Despite discrimination from both whites and Indians, Clint Parrish’s quest is to find unity on the reservation
Clint Parrish, 33, is currently the pipe carrier for his class level at the Montana State Prison. Parrish has been an inmate at the prison for the past 13 years. Photo by Ashley McKee.
Prague 2007: Common Ground
With blue eyes and fair hair, Clint Parrish looks like a white American, except for his tattoos with Indian motifs and his Indian accent. Parrish does not look like it, but he is Native American.
And not a typical one. In the community he lives in now, he is greatly admired and has spiritual power. For all the Native American inmates in the high-custody section of Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge, Clint Parrish is their connection to Indian culture. He is a pipe carrier.
“I have spent most of my adult life in prison,” says the now 33-year-old father of a 14-year-old son. Parrish was in prison for thirteen years for burglary but was released last April. “I moved to my reservation, the Flathead reservation, and I went to Salish-Kootenai College,” he says. Then he explains how he got into trouble again.
His son was living in Missoula, two hours south of the Flathead Reservation, and he went there to bring his son’s belongings to the reservation. “But I was drinking, you know. And I got into an accident. Nothing bad happened, nobody was hurt, but I was drunk,” he says with a note of apology in his voice. And because of his earlier imprisonment, he is serving five years punishment now, instead of the two he would probably have been assigned instead.
For Parrish, the worst thing which ever happened to him was that he was born a “white Indian.” “I always felt racism everywhere, even among my own people.”
Clint Parrish is from Great Falls; he was born there. His parents went to boarding schools and in his first class in school he went to an Indian class that was separated from the class of white kids. “But I was also ‘white.’ They hated me there because I was white and white kids hated me, because I was Indian.” In high school Parrish got into several fights because of the racism he felt directed at him. He left school and went to the reservation.
“To be honest, I was getting into big trouble, if you know what I mean. And you know… It was like moving to the ‘Old West.’ ”
The day he is released from prison, Clint Parrish believes he will go back to the reservation. Even when he knows that the reservation is poor and there are almost no jobs. “But unity is what draws us back,” he says. “We like to be around our people.”
Excellent photo! As for Clint's case, are there no good attorneys in MT? Five years for a DWI/MVA with no PI (Personal Injury)seems really out of whack, leading me to wonder if there mis more to the story...
Posted by: Jim Rizos | January 12, 2008 at 12:13 PM