What have I done?!

Rez Life Series
Oil on Canvas 2025

When I was a boy, no more than nine or ten, I heard a sound that split my childhood in two — the violent screech of tires, a thunderous crash, and then silence. I ran toward the highway and came upon a scene that has haunted me ever since.

A young Native man, drunk and reckless, had slammed his car into two Gold Wing motorcycles carrying tourists on their way to Glacier Park. The riders — husbands and wives — lay broken on the road. The young man staggered among the bodies, frantic, trying to give CPR. But it was too late. All of them died, one woman crawling toward her husband with her last breath before slipping away.

My parents tried to keep me and my brothers back, but I had already seen enough. That moment carved itself into me — the chaos, the futility, the crushing weight of a single decision made in a haze of alcohol.

This painting, What have I done?!, is not just a memory. It is a reckoning. The anguished figure on his knees, hands clawing at his head beneath the cold glow of the moon, embodies both the young man I saw that night and the generations of Native lives destroyed by alcohol. On our reservations, alcohol has claimed more of us than any drug. It is a cycle of loss, grief, and guilt that echoes through families and communities.

For me, this canvas is more than paint. It is a wound reopened, a cry into the night, and a warning to anyone who will listen. It asks the question the young man could not stop screaming with his actions: What have I done?!