gang.jpg=Stanford, 18, sitting dead center with friends and siblings on “Gatorade,” the Ford Maverick he bought with money he made working construction. He was the leader of the pack – a hard drinking, bronc busting, cowboy fighting, womanizing renegade. His mother once came up behind him while he was selling some pot in Riverton and tapped him on the shoulder. When he turned around, she punched him in the nose and dragged him to her car. He sometimes wondered if his fast-lane lifestyle was leading him in the wrong direction, but then my friends would show up to go out and “I didn’t want to disappoint them.”
11.jpg=Stanford’s place wasn’t home to only his family. Lots of young people – usually men – rotated through his house, some just taking a break from their daily situations, others furloughed to Stanford by the tribe. He reminded me of the metaphorical Catcher in the Rye – shepherding native boys through the hair-trigger years from their late teens through their early twenties. And he knew just how hair-trigger they were. Of the six Addison brothers of his generation, two had entered their thirties in sound physical shape. Two had died in their twenties – George after his car hit a fence, and David of suicide. Stanford and Jay-R were both disabled in car crashes. Although violent crime didn’t take any of them, the rate of violent crime in Native America is more than twice the average. (photo by Sarah Kariko, © 2009)
07.jpg=For years, Stanford’s main helper with day to day hygiene and health was Cody, his sister Arilda’s son, shown here walking near the house with his daughter Triston. “He helps me out,” said Stanford. “Not only that, he’ll stop his own fun to help me out.”
02_onhorse.jpg=Stanford, a couple years after the auto accident that paralyzed him at 20, being held on a horse by his youngest brother David. It would take 12 tortuous, occaisionally suicidal years for Stanford to accept the loss of his physical prowess and the arrival of disconcerting healing powers.
12.jpg=One of the boys who had lived at Stanford’s was stabbed to death on the streets of Riverton at age 17. After the funeral, I looked out of my car window and this is what I saw. It felt like Judgement Day.
08.jpg=Stanford married his brother David’s widow and took her two sons as his own. The older boy, Beau, was three. He was breaking horses at six, and by the time he was grown he was a lot like Stanford had been at that age – a natural rebel and a dazzling horseman. Beau liked to ride a stallion named Fabian, whose neck arched even though he didn’t hold him back. Fabian galloped straight forward, but he liked to do his walking and trotting in complicated sideways or diagonal gaits. Beau glided sideways, loose-hipped and straight-backed, his body always exactly over the horse, never off balance, never inclining to where it was just a moment before.
03_stan.jpg=Confined to a wheelchair, he spent day after day watching horses respond to people. He worked out a horse gentling system worlds apart from bronc busting days of his youth. (photo by Sarah Kariko, © 2009)
10.jpg=… and he rode horses. Daniel at the Shoshone pow wow. (photo by Sarah Kariko, © 2009)
06.jpg=Stanford and his grand-niece, Donnica
01_youngstan.jpg=Stanford, 17, sitting dead center with friends and siblings on “Gatorade,” the Ford Pinto he bought with money he made working construction. He was the leader of the pack – a hard drinking, bronc busting, cowboy fighting, womanizing renegade. His mother once came up behind him while he was selling some pot in Riverton and tapped him on the shoulder. When he turned around, she punched him in the nose and dragged him to her car. He sometimes wondered if his fast-lane lifestyle was leading him in the wrong direction, but then my friends would show up to go out and “I didn’t want to disappoint them.”
15.jpg=A friend described Stanford’s role as a healer and support to the people in his community, saying they “lean on him, call on him, visit, call for help, and he’s there every time giving them something they need to make their lives easier, better. It’s amazing. Even in his condition, I don’t know anybody, anybody, that’s carried that many people. I wish I had a fraction of that strength."  (photo by Sarah Kariko, © 2009)
13.jpg=The sweat lodge, where things get set right. (photo by Teresa Neptune, © 2005)
01b.jpg=In Stanford Addison’s kitchen, I quit worrying. Listening to the stories of my new friend, my own twists of fate started looking a lot less like doom and more like The Way Things Are. This Arapaho man had suffered more than anyone I had ever met. He had endured physical pain I could only imagine. He had fucked up extravagantly when he was young, gotten hurt, then suicidal, but now he was kind and wise because all his misfortune had pried him away from serving his own ego above all else. He had spun the worst kind of misfortune into something reverent and beautiful and real. He showed me the rock bottom truth so often obscured from the white middle class: Life doesn't do a damn thing you think it will do.
09.jpg=While Beau sang traditional Native songs and went to all-night peyote meetings, his younger brother Daniel moved easily through different worlds. He wrote rap, but he attended sweat lodges. He raised pit bulls, and he briefly dated a Brazilian actress. (photo by Teresa Neptune, © 2005)
14.jpg=In Stanford Addison’s kitchen, I quit worrying. Listening to the stories of my new friend, my own twists of fate started looking a lot less like doom and more like The Way Things Are. This Arapaho man had suffered more than anyone I had ever met. He had endured physical pain I could only imagine. He had fucked up extravagantly when he was young, gotten hurt, then suicidal, but now he was kind and wise because all his misfortune had pried him away from serving his own ego above all else. He had spun the worst kind of misfortune into something reverent and beautiful and real. He showed me the rock bottom truth so often obscured from the white middle class: Life doesn't do a damn thing you think it will do.
04_Roan2.jpg=Horse (photo by Teresa Neptune, © 2005)
05_family.jpg=Stan on the porch his sister Arilda, two of her grandchildren, and their mother Nicole. Stan’s sisters were strong presences at his house. Many adults had a few extra kids in tow.  They’d often leave them at each other’s houses, and everyone would take care of them. Stanford loved babies.  They got onto his wheelchair to take rides, clinging to him like cherubs.
