the means to help another Human Being. Good fortune, I have always believed, is meant to be shared where it is needed, and where you can.
And that’s where you come in. You, reading this. You who don’t have enough to make your rent or can’t buy what you need for yourself and your kids. There is something you can do. It won’t even take you out of your way.
You can get involved in Werner Kunkel’s case. You can write a letter, send an email, or even a postcard to the USAG’s office and tell them to re-open the investigation into the killing of Gilbert Fassett. Tell them that The Fargo Forum did a series of articles that they need to examine and from that, realize that they have the wrong man in prison. That the corruption that preceded them at their agency helped to put him in prison, and doing so left a serial killers free to terrorize their community.
Lynn Crooks is dead now. May he burn in hell. He knew he was railroading the innocent when his team covered up the evidence of Yanktons and their accomplices, and the FBI beat and tortured people to force them to perjure themselves in case after case where Yanktons did the killing and the innocent were blamed, convicted and sent to prison. He abused the power of his office and it is sickening the way he is being lionized as if he was a defender of the People. He was a tool.
But let us not speak ill of the dead. You don’t have to go there. But do write, phone, email everyone in every office that you can, and urge them to reopen this case and give Werner Kunkel a new trial.
Werner has been tortured in prison. He has been abused and those who put him there know he is innocent, but they are too cowardly to step up and do the right thing. There are a lot of cowards in this world. Most of them have jobs that make them weaker so they don’t even speak up. They don’t even prevent abuse.
I don’t know how they live with themselves. I’m guessing they do a lot of drugs and alcohol to try and forget what they have become. Or to try and reach that high they once had when they helped out another person and made a difference in their life, but now they just drive on by.
“Not my problem” they tell themselves. But it is their problem. It’s all of our problem. Because we are aware of it. We know what can happen. It is up to us to make it stop, or to stop it from becoming even worse.
You know who thinks they are lucky? Werner. He’s been through hell. He’s been tortured by those in power, physically and psychologically, for their amusement. But complete strangers have stepped up, reached out, and connected with him.
He knows he is not an accident in this world. That he is part of what connects all of us.
You may have to do a U-turn on what you think the world is and your place in it, but you will know, when you do it, that it was worth it and you are better off for it.
You will have made the world a little better, a little brighter, for someone you may never meet in this life. You are the one. We are the many. We are connected by this simple act of getting involved.
You know where to find me.
Years later I started hearing stories about a man named Gilbert Fassett, his decomposing body was found by a couple of berry pickers on the hill, an elder and his nephew.
There were some who wrote to me to try and explain why such a terrible, may horrific mutilation was done to a man: they were trying to say that Gilbert was a rapist, and that he had raped one of the Yankton girls. Even if that were true and I have my doubts, nothing would justify a cold blooded murder and sexual mutilation of another human being.
I really know nothing about Gilbert in his life, but I do know that his body was sexually mutilated it was found by two Berry pickers. And by no odd coincidence James Yankton had a trophy in a jar that he from time to time, shared, showed off to other people. I'm sure he enjoyed it when he was alone as well. He and his brothers and even some of the police that worked with him were that sick in the head.
The Fargo Forum newspaper, in a series of articles written by Patrick Springer went into great detail about how this crime was wrongfully attributed to Werner Kunkel, who to this day sits in prison for a crime he had nothing to do with, a crime he had no knowledge of, and that he is being mistreated buy those who are supposed to be law enforcement, supervisors, and prison guards who do the bidding of supervisors and enjoy it.
The torment is meant to break Werner. Just like the abuse that was heaped on to Richard La Fuente, And the eleven other innocent men who were falsely accused of Eddie Peltier’s murder. In that case it destroyed their lives, but they told the truth over and over and over again.
The psychological torture of Werner Kunkel as well as the physical and emotional abuse is something I feel should be looked into by an independent agency, not connected to the North Dakota USAG office. The USAG has much to lose if this case has looked at too closely. Prosecutorial misconduct may rear its ugly head.
That misconduct will tie into a pattern of misconduct that has been occurring in Indian Country, at least since Lynn Crooks held that office in rammed through convictions based on false statements, coerced by beatings, threats and torture of those who either knew nothing, or did not want to lie to convict the innocent.
In case you're wondering how we got here this is part of it. The corruption in Indian Country has been ongoing since inception. It has been profitable in both power and wealth to those who use it to their own ends.
I can point you to the villains, hand you evidence of their crimes, and even have you talk to witnesses, but unless you’ve looked under the hood, you’d think that’s all there is.
That the worst criminals on the rez are now functionally disabled, (I’m told two of the surviving brothers are double incontinent, crapping all over themselves and their house. That no one can stand to be downwind of them…) and you might have a sense of Justice being karmic in this case, and the danger having subsided substantially… and you’d be wrong.
If we learned anything from history of Spirit Lake Nation Reservation/Ft. Totten it is that the Yanktons were incredibly dumb and bumbling in their lives and especially in their crimes. I first thought they were too stupid to get away with the list of crimes they were connected to, and couldn’t figure out how they managed to get away with it all those decades.
And then I looked closer and deeper and I saw the bigger picture. I saw how the government played a key role in all of it. The government has never been the friend of Indian Country. They have taken control over all aspects of life on the Rez and that includes the court systems where there is no appeal regardless of how bizarre or wrong the judge or judgements are. It also includes the way business is conducted. The sale or leases of lands, resources is key.
Corporations, especially resource extraction corporations, don’t deal with the tribes directly—they deal with the BIA and other federal agencies. No one looks at the legitimacy of those contracts, and no one really knows who is getting what money. The Oil Companies (as an example) can distance themselves from the damage they do, or any scandals by pointing to the government and saying it’s all legit.
That’s only part of it.
Knowing what patches of land are going to be bought up by the oil companies for drilling, processing, and access (roads/pipelines) can make specific patches of land worth millions. If you file the paperwork for the right people, especially through shell corporations, you can move millions of dollars around and fuel an influence and money laundering scheme among politicians, law enforcement, people of influence, and no one even knows where to begin to look. Nor do they bother to try. It would upset too many apple carts.
Those patches of land can be sold and resold for increasing profits until they are finally bought or leased by the companies extracting the resources (Oil, timber, minerals, precious metals and water). That’s how people seem to acquire a whole lot of money and power, and it’s worth it to them to keep the corruption in place and the corrupt in power.
That’s just ONE aspect of corruption and the protection of the corrupt in Indian Country. There’s so much more. And it’s not just Spirit Lake, it’s the entire system, nation-wide.
Living in the midst of all this, are some of the bravest, kindest, most generous people you will ever meet if you ever get out there. They struggle against a system that is rigged against them, and the corruption that shadows every life out there, and they do it without help from the outside.
They do it against a backdrop of oppressive racism and stereotyping that has been in place since Contact.
If you’re wondering how some of the stupidest, meanest bullies seem to rise to power with impunity despite everyone knowing what they have done, look no further that the government that controls every aspect of their life, and has for the past 300 years.
You may not understand them and how they do it. You may not even be able to tell the good guys from the bad guys when you meet them. That’s the way the game is played.
Don’t assume the addict, the drunk, is the bad guy and don’t assume the guy with the $200 haircut and hand tailored suit is the good guy. Chances are you’d be wrong about both.
There are no “Perfect” victims here. No one is looking for your pity or sympathy. Just want you to gain a clearer vision and question what you hear or read from the government. Always look to see “who profits? Who benefits?” Most of all “Who has power?”
We all need to take a much closer look.
I knew when I started hearing about James Yankton displaying a jar with a pickled scrotum to impress people that it was a personal trophy from one of his kills. I just didn’t know who, for years.
Now I know: It was Gilbert Fassett. And the guy who was railroaded to take the fall, was Werner Kunkel. All the same key players were in place, just like they were when they railroaded 11-19 young men to take the fall for Eddie Peltier’s murder. And the same system, same key players that railroaded his cousin, Leonard Peltier, into a lifetime prison sentence for a murder he had nothing to do with.
Complete with experts who were not experts, science that was pure rubbish, debunked, but which the judges who probably have land holdings in shell corporations portfolios, keep them in prison to keep themselves living above their means, which no one ever looks into or even questions.
You can’t free the innocent without uncovering the corrupt and the corruption. They refuse to give an inch.
Or can you, me, all of us together, demand that trials be reviewed in an independent light, where the lies, evidence of innocence that was withheld, and the frauds that were promoted as experts, is all exposed, and the innocent freed? The corrupt can protect themselves from the one thing they fear most: Exposure, if they just get out of the way of Justice.
Or, we can expose the corruption, more and more at every level, and have people questioning every ruling, every sentence, every business deal, and how much behind the scenes chicanery has been at play.
One way is faster. It frees the innocent and quiets the questioning, lessens the exposures. The other way shatters confidence in the system, creates doubts about every political play, and reveals even more ugliness than the public can stand to know.
We like our fairy tales. We like our pillars of social circles to appear squeaky clean. We can only hold onto that illusion if cases brought and ruled upon with questionable, corrupted evidence or processes, are given new trials, fair trials.
One way or the other, it’s in motion. I’m here to be the narrator. We are all here, to bear witness.
You know where to find me.
~Cat