Though he never went to college, Adam Nordwall taught
Native American studies at Cal State Hayward. One day, a colleague asked him to
attend the International Conference of World Futures in Rome.
The Italian media were waiting for Nordwall when he deplaned in full tribal
regalia and made this pronouncement as cameras flashed: "'What right did
Columbus have to discover America when it had already been inhabited for
thousands of years? The same right I now have to come to Italy and proclaim the
discovery of your country."
For a week, Nordwall became a celebrity in the Italian media. Then he was
summoned to the Vatican for an audience with Pope Paul.
When led in to meet the pontiff, who lifted his ring-clad hand for the
customary kiss, Nordwall was ready. He offered his ring right back to the pope.
"There's this gasp," Nordwall recalled. "But the pope broke the
ice. He broke into a grin and clasped my hand."
The photo of Nordwall and the pope hand-in-hand hangs in two places of
prominence in his home now. Nordwall's wife, Bobbie, still seems bemused by the
exchange three decades later.
"I was surprised, but what was I supposed to do, run over there and grab
his arm and tell him we have to go home?" Bobbie Nordwall said. "When
he opens his mouth like that, it's best just to get out of his way."
What makes Fortunate Eagle run off at the mouth so?
It could be a difficult childhood, his quest from an early age to fit in and
find his place in an often-hostile world.
Nordwall was born in 1929 in Red Lake, Minn. His mother, Rose, was Chippewa;
his father, Anton, of Swedish descent. The family of eight lived on the north
side, the Christian missionary side, of a 200,000-acre lake. He sometimes
wonders now how his life might have turned out had he grown up on the south
side, the pagan Indian side, of the lake.
When Adam was 5, his father died. The Swedish side of his family had long since
disowned them. Against his mother's wishes, Adam and four other Nordwalls were
shipped to a boarding school, Pipestone Indian Training School.
It was there that Nordwall first experienced a different kind of racism --
coming from pure-bred Indians. He didn't look "Indian enough" to the
other kids.
"I'd look at those beautiful Sioux and Cheyenne boys with their beautiful
long narrow noses and then look at my pug nose in the mirror," he
recalled. "I became very self-conscious.
And all the other kids had these great names like Running Hawk or Charging
Eagle. My name? Nordwall. Kids were mean, and my sensitive little hide couldn't
take it."
Actually, he had a Chippewa name that he learned when he was 8: Amabese,
meaning "Handsome."
"Now, there are some names that kids can proudly say out loud,"
Nordwall said. "But that's not one of them."
It would not be until he turned 42 that Nordwall would receive an Indian name
he felt he could say aloud: Fortunate Eagle -- bestowed on him by a Crow Indian
for whom he had done a favor.
Standing
in the husk of his roundhouse, Nordwall likes to talk about the circularity of
life, how the past never really stays in the past, how it only changes form.