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Unfortunately, Jensvold informed me dismissively that he might be busy the day we planned to shove off. “If he needs encouragement, tell him I’ve heard stories of men who came through here before in canoes.”

I asked Jensvold if there was anyone on his rez, a spiritual leader perhaps, who might be willing to come out to the river and speak with José. Jensvold said he would look into it and promised to call back. He never did.

I turned to the back of the van and shouted to get José’s attention. I told him about the conversation I’d had with the Upper Sioux chairman and his apparent lack of interest in our undertaking. José said that kind of treatment was what he had come to expect from Native people, even members of his immediate family.

“That’s how it goes, bro. Indians hear my name and think I’m just another Mexican. They don’t give a shit.”

José had told me before about how his brothers and sisters, of a Lakota mother and fathers of diverse nationalities (Somali, Ethiopian, Puerto Rican, Yemeni), had all experienced similar disdain from the greater Native community, who often derided them as illegitimate Indians. At Heart of the Earth, the Native charter school in Minneapolis where José had gone to high school, he was constantly getting into fights—particularly with the Anishinaabe boys—over the question of his Indian-ness. They hated him for being light skinned and having a Hispanic name, and he hated them for being Anishinaabe. He had been burned in romantic and business relationships with Anishinaabe people, and he clung to the historic animosity that lingered in Minnesota.