The first red flag was when they came back after being kicked out of a local historical site called “The Medicine Wheel”. The Medicine Wheel is an ancient rock formation which is older than the native American tribes of the area (supposedly).

There was also a local bar by the same name, and I thought they were talking about getting kicked out of there, which actually made more sense until they told me what they had done. She explained that her and “Chocktaw” had “entered the sacred land in the ‘old way’ which is the way they always did and the ‘white man’ (aka authorities) didn’t like it”.

Sigh, okay I’ll take the bait, I thought, and asked them to clarify what the ‘old way’ is, already guessing.

“Buck naked” she shot back grinning defiantly, flipping her head and looking cocky at me in the eye the way she always did when baiting one of us, as if waiting for me to clutch my pearls and have a meltdown.

I didn’t. I just ignored her but I did notice my twelve year old niece looked extremely uncomfortable and turned my attention to her. She had stayed with us while her whackadoodle white mom and her mom’s equally whackadoodle white boyfriend went off to purposefully piss of the actual natives, meaning the local community of sane people.

“Do you also enter these sacred places ‘the old way’?” I asked her. She didn’t answer, but my sister and “Chocktaw” sure had plenty to say about it.

They explained that she did and was initiated into the tribe ‘the old way’ along with a few other kids just before they left California. I asked how and they said the kids were baptized naked in the Sacramento River in a sacred ceremony that he as an “elder” (of course) led.

I kept my composure and asked my niece, who was still just a baby of TWELVE at the time, and who had just lost her dad, the only stability she had known and who would be rolling in his grave if he knew, if she was comfortable getting naked with her mom and this “Chocktaw” character and she didn’t answer.

I gently asked again but tears were welling up in her eyes and she finally shrugged as if to say, I don’t know.

I let it go, but I knew I had to intervene before they took off with her to the wilderness in northern Montana, which is where they were headed to meet up with the “Rainbow Family” which already had a reputation for harboring pedophiles and other lowlife scum.

My niece excused herself to go change her shirt soon after and headed out to the camper they had come in. A few minutes later that son of a bitch actually got up and made a beeline after her right in front of us.

I knew then I wanted to kill both him and my sister, but I had to stay calm. Someone had to be reasonable here or one of us was going to jail.

To be continued…