Mitch’s life started out quietly. His sister Izzy, loved him. She referred to him as her “mitchy-boy”. Izzy wanted the world to know who her most favorite person in the world was. Why wouldn’t a lil 4 year old girl want everyone to know her brother meant everything to her? Mitch was happy. Though, his rambunctious sister would get him in trouble several times each day, he was happy that he was somebody’s favorite person.

Mitch’s happiness existed within the midst of absolute hatred and poverty. There were 9 children in the family at the time. All 9 kids and both of Mitch’s parents lived in a small one room shack next to the iron and copper slag piles, on the outskirts of Anaconda, MT. There was no running water, plumbing, sewage disposal, nor electricity. This was the only place the sole Native American family in Anaconda was allowed to live. The year was 1951.

Izzy and Mitch didn’t have many choices in where they could play. The trip to the city park was dangerous enough that they preferred the dangers of the mining slag piles over a lush green lawn. If they weren’t playing on those slag piles, they were walking down the railroad next to the shack they lived in. They braved the danger of being hit by a train and the slicing sting of metal cutting their skin on the slag piles, because it was much safer than venturing into town.

One day walking home from school, a cop car kept slowly passing Izzy and Mitch. Mitch said, they should run down this alley and hide. Mitch made Izzy hide behind some trash cans. He placed some extra lids on top, to make sure the cop couldn’t see his little sister. Izzy could see anything going on, from behind the trash cans and under the lids. All she heard was a car slowly rolling up the gravel in the alley, as Mitch climbed into a dumpster and slammed the lid shut.

The car came to a stop not far from the big dumpster full of rats, that Mitch had jumped into. As slowly as the car door creaked open, a rat bit into his ankle. Mitch’s ankle was numbed to the pain of the rat bite, after having played so much on the slag piles. The crunch of the gravel, under the cop’s feet is what frightened Mitch the very most. That crunch echoed a billion times inside of Mitch’s ears, bouncing off of his mind and heart. He knew something bad was about to happen.

CLANG!!! The hardwood billy club shrieked on top of the steel dumpster’s side, piercing through Mitch’s own protective shield of silence. His fingers were pinched between the dumpster’s lid and the sidewall he hung onto. The pain surging in his knuckles caused Mitch to scream. At that moment, the lid was flung back and the cop grabbed Mitch by the neck. Unable to do much to protect himself, Mitch just held his hands close to his body as the cop dragged him back to the squad car. Izzy watched everything through the tiny crack between trash cans, never once making a single sound.

After the cop sat inside of the car and unzipped his pants, he yelled at Mitch, “open your fucking mouth!” Mitch refused to. The cop then took the butt end of his club and shoved it inside of Mitch’s mouth, breaking several teeth. As Mitch finally opened his mouth, the cop began slamming Mitch’s face into his crotch repeatedly. All Mitch could do was gag, each time his mouth was violated. Wasn’t long before he could feel a squirting inside of his mouth. The thick slime coated his entire mouth, and was dripping down his throat.

The vomit all but power washed Mitch’s mouth, as the cop pushed him away. After zipping his pants up, the cop kicked Mitch in the side and billy clubbed him in the kneecap. The cop warned, “don’t you dare tell anyone about this. You’re just an animal and I’m an upstanding citizen. No one will believe you, ever”, then got into his car and drove off.

Izzy climbed out of hiding when she knew the car was gone for good. Mitch was still on his hands and knees vomiting. Izzy felt helpless. Mitch felt dead. As Izzy tried to help her brother who sacrificed his own soul to keep her safe, they both fell over. Mitch forced a laugh, which confused Izzy. On their long walk home, Mitch made Izzy promise she’d never tell anyone what happened. She said, she’d promise as long as she could. She kept that secret for several decades.

After this attack, Izzy and Mitch no longer wanted to go to school. In addition, their older sister started running away from home. This caught the attention of Montana’s Human Services Department. As the living situation of the family was investigated, all the kids were taken away from Mitch’s parents. They were nothing more than another pair of “unfit injun parents”, as far as the state of Montana was concerned.

Both Joe and Charlotte—Mitch and Izzy’s partents—were uneducated. Struggling to make do with the abyss Montana society allowed them to have. The hatred of Natives in Montana built many unfair obstacles for any skin to survive, simply because whites still believed in Manifest Destiny, and that all Natives are less than human. In this climate of hatred Joe and Charlotte struggled to provide food, clothing, and shelter not only for themselves but for 9 children as well. Both struggled violently with alcohol and depression. Thus, Joe and Charlotte were labeled unfit parents by the state of Montana. As a result, all 9 children were seized by the state and placed in custody of St. Joseph’s Catholic Orphanage outside of Helena, MT.

After arriving at the orphanage, all 9 children—ranging in age from 3 to 16 years—were ordered to take all of their clothes off. Once all the children stripped down to just their undergarments, the priests and nuns tore the undergarments off each child by force.

Mitch tried to protect Izzy from the nun, but a priest hit Mitch’s hands with a large wooden spoon. Soon, Mitch and all of his siblings were standing in line, completely naked, and shivering. Their shivering was half from trying to keep from crying and half from the cold of the late autumn afternoon.

One by one, each child was checked for bugs and then “cleansed”. Cleansing for Mitch consisted of having all of his hair shaved off his head, being fondled in between his legs for several minutes by a priest, then sprayed with a hose and sprinkled with bug powder, then rinsed off with the freezing water from the hose. Before he was allowed to dress, the priest commented, “My—you’re quite the handsome little critter…”

One day, Mitch was having a difficult time sitting in his desk, during class. The nun walked over to him and jerked him out of his seat. She saw blood pooling in the concaves of Mitch’s chair. Horrified she demanded, “What on earth have you done to conjure up such evil???” Mitch had no idea what she was talking about. He simply looked blankly at the nun. She backhanded him across the face. Then she ordered Mitch to pull his pants down, in front of the entire class. The nun almost passed out the moment she saw Mitch’s entire backside drenched in blood. Again she demanded, “What have you done to yourself to cause all of this blood???” Again, Mitch did not answer. The nun then hit him with a ruler on top of his head. All Mitch could think was, “I’m not going to let anything happen to Izzy”.

The head priest of the orphanage just happened to walk by the classroom and saw what was going on. He gasped, “What on earth has happened here!?!” The nun gave her explanation of the situation, of course Mitch’s side of the story was never asked for. He just continued thinking, “I will not tell. I will not let anything evil happen to Izzy.” The priest glared, “Such insolence will not be tolerated here! We will force Satan from your soul by any means!” Next, the priest punched Mitch in the face, which knocked him out momentarily.

When Mitch came to, he was bent over the desk top, getting paddled on his bared buttocks by the priest. The blood was splattering onto the other NDN kids sitting in desks around him. Still Mitch kept thinking, “I will not let anything happen to my sister.” As the priest finished paddling Mitch, he was sent back to the source of all this trouble, to be cleaned up.

As the priest—who first “cleansed” Mitch, when he arrived at the orphanage—hosed down Mitch’s anus, he fondled Mitch’s privates even more. The priest continuously whispered, “Don’t tell anyone, or else the most evil of all evils will consume your precious little sister, Izzy.” Mitch kept thinking, “I will not let anything happen to Izzy.” Tears, streaming down Mitch’s face, washed the anger and hatred away. All that was left, was Mitch’s love of his little sister, Izzy. This love is what enabled Mitch to endure the uncivilized tortures he experienced in the care of the most civilized of civilizations in this world.

Several months later, Mitch was torn from Izzy’s life, to live with the first of many foster families. For six years Mitch would go from foster family to foster family, experiencing a generalized maltreatment and contempt that did nothing more than germinate a distrust and hatred of whites inside of Mitch’s heart.

Mitch was now 11 years old. He’d been sent to a new foster home—one which had recently adopted an older Native boy. The entire home was really just an old woman, whose parent immigrated to the US from Austria. They’d left the small rural Montana farm to their only daughter, who now needed men to work the land for her. Of course, she figured adopting young Native boys to be her slaves would be the answer.

This woman worked Mitch and his new foster brother well over 12 hours a day. Routinely, she starved them for not finishing up work she wanted done. Daily, she beat them both metal pipes for doing things different from how she told them to do everything. For an entire year, both boys endured the beatings and days of not being allowed to eat any food.

Finally, Mitch and his foster brother had enough. During the night, as the lady slept, the older boy snuck into her room and took the 12-gauge shotgun, the 30-30, and some shells. Later the next day, as Mitch and the older boy were working in the fields, the old lady came running out to them angry as ever. She was cussing, kicking things, and carrying a metal pipe to beat both boys. That’s when they pulled out both rifles and shot the lady multiple times. After shooting her body full of bullets, both boys proceeded to bludgeon her body with the metal pipes she had intended to beat them both with, for leave one crumb of toast on the kitchen table from breakfast.

At the age of 12, Mitch was officially a convicted murderer. After spending 2 years in a mental institution, Mitch was sent to an adult prison at the age of 14 years old. He’d spend the next four years being raped, sodomized, and introduced to drugs—while serving out his sentence until he became an adult. The day Mitch was released from the old State Prison of Montana in Deer Lodge, he was 18 years old. No longer in the care of the state of Montana. Mitch decided to leave Montana for good.

Since Mitch had never been raised, but rather shuffled through the system, he’d never been exposed to—nor taught how to really interact with other human beings. He had no idea how to be a friend, a brother, or how to even love. Love was nothing more than a lost thought from when he was 6 years old. He’d even forgot the name of the little girl he’d loved back then. He’d forgotten she was also his little sister. All Mitch knew was how to get high and just forget.

Mitch eventually found a woman who made him clean up and settle down with. He got himself a good job and tried his best to be a good husband. Mitch and his wife even had a baby. The problem was that Mitch just never knew how to show love. Not long afterwards, his wife left him, taking his only son with her.

No longer having much to live for, nor wanting to remember anything, Mitch fell back on drugs. He would eventually die from cardiac arrest from drug overdose. His lifeless body laid in a hotel bed for two weeks before anyone knew he’d passed into the spirit world. Coincidentally, two weeks after Mitch passed away his own son passed away from a drug overdose in the hotel across the street from where he’d passed.