River Spirit

Monday, July 5, 2004

On reservation, July 4 booms sound like bling-bling :explode:

By JENNIFER LANGSTON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

MUCKLESHOOT RESERVATION -- On three hours of sleep, Angel Parker sometimes has to leave the booth when she hears the question: "What'll you give me?"

She knows the drill, having learned to sell fireworks from her mother at the age of 9.

But it wasn't until Saturday at 10:30 p.m. that the booth cleared the money owed to the wholesalers that stocked the shelves of the "Love Shack" with Vampire Rockets, Desert Rat artillery shells, smoke balls and color snakes.

This year, the booth owned by her fiancé, Warren King George, is aptly named. The several thousand dollars they're hoping to make this season will go toward hosting and feeding hundreds of relatives at their wedding this summer.

Other stand owners at "Boom City" on the Muckleshoot Reservation fronted several months' worth of mortgage or rent payments. Some wholesalers will take title to your car in exchange for fronting the fireworks, they say.

Until the stand breaks even, Parker says, it's hard not to stress.

"It's like a lot of weight has been lifted off your shoulders," said Parker. "I love to hate it."

In this gravel parking lot, Native American fireworks vendors hawk their wares with everything from single-color, hand-painted signs to golf carts advertising Web addresses. The irony of the situation isn't lost, with booth names like "Home of the Free -- Because of the Brave."

"I've always thought it was funny that Native Americans are benefiting from something that oppressed them for years and years," said King George, whose father was one of the first to introduce fireworks sales on the Muckleshoot Reservation 25 years ago.

"It's one of those bittersweet deals. You think of how things were before assimilation ... every day was an independence day," he said.

The phenomenon of fireworks sales on reservations isn't the first instance of Native Americans appropriating white holidays for their own purposes, said Sasha Harmon, a historian and associate professor at the University of Washington's American Indian Studies Center.

In the 19th century, when Indians were being coerced into giving up traditional celebrations, they began using holidays accepted by white government officials to sneak in potlatches, dances and other cultural practices, she said.

"Meanings of these holidays change over time for all people, just as they mean something different to us now as they did 200 years ago," she said.

Rudoph Ryser, executive director of the Center for World Indigenous Studies in Olympia, said that because of the delay in settling and developing the West Coast, events like the signing of the Declaration of Independence didn't really mean anything to tribes here.

"If the United States had another holiday that celebrated peaches and there were a lot of peaches on the reservation, they'd probably be selling peaches. Is that representative of some kind of attachment to peach day?" he asked.

Since King George was a teenager, selling fireworks has provided his family with extra money to take vacations, travel and spend time together. This year, it'll probably go to spoiling his first grandchild.

King George and Parker run their own stand at Boom City, and he manages another on his father's property. His three sisters all have their own stands.

It's a business, he said, since July 4 doesn't represent much for him to celebrate. By contrast, Veterans Day is a far more meaningful holiday. His grandfather died fighting in World War II.

"I don't even light fireworks," he said. "We're too exhausted."

Noreen Milne, the fireworks commissioner for the Muckleshoots this year, had even more to worry about -- serving as parking referee, collecting money and searching for recycling bins for thousands upon thousands of discarded cardboard boxes.

She's run a stand for the past five years: In a good one, she's made in excess of $10,000. Last year, which vendors say was dismal, she didn't surpass the money she owed for the fireworks until the morning of July 4.

"Some people go in the hole," she said. "You've got to be able to talk to the customers, know how to get them in, know what your prices are and how low you can go."

Stand owners rely heavily on their salespeople to push the products, handle the money and strike the right balance between closing a deal and giving too much away. With more than 100 vendors in close proximity, the undercutting can get intense.

Cody Pinkley started working for the King George family when he was 7 years old, folding boxes and picking up garbage in exchange for free sparklers, firecrackers and bottle rockets.

Now, the 17-year-old knows so much that he advises his bosses on what to buy. They stock plenty of prepackaged products aimed at families, with sparkly colored fountains for girls and tanks with firecrackers for boys.

For the serious pyro, artillery shells are it. Illegal to discharge in neighboring jurisdictions, they offer a dizzying array of aerial displays: gold willow umbrellas, ascension bursts, peony patterns, four-way blasts of neon colors.

The salesmen sell hard on the last day, loading up boxes and whipping kids into a frenzy debating which fireworks would make their neighbors the craziest.

For Parker's employees, it's the sprint at the end of the marathon. Everyone's profits -- including their own -- depend upon what they're able to do after the wholesaler gets paid.

"I pushed these guys so hard yesterday," she said.

"I'm happy now, but they still have to work hard to get all this stuff into someone else's car, because I really don't want to have to take it home."

P-I reporter Jennifer Langston can be reached at 425-252-5235 or jenniferlangston@seattlepi.com

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"The Cleveland Indians are going to change their name. They don't want to be known as a team that perpetuates racial stereotypes. From now on they're just going to be called the Indians." - Native Comedian Vaughn Eaglebear, Colville/Lakota