Chased By Spirits

Centuries-old tribal feuds sometimes live on at Haskell Indian Nations University, on the southeast edge of Lawrence.

Haskell students know, for example, that their classmate Corey Ladson is a Crow and that his tribe is an ancient enemy of the Sioux. And it's easy to distinguish the Sioux because of their French-sounding last names, Ladson says. General Custer is said to have used Crow scouts to locate the Sioux for the battle that would become his famous last stand.

Misunderstandings sometimes come easily. Haskell is one of 32 federally recognized tribal colleges and universities in the country; some of its students come straight from reservations; others have never set foot outside of urban neighborhoods. Some kids at Haskell come only for the cheap classes or to play sports and don't know their heritage, says Ed Tsoh, a Navajo and Apache whose grandfather was a Navajo code-talker in World War II. A student at Haskell has to be one-quarter American Indian, descended from an enrolled member of a tribe, to qualify for Bureau of Indian Affairs education benefits. One semester at Haskell is $105 for an on-campus student, $70 for those who live off campus.

Among the first things students learn are the ghost stories.

A marked cemetery on campus contains 103 gravestones, but virtually everyone at Haskell believes that far more bodies lie in the wetlands at the southern end of campus, which continue onto land owned by Baker University. From 1884 to 1930, the eastern portion of the wetlands was drained to make farmland so that the first Haskell students could learn European agricultural skills. Forbidden to return to their families for periods of up to ten years, students sneaked into the wetlands to practice tribal rituals and meet relatives in secret. They were underfed and overworked; scores caught diseases such as pneumonia and tuberculosis and died because of inadequate medical care. Since that time, the farmland has been restored to wetlands. The spirits of Haskell's first students are rumored to watch over the grounds, tickling the toes of sleeping girls and playing pranks on others.

"Natives aren't usually afraid of spirits," says Jeremiah Lahm, a student in his third year at Haskell. "We know they're around us all the time, and all you have to do when one is bothering you is say, 'Hey, I'm trying to eat' or 'Hey, I'm sleeping.' Most of the time. You never know, though.

"After class one day, it happened," Lahm continues. "I went to my room to take a nap, and I heard it, someone crying, and I froze up. I couldn't breathe ... I thought maybe it was someone's grandma, a relative, telling us we were doing something we weren't supposed to be doing, something that was hurting our family, our people. Someone was giving us a warning."

Gary Dorr, a 37-year-old senior from the Nez Perce tribe near Yakima, Washington, says a friend of his felt invisible fingernails poking him in the ribs one night after smoking a joint too close to the Haskell cemetery. In 1999, Dorr says, students noticed an increase in spirit activity on campus; a few weeks later, a Chevy S-10 carrying a keg flipped on the railroad tracks off Maple Avenue in Lawrence, killing three students and one of their friends.

"Drinking isn't part of our culture," he says. "It's not what we're supposed to be doing. No good ever comes out of it."

Besides, he adds, "Drums were never traditionally used under the influence of alcohol."

Outside the Roe Cloud residence hall, the latest Trillville single, "Neva Eva," rattles the windows of students' cars. It seeps out from under dorm-room doors. The lyrics get tossed back and forth between students who roam the first floor with an easy, Friday-afternoon slide.

Jeremiah Lahm breezes through the hall's glass doors. He's dressed in a long shirt, baggy pants and athletic shoes -- urban gangsta chic, though he's from the Omaha reservation near the Iowa-Nebraska border. His white canvas baseball cap reads "Savage Family" in black, threaded script. It's the name of a Native hip-hop group as well as an ironic moniker referring to "educated Natives." Lahm skips up the stairs to his second-floor room at the end of Thunderbird wing.

There, Lahm settles into an uncomfortable piece of residence-hall furniture, a thin, blue couch. The suite's central area branches out into three rooms: a tiny bathroom; Lahm's room, which he shares with a guy called Jazz; and their suitemates' room, where Tsoh and Ladson live.

Two posters hang in the common area. One is Cindy Crawford, '80s style; she wears a yellow one-piece swimsuit with the legs cut up to her armpits and a zipper down the front, hair gelled to the sky. The other is a black-and-white picture of a Native American woman wrapped in a blanket and standing on a windy rock. "Only after the last fish has been caught, the last tree chopped down and the last river poisoned, only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten," it reads.

When he goes back home to the reservation and to Lincoln, Nebraska, where his father lives, Lahm says he gets respect from his old friends, a rough crowd who call themselves the North Side Native Gangstas. But they also tease him for being a college boy. Now 23, he's been here three years and is set to graduate this month with an associate's degree in American Indian studies. He'll be the first in his family, on his mother's side, to graduate from college.