Old Ways Leoda Larson Native American Matriarch, By Elaina Erola
Leoda Larson, “1956” (Image courtesy of Elaina Erola)
The baby lambs that filled the kitchen all spring would naturally butt at the things they love, trying to get at the milk, insatiably pursuing their life force. This is probably a good image to start with for Leoda. She has delicate features, kind and maternal to those she adores, but she will knock the feeding bottle out of your hand with the force of that love. She’s about to have a birthday any day, turning 85. Every year she calls my grandmother, her former sister-in-law, to ask what age they are now.
“Leoda on the far right. Ranch in Montana.”” (Image courtesy of Elaina Erola)
Her name is currently Leoda Larson. She is my great aunt, my grandfather’s sister. She is a commanding presence. A woman who never took any shit from anyone and has survived three or four marriages depending on if annulments counts and who you ask in the family. She insists she never lived with any of her husbands until her most recent, Sonny. She raised six children-again, depending on who you ask in the family. She is a matriarch, and she comes from a matriarch. Her mother was Blackfeet Indian, her father Chippewa, and Cree. She was born in Browning Montana, the heart of the Blackfeet Indian reservation, and then later moved out the ranch her that belonged to her mother. Because her father was not Blackfeet, the land could not belong to him.
Leoda is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. I remember the first time I saw a picture of her from before I was born, I was convinced I was looking at Elizabeth Taylor. Like Elizabeth, Leoda grew up on horses learning to ride by the time she was five, watching her father and the men who came to work on the ranch tag sheep. During tagging season, the ewes would drop their lambs and, sometimes, fail to care for them further. That’s how she ended up with a kitchen full of baby sheep.
She called them “delicate.” The bum lambs were no match for a Montana spring, still wild with snow and frozen ground, especially on the reservation, which lies across the Canadian border. My grandfather told me the sound of the wind in the winter there could drive you mad. So they brought the creatures into their kitchen to be coddled and bottle feed around the clock, the babies butting their hands and milk flying everywhere.
She was the youngest of the three siblings working the ranch with their parents. She described them as workaholics, first rearing the lambs and later driving cattle. Her mother maintained a huge garden for canning and maintaining a root cellar. Her father also grew barley. They all had that homesteading, bootstrap, survival mentality, deterred by nothing and living on the land of their ancestors. When the cattle got sick, the nearest veterinarian was thirty miles away in Cut Bank. Mostly, they relied on what Leoda called “old ways.” When she told me this, her voice dropped, and she said: “but everyone has forgotten about all that now.”
“Leoda behind her sister at school.” (Image courtesy of Elaina Erola)
Her parents would eventually divorce when she was still young, and her father would remarry right away. Her mother would meet and fall in love with a man and have his child, only to discover he was already married to a Sioux woman. Her mother would return to Browning to have the child, giving birth just a few days before Christmas.
Her oldest sister, Leora, was the first to leave for the Indian boarding school in Salem, Oregon. Chemawa is one of three that still operates in this county, taking in Indian children from all over the United States. The schools are known as a very dark part of Native American history, known for countless types of abuse. Most notoriously, the vilification of using your native language, which caused the death of dozens of native words never to be spoken again. Equally, horrendous was the severing of Native hair, which to Native Americans would be like losing an arm.
“Leoda center left at Chemawa.” (Image courtesy of Elaina Erola)
I don’t know if any of this occurred at Chemawa. What I know is that my grandfather and great aunts made friends. Leora was the family’s pioneer, and George followed soon after her, telling me he couldn’t wait to go. Given a choice between another year on the ranch and high school years with kids like them, all the siblings chose Chemawa. When George left, there was a shift in the family dynamic, and Leoda was left without allies- just a baby sister to take care of and a mother who was now enjoying her freedom and her own powerfully dynamic good looks.
They moved again, this time to Seattle, a city filled with more people than Leoda had ever conceived of. For a while, the three of them moved around so frequently Leoda couldn’t attend school because she had no address. They stayed with family until her mother secured a government-subsidized apartment. They had no furniture, and the adults were frequently out. Leoda made up her mind to get to Chemawa.
She was supposed to be in seventh grade, but when she enrolled in her Seattle public school, she put herself in eighth grade instead of trying to teach herself everything she had missed during her transient time. She did her homework on an ironing board and put herself to bed on an army cot. The adults slept on the floor. She worked so hard that year, passing by the “skin of her teeth,” finally being able to join her beloved brother and sister. Leoda would always end up figuring it out; she would always be the life of the party; she would always carry our history in her stories and her bones. She would give me my first eagle feather and explain to me my first dream catcher. She would teach me old ways.
All facts from interviews were conducted with Leoda.
“Leoda and I Inchelum Washington.” (Image courtesy of Elaina Erola)