My main contact at the Indian Community School was a woman named Paula Fernandez. She was basically attached to me the whole week and helped answer a lot of my questions. When we first met, we had this very professional relationship. But by the end of the week, we were making fun of each other and had become really good friends.
When it was time for me to leave, Paula took off her necklace and gave it to me. It was a small leather pouch she'd made herself that contained sacred herbs; she wore it during the birth of her first child to keep her safe. Paula told me it would keep me safe on my travels. That really touched me. Every time I pack gear for an assignment, I always bring it with me and make sure to wear it when I'm in the field shooting.
Paula is an amazing, strong woman, and I'm so glad and proud to be able to call her my friend.
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I was trying to find a place to grab dinner, so I started asking people about a good place. Everyone kept talking about this steak house in a neighborhood that just happened to be in the zip code I was shooting. So I went and took a seat at the bar while I waited for my table. I began talking to a couple next to me and told them I was doing a story on their zip code. That's when they asked me if my story was about the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. I thought, What?! It turned out this was the same neighborhood where Dahmer lived and committed a lot of his terrible crimes in. That gave me an awful feeling that was hard to shake.
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On my first day at the school, I attended a drumming ceremony. The school's spiritual leader handed each student loose tobacco. The students then offered it to the spirit pole on campus and asked for a special blessing. When Paula explained what was going on, I immediately wanted to make my own offering so I could ask for a blessing on my story and let the spiritual leader know that my heart was in the right place. So I did it, and that day he even said a prayer for me.
The rest of my week went smoothly, and I had access to just about everything. I even photographed a sweat lodge ceremony, which I'd never done before. The spiritual leader's prayer must have worked because before I got this assignment, I worked on a Native American reservation in New Mexico for nine months and never had access to anything sacred. It was an honor to be included in that community.
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