The fusion of food in this tribe's culture really stood out to me in a few ways. Old Bear's first wife was notorious for drowning everything she consumed in ketchup (a nontraditional Native food), which Old Bear mentions as one of the possibilities of their divorce. But there is also a deep sense of scarcity in the area. Scarcity even to the point of health care; obviously Old Bear would definitely benefit from dental or some other type of medical treatment, but because he lives on the reservation medical care is known to be of poor quality. And that's a question many Native American are forced to face: should they risk possibly decreasing the health of an already diseased person? Old Bear takes to extremes, risking his health by placing an aspirin directly into the cavity-- something that would most likely lead to a path outweighed by cons rather than pros. The role of food comes into play as he sits in bed and romanticizes the foods he can only conjure in his imagination.
I found the ending of this excerpt very interesting:
"Old Bear became heaven. Old Bear became God. Old Bear became the nacreous gas of space before the Bing Bang"
- Old Bear says this after facing starvation and then consuming a pot of beans.
A little side note since I'm always interested in the connection between humanity and the natural world: "Old Bear", even though its just the name of an individual, metaphorically shows how Native tribes highly identify with nature and believe in the connectivity between man and all living things.
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