A Walk Along the Corn Pollen Path: Let’s get nice and cozy: How the AIDS/HIV epidemic is continuing to be the silent killer.

Above, Isadore Boni of the San Carlos Apache Nation goes public with his HIV/AIDS
diagnosis in hopes of raising danger of the disease to
Native Americans.

My cousin Alpo had just returned from prison and I was home for the winter break from boarding school. It was the first time that I had seen him in four years and I barely recognized him. At first I thought that it was because the last memory I had of him was beating my dog as a small child, or because I didn’t recognize all the tattoos that littered his face and arms. When I walked into my gramma’s house, and saw him, I gave a quick jump, not expecting to see him and suddenly terrified at the thought that my scrawny 9-year-old frame was alone with him.

He eyed me up and down and spoke to me in Apache. His voice was hallow and empty, like he had just swallowed something too quickly. Our conversation, which I can still hear in my mind when I hold still, went something like this:

“Gramma told you?”
“Told me what?” I said.
“That I got the white man’s sickness?”
“No. Which one?”
“The one that eats your soul. Never heard of it till today, it’s called H. I don’t know, the white nurse at I.H.S. said I was going to die. I might get all sorts of diseases because my soul can’t fight them. She said it was because of all the tattoos.”
“What does your soul and tattoos have anything to do with each other?”
“I don’t know, she didn’t explain it too good.”
“You scared?” I asked.
“Yea.”

I remember eyeing Alpo when he told me this, not quite comprehending all that it entailed. I had never heard of this “H” sickness that he told me he had. I remember the white nurse that he went to see at Indian Health Service coming to see our family. I remember translating her words for my gramma to understand. I remember having difficulty understanding what she meant when she said that Alpo’s immune system will deteriorate. First, I didn’t really understand what an immune system was, and I also didn’t understand how it related to his soul and tattoos. I asked my gramma later, and she didn’t know.

I returned to school and a couple of months later I remember watching ABC News in our boarding school commons. They had a special on the “AIDS/HIV epidemic”. I remember being terrified watching this program, because I realized that it’s what Alpo had, and that there was no escaping this death sentence. I started crying thinking that AIDS was everywhere; on me and on everything I touched. It was this fear, that I was going to die from something so small, that I couldn’t even see or understand, that shook my core being. I tried to find out more about it, I remember going to see my principal, the school nurse and even the eighth grade science teacher, but no one really seemed to know.

I remember looking up the definition of an immune system in the dictionary and it had nothing to do with tattoos or Alpo’s soul. To this day I wonder what that nurse was trying to have me translate to my grandmother. Perhaps it was my nine-year-old mind not able to pick up on any of her subtle conversation. Then again, it wouldn’t really matter; Alpo’s soul had nothing to do with it.

Fast track eleven years later, Alpo has died, eight more known cases of people now living with HIV/AIDS on my reservation of only 2, 500 people have surfaced. One, my first cousin Donna, sixteen years old, has contracted it through rape a year earlier. Two of the other cases involved a man coming home from prison infected and unknowingly passing it onto his female partner.

Fast track to today, I sat in class discussing the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the gay community during the 1980s. We discussed about how the sickness was at first coined the “gay disease” and it’s numerous connections with issues of morality. We also considered how it no longer is just the “gay” disease, how it affects drug addicts, many blacks and latinos, “people of color,” (which in class feels like ironically it doesn’t seem to include Native Americans), and so on. We talked briefly about how HIV/AIDS doesn’t discriminate who is infected by race, gender, sexuality or social class, it is impacting everyone. We noted that medicine has also made leaps and bounds that now; HIV/AIDS is no longer just a death sentence. Prevention and information programs in mainstream culture in the United States have also made it so that people know more about it.

But what about the people, such as Native communities that are not receiving this information? What about communities in different African countries that beginning to encounter, or continuing to deal with this epidemic? What about the rate of people being infected daily with HIV that continues to grow? What about the places where even the language, or culture to discuss such things is not allowed?

Then a comment from a fellow classmate floored me, for him, AIDS/HIV was an issue of the past that today, most people don’t need to deal with; as if the fight is over. Now, it’s not something that as a gay man, he feels that this generation is having to deal with. To this student, I say that I am dealing with it, my community is dealing with it, and so are many others.

To me, his comment rang of the concept that it’s just an “African” problem, or the “Gay Disease”, or just a problem for this small group of people, not everyone. Now I’m not saying that we should all go out screaming in fear on the streets that AIDS/HIV is the end of the world. But at the same time, if we allow ourselves to think that the problem is contained or segregated, we are still allowing entire communities to parish in our ignorance that it’s not “our” problem. If one person a day contracts HIV, it is all of our problem, regardless of race, gender, sexuality or social class. As a human beings, we cannot allow ourselves to become cozy and fall into this rut of compliance, allowing it to infect another person. If we do, then AIDS/HIV will continue to be a silent killer that we are allowing to exist.