Roger Dunsmore and Josh Slotnick

[00:02] ROGER DUNSMORE: My name is Roger Dunsmore. I am 84 years old. Today's date is Wednesday, June 8, 2022. We are in Missoula, Montana. The name of my interview partner is Joshua Slotnick My relationship to him is as or dear old deep friends together.

[00:28] JOSH SLOTNICK: Thanks. My name is Josh Slotnick. I'm 57 years old. Today's date is Wednesday, June 8, 2022. We're in Missoula, Montana, and I'm here having a conversation with my friend Roger Dunsmore, who is my holden. Dear friend. So, Roger, I invited you to come and do this storycorps with me, really, because of all these conversations we've had over the years. And recently, when we got to drive across central Montana for, I don't know, six, eight, 9 hours at a time. It was a long couple days, but those hours just went like that because of the conversation and some of those stories. And when this opportunity came up, when I heard the story Cora was coming to Missoula, I was thinking about some of those stories that I was so really blessed to hear while we were driving across our great state, thinking that Mandev, some of this needs to be recorded for posterity. It needs to be available. I shouldn't. I should be more generous than to have. Be the only person who ever heard these things, so. And you were in Mexico. So I send you a text saying, hey, come do this thing with me. And I could tell from your text you were your normal, gracious, friendly self. Yeah, like, whatever. Okay, I guess it sounds fine without having any explanation. So first, I want to thank you for trusting me to bring you in on something like this.

[01:51] ROGER DUNSMORE: Well, thanks for asking.

[01:53] JOSH SLOTNICK: So when you were a professor, way back when and I first met you, I was a student. You were really an authority on a lot of cultural things related to native people. But one thing that really struck me as a difference between you and other academics is that for you, you weren't drawn a line between, this is what I study, and then I go live over here. Your study and your practices in academics and being a teacher were so obviously interwoven with how you lived every day. It wasn't a job you opened and shut a door to or an academic interest. It was who you were as a being. And I know from hearing about some of those things you did, your interest in native folks and justice and kind of understanding how things got to be. They were how they are and making them right really became real. And you dove deep into some of the movements back then, and I wondered if you could talk about this and I'm thinking some of these things happened in the seventies.

[02:58] ROGER DUNSMORE: Yeah, yeah. Well, the american indian movement starts. Aim, aim. Yep. And it starts, I think, late sixties. And then wounded knee, where they occupied wounded Knee Hamlet on the Lakota reservation in western South Dakota. That's, I think, 71. You know, I might be off a year or two there. And that was a huge, huge event in the life of this nation, actually, not just the life of native people, but it. It brought native issues right to the front, and it did it in a very dramatic way. They weren't just talking about it or voting about it. I mean, they went in and occupied the place, and the feds came and surrounded them with vehicles and weaponry, and there were shootouts.

[03:54] JOSH SLOTNICK: How long did that go on for?

[03:56] ROGER DUNSMORE: It's like maybe 70 some days.

[03:59] JOSH SLOTNICK: 70 days?

[04:00] ROGER DUNSMORE: Yeah, 70 something. It was a long time. And there was a child born within the wounded knee. Occupational.

[04:07] JOSH SLOTNICK: Was this covered by media? I mean, did people know? Everybody knew about this?

[04:11] ROGER DUNSMORE: Oh, it was covered by media, although not too many media were inside there. I had one friend of mine, a guy named Will Baker. He's dead now, who was also a professor, but also a filmmaker. And he was inside there. In fact, his vehicle was used to smuggle Russell means out of there. At a certain point, they wiped mud on the license plates and drove old Russell out, you know, but it was a huge media event, and it was sort of like, I don't know if you could say they proclaimed a little nation there, but it felt. It felt like they had liberated some territory.

[04:50] JOSH SLOTNICK: How was it resolved?

[04:53] ROGER DUNSMORE: I don't know. And that's just because I haven't looked at the history of that. I mean, it was a negotiated. It wasn't like the feds moved in and killed everybody, although, you know, the feds did make people pay over the years in various ways for that. I mean, Leonard Peltier is still in prison. He's a political prisoner.

[05:16] JOSH SLOTNICK: And the origins of that, of Leonard Peltier's imprisonment, were at this occupation at Wounded Knee.

[05:22] ROGER DUNSMORE: He wasn't imprisoned there, but certainly his profile within the american indian movement and his profile there. There was also a. I think it was after wounded knee, there was a shootout in South Dakota in which I think a couple of federal agents were killed. And I think they never could figure out who exactly fired the weapons that killed the agents. But they needed somebody, and they got Peltier on that.

[05:53] JOSH SLOTNICK: So how long after this did you start becoming active?

[05:58] ROGER DUNSMORE: Boy, I don't know if I'm not an activist. And so I wouldn't claim I was this active guy, but what I did do was I was in a sweat lodge community up on the flathead reservation. And my wife and I, not in the seventies, but probably not in the early seventies, but by the mid to late seventies, we sweated weakly up there. And sometimes if we had a person out fasting for four days, we'd sweat before he went out. We'd sweat every single day he was out there, and we sweat when he come back. So some weeks we'd do five in a row, which was always like, wow. But through that sweat lodge community, of course, I had many indian people that I knew and liked and got along with. My wife at the time was a part Cherokee woman and had been in the wilderness program, and she and I broke up.

[07:04] JOSH SLOTNICK: Wilderness program where you were teaching around.

[07:06] ROGER DUNSMORE: River program where I was teaching, yeah. And she and I broke up, I think, in about 83, but we continued both to attend that particular sweat lodge up on the flathead. And there was a little guy who started showing up there. He was Apache Yaqui and had tattoos over his whole body. Very. A very intense human being. And I won't use his name, I'll just call him Big D. And he was the rock carrier for the sweat lounge. You heat rocks up until you can see through them, and then you bring them in and put them in the middle of sweat lodge. And the leader splashes water on and songs are sung, prayers are made, pipe is offered, all that. Well, he was the rock carrier for that. And he had come up here. I don't know what had brought him north, but he had come up here and I helped him. I was his rock carrier helper. And he taught me a lot about the rocks, how they were our brothers, basically, and how they had given up their being, their intensity to cleanse us and purify us. And so we had a pile of used rocks outside the sweat lodge clinkers. And those were our brothers. And he took that very seriously and helped me to learn that. Well, about a year and a half after my wife and I broke up, he took up with her. And at some point then after he took up with her, and we were friends. We were all friends. It was not like, oh, you stay away from my grave. He said, hey, he said, you want to go to a Sundance? And I said, sure. You know, I'd never been to a Sundance. And by the way, at that time, in our, the white indian interface, there were people who made the summer Sundance circuit. They might go to Sundance every couple of weeks all over the west and all over the west and stuff. And so there was a lot of that going on and how that interfaced with the local people who sundance. It was probably varied from Sundance to Sundance, but I never wanted to partake in that. I didn't want to turn it into a summer thing that I did and I didn't feel ready to take on. It wasn't something I wanted to learn about something that it was a very potent ceremonial activity that. That I didn't feel ready to participate in. I wasn't going to go and just study it or something. So I said, sure. And he said, well, I need a ride to the american indian movement, Sundance, over in South Dakota. Will you take me? I said, sure. And so I felt.

[10:21] JOSH SLOTNICK: So let me just jump in here a sec. So at that point was aim the american Indian movement still looked on with suspicion based on wounded knee or did things settle down enough so that it wasn't attracting a lot of attention?

[10:34] ROGER DUNSMORE: Well, I think it didn't attract as much attention by then we're talking. That's probably ten years later. But they were still very much themselves and met and I don't know what their activity. I don't know the political activities after that, much less highly visual. I mean, the occupation of wounded knee was a huge. It changed the whole history of american culture in terms of their awareness of the indian people and their situation. But anyway, so I went with Big d to South Dakota. South Dakota, middle of South Dakota. And what was neat about that was we got to know each other.

[11:23] JOSH SLOTNICK: The long drive.

[11:24] ROGER DUNSMORE: The long drive and stuff. Stuff. And we liked each other. And we stopped at Harney Peak in western South Dakota. It's the highest point in South Dakota. It's where black elk, Nicholas black elk, I always like to call him Nick, was his white name. Nicholas Black Elk had his vision up on Harney Peak. And Harney, by the way, was a general in the US army. And one that was just one of the worst. I mean, I think the Indians referred to him as child butcher or something like that. And so there's this peak, the highest peak in South Dakota is named for that guy, of course. Perfect in terms of history, the perfect kind of insult and aggressive co option of geography and language and all of it which has happened. And so I wanted to stop there because I knew black elk had gone up there. And black elk speaks is a totally seminal text from Maine, from my identity as a white american male. And it changed my life, that text did. I've written, oh, yeah, multiple books yeah, but written specifically on that book. Anyway, so we stopped at that. And by the way, I think that now where Harney Peak is is no longer Harney State Park. I think it's black elk State park, and I think the mountain has been renamed. So I think that that's part of the kinds of changes that have occurred since. That would be in 1984. So I wanted to climb Harney Peak, but Big D had been talking about. He did a lot of time in prison. His specialty was armed bank robbery, which he was highly addicted to. And I think he'd done maybe 20 years in federal prison. And he had his little prison tattoo kit he carried with him. And I said. And I noticed he had a sign on his clothes. It was a circle with a particular thing in it. And he said, yeah. He said, I mark all my stuff. I said, well, would you give me that tattoo? And so he said, sure. So before I climbed Harney Peak, black elk Peak. Now, we sat at a picnic table there in western South Dakota, and he got his prison tattoo kit out with just needles and India ink. I have it on the back of my right shoulder, and I value it highly. It's a very unobtrusive tattoo. It's only as big as a nickel, probably, but I carry that, etcetera. And he did not climb the peak. He wanted to stay down below. So I climbed up to the peak, and I took some very small stones from the top of Harney Peak. And I'll tell you why later on in the story. I took just one for each of my three children and my older brother and my parents. So the immediate family. And then we went down and we went on over into central South Dakota, set up for the Sundance. Well, it was an aim Sundance. They had all the aim cadre, you know, there, as well as other people, as well as local people, etcetera. And we got there early to help build the arbor. And because I had come in with Big D, I was sort of. I don't know what the right word is. I had a special place there because he had been. During the wounded knee occupation in 71, he had been their top security man.

[15:41] JOSH SLOTNICK: Okay?

[15:42] ROGER DUNSMORE: And here's a guy who walked that perimeter all night, every night, and checked every single guy. And if there was a guy, like, stoned or drinking, you know, at his security. Security point. Well, big D told me one time, he walked up in this large mail, said, hey, brother, you don't come here, have a talk with me or something. And he walked over and hit the guy in the face with a rifle butt as hard as he could and knocked his teeth out and said, listen, we are at war. You do not, at a security point like this, you do not get yourself stoned or drunk at war. That's an offense that during real war time in the military, you'd be executed for that. He was that guy, and in a lot of ways, he was that guy.

[16:33] JOSH SLOTNICK: So tough guy.

[16:34] ROGER DUNSMORE: Yeah.

[16:35] JOSH SLOTNICK: Oh, so tough.

[16:36] ROGER DUNSMORE: Oh, yeah. But good. Very good. I mean, I really liked him and was felt honored. He was my friend and had taught me, so I went in with him. So that gave me a special place in the Sundance thing without me even thinking about it, just because that was my tent mate for the Sundance. And I don't know how big the encampment was at that point because it's pre sundance, but we were building it, and food was short. I mean, how are you going to feed 30, 40 people trying to put together this thing? And so one of the things that happened was, after a couple of days, a whole bunch of beef showed up, and some of the guys had gone out to one of the local ranches and gotten themselves a cow and brought it in.

[17:33] JOSH SLOTNICK: Not legally.

[17:35] ROGER DUNSMORE: Yeah, not legally, you know, and brought it in. And, you know, I thought, you know, this used to be Bison country, and here these people are who lived for thousands of years off millions of vice, and now, you know, they have to go out and illegally take a cow in order to get enough meat to feed a Sundance community. The irony of that, rather than saying, well, that was illegal, and that's the important thing about it. No, it's an important thing about it, is the history. But it was like that there, and I enjoyed it. And I was asked if I would be security, probably because I came with Big D, if I would be security part of the security guys for the camp. So I said, sure, in fact. And so we wore a little red piece of red rag cloth tied around our upper arm that identified us as security. Security. And I still have mine, and I was going to wear it today, but I got in a hurry and left. And so I was at a certain point, we started at 04:00 a.m. in the morning, and we went until noon, and then we could take part in the rest of the ceremonial stuff. And my security partner was a guy named Johnny walking Crow, and he had a Lakota mother and I think a black father as a mixture. And his mother brought him coffee every single morning and donuts at 04:00 a.m. when we went on. And I noticed after the first day, we stood on either side of the road going in. We had to check every vehicle for cameras, drugs, alcohol, and firearms.

[19:20] JOSH SLOTNICK: And so no drugs and alcohol in the camp?

[19:23] ROGER DUNSMORE: No, none. No drugs and alcohol in the case? No. And firearm or cameras or recording things? None of that. You know, this was.

[19:31] JOSH SLOTNICK: It's real.

[19:32] ROGER DUNSMORE: Yeah. This is a serious sundance, you know? And I noticed after the first day that all through that day, once the dancing started, that walking crow danced all day in place at a security thing. We were just across road from each other, a dirt road, but he was partaking of the dance. So I asked him at the end of the day, I said, gee, I'd like to do that, too. I'd like to dance all the whole time. Would that be okay? I don't mean to do anything. Hey. Oh, hell, yes. It's fine. You want to dance in your security position like I do, that's great. Good for you. So I got to do that for that sun dance. I got to dance. The dancing didn't start until later the day. They weren't dancing at 04:00 a.m. but when it started, I got to do that. A couple other things that happened is the gathering of the tree, the going out and getting the tree that's going to be the center pole for the Sundance was really a wonderful thing. And what happened is they send out some young men who are going to be in the ceremony to find the right. The appropriate tree, specific, not just kind of tree, but the specific tree. And sometime around, you know, later in the morning, these guys came back and they found the tree, announced that to the camp. So the whole camp walks to this place, and it's like, maybe. I don't know. It's not real far, but it's maybe a mile or two out there, and it's.

[21:17] JOSH SLOTNICK: It's growing still.

[21:18] ROGER DUNSMORE: Oh, yeah. It's a live tree. It's going to be the centerpiece. And I go out there, and we all went out, and then the dancers, young people who were going to be the dance, not all young, each, I think, got, I think, four ceremonial strokes, and then they hand the ceremonial act to the next guy. And until the tree came down, there was no chainsaw involved or anything like that. I mean, it was all done by hand. And then there's maybe 75 of us. We picked the tree up. The whole tree.

[21:59] JOSH SLOTNICK: All the people picked the tree up?

[22:00] ROGER DUNSMORE: Yeah, we picked it up. And there were songs to sing for the tree as we carried it as a group all the way back to the sundance. Ground singing all the way in the morning. I mean, that was like. For me, it was like, I just love being able to be a part of that as this guy, this white guy from Montana. And there was no. I didn't have any sense that, well, I didn't belong there. And I couldn't do this because I wasn't the right race or something, something like that. That wasn't a feeling I got from anybody there. And then there's. Before the tree is raised, you make offerings. You make flesh offerings. And there's a guy with a razor, and he's sitting off to the side of the Sundance arbor. It's been built. And then people line up. Of course, the dancers are offering their bodies for days, and so they don't make these flesh offerings.

[23:08] JOSH SLOTNICK: They're just dancing for days.

[23:10] ROGER DUNSMORE: Yeah, but most of the people that were making offerings were women, and there were some children. And then. So I got in that line. So I'm standing in this line with the women in the. And the children. And I got there, I made an offering for each of the stones I took off the top of Harney Peak for one of my family members. So I paid for those little stones with my flesh on this left arm here. And the guy who he does, he pinches it and slices it. And then he has a little piece of cloth, you know, four by four something, and puts the flesh offerings in there and ties it and gives that to you. So you have your flesh. Wow. In a little ceremony wrap, and then you take that and you tie it to the tree. So when the tree goes up, it's. And there's all kind of offerings. And not all flesh offerings, but flesh offerings and ribbons.

[24:13] JOSH SLOTNICK: Is this tree just like a tree, or is it limbed like a pole?

[24:17] ROGER DUNSMORE: It's been limbed in order to stand up there. It's not fully branches. You know, it's limbed at some point.

[24:23] JOSH SLOTNICK: And things are tied and attached to it.

[24:26] ROGER DUNSMORE: Well, I mean, let me just think about that, because. No, it. It must have. I think it must have had its branches. I don't. I don't know to what extent it was limned. I don't know if it was partially limbed or not. But it did have some branches because I know that what my memory is, anyway, and again, I'm not an expert on this. I haven't studied this sundance. I haven't compared different kinds of sundances or any of that jazz. I just went to one with this guy. But my memory is that the tree then is raised, and there's all these offerings people have made in colored cloth fluttering all over the beautiful. Oh, yeah.

[25:11] JOSH SLOTNICK: And 75 people with all of that energy around this tree.

[25:15] ROGER DUNSMORE: Yeah, well, that was just the ones who carried it. By the time the offerings are made and the tree goes up, there's more people than that there. I mean, you know, there's going to be a couple of hundred people, probably, maybe more. I don't know. But I mean, so. But this tree is then as the wind blows, sending all those offerings and prayers up into.

[25:36] JOSH SLOTNICK: Yeah. Into the atmosphere, whatever.

[25:39] ROGER DUNSMORE: The mighty something that is responsible for all of this. So that was really moving to me to just take part in all that in my own kind of ignorant way, but wanting to be there and feeling befriended by this young aim guy. The other thing that happened to me there is I got shot there and I was. It was. Well, a couple things happened right before the Sundance started. You know, like the evening before, the day before, there was a sweat lodge going on over at another place, you know, a couple miles away. And they just announced that, hey, any guys want to do a sweat before purification, you know, before the sun dance? Come on. So I looked at Victorio and he said, sure, no big dheenden. And he said, sure, you know, go ahead. So I got in this truck, this open truck with a bunch of other people, and we went. And because I was the white guy and the outsider, the young men at that sweat, some of them played with me. I mean, teased me, do you think you can take it? It's going to be 400 degrees in there. You know, I don't know. Maybe you shouldn't, you know, and all that. And it wasn't mean play or unfriendly, but they were testing me and playing. And at some point I said, hey, you know, there's one way to find out. Let's go do it. And I had sweated a lot. I mean, I probably sweated hundreds of times by then, so I wasn't.

[27:21] JOSH SLOTNICK: I knew what you were getting into.

[27:23] ROGER DUNSMORE: Yeah. And it was fine. It was a good song. Solid sweat. And then we went back to the Sundance area, and I don't know if it was the same day or if it was maybe the next day there was a peyote meeting. And so that was very controversial. In those days, there were people who thought, you don't mix the pipe religion and the peyote religions. But these guys did do that. It wasn't something that they felt they could only do, you know, the pipe religion. And so they did an all night peyote meeting. And I.

[28:03] JOSH SLOTNICK: All night.

[28:04] ROGER DUNSMORE: All night? Yeah. You sit up and sing and play the water drum and build the crescent moon into the full moon with the ashes. And I'd been to a couple of those, too, back in the seventies. I mean, you know, I was not there as an academic. I was there as a person who needed to cleanse my own self. And I was very interested in how our native people are, meaning just in our geographical area did that. And I've been very, very fortunate to have enough of a connection to partake of that. So we sit up all night, and peyote is. People usually say, well, I heard one academic say, well, it's like sitting up all night in the tv with a bunch of Indians puking. Well, that's not so. That was really ignorant.

[29:07] JOSH SLOTNICK: What was it like?

[29:10] ROGER DUNSMORE: Well, I don't want to go into that so much. I'm hesitant to be too descriptive about ceremonial activity, but I'll tell you a couple things about it. One was that the guy who was leading the peyote chief that night, the young Lakota guy, did end up getting sick, and he went out of the teepee and was throwing up right behind where I was sitting outside the tv. That's the only time in a podium. I've only been to three or four of them. That's the only time I had felt ever queasy was with the leader out there throwing up behind me. But the main thing about it was all night. Come back, come out in the morning. And I went back to my camp and made a fire to make tea for myself. Well, they told me later, one of the aim guys the year before had poured a bunch of leftover, wounded knee ammunition into that fire pit. Oh, no. And so when I built my fire in there, this ammo started going off. Oh, my God. And I've been up all night on peyote.

[30:31] JOSH SLOTNICK: All night on peyote. And then you made a fire on top of some ammo.

[30:35] ROGER DUNSMORE: Yeah, I made a fire on him. And one of the slugs hit me in the.

[30:40] JOSH SLOTNICK: It went off. Boom.

[30:42] ROGER DUNSMORE: Yeah. And hit me in the right thigh. And it didn't go deep. It was kind of a flesh wound. But I could remember just watching the blood grow up to silver dollar size. And some of the guys came over and some of the coda guys came over, and the guy who had run the peyote meeting the night before said, oh, God. He said, I think we're going to have to dig that out of there. And I said to him, no, I'm going to wait, you know, I mean, I'm not afraid of lead poisoning. I don't think I'm going to have you guys dig that out of there. And it was okay because it didn't lodge in.

[31:21] JOSH SLOTNICK: It went through.

[31:22] ROGER DUNSMORE: It went through. It wasn't a deep wound or anything. It was a surface wound that went through. But when I got back to the flathead north of Missoula there, the sweat leader there, sweet guy Danny, he started calling me wounded knee because I had gotten shot. Okay, with the wounded knee guys, that was important. Well, another thing about Big d that I want to say is, like, in terms of him and who he was and how he functioned as a person, you know, how they brought the piercing back at the Sundance where the guys were dancing, would pierce through the pectorals and then. And then. And then attach that directly to the tree, and they would dance until they. They tore free through their muscles and stuff. And that's. That's a part of it. And I've seen that referred to as self torture, but that's not what it is. It's a. It's a sacrifice of your flesh, a real. What are you going to sacrifice? You know, your Honda? No, no, you. You do your flesh. And there were guys out there pushing relatives that were in wheelchairs around the Sundance arena to try to help give them healing and hope and stuff. I mean, it was very moving and serious and deep and old. Well, for Victorio, there's none of this pectoral piercing. He had himself pierced through the back in four places and hauled up into the tree. He's hanging and he's hanging from back piercings up in the tree while the other guys are dancing around. Okay. That's who he was, you know, or is. I hope he's still around. And it didn't last long. I think they tore out within a few hours. And then he was lowered down, or fella down and came out. And when he came out, he gave me a little gift, which I treasured. There was a buffalo skull at the base of the sundance tree, and he had grabbed a handful of hair from that buffalo. And then when he came out, he came and put that in my hand, you know, for me. And so I felt, you know, deeply honored and touched and grateful, you know, that he was doing that for me, you know, and my family and people and stuff. One of the other things I would say about this particular sundance, and there's things I won't say. I mean, I was threatened there in other ways that I won't go into or can't go into in a public thing, but it's also that. And again, I'm not generalizing about sun dancing at all. I think they vary greatly in terms of whose Sundance it is, not just tribally, but then individually within the tribe even. This is the only one I've ever been to, so I don't have anything to compare it with. But at this one, Big D told me later, he said, you know, it's a fertility rite. And what that means is that the sexuality is wide open. And when the leader said to me when I first got there, you go around, you look and enjoy yourself, he said, what he meant was that it was a sexually open place for everybody. And that's a part of the celebration. The fertility of the earth and the sun, all that. Well, I've never heard that anywhere. I don't know if I'm even supposed to say it. I've never seen that written anywhere. I've never seen that reference to that. And what Big D told me is, yeah, we recruited urban Indians in Denver by letting them know about that. So anyway, that was that Sundance and I haven't had. I don't think I've. At the end of it, we didn't go back together. He went south and I went back to my home, and I never have heard from him again. But I feel a deep connection to him and a deep obligation to him. And I certainly hope that nothing I have said here about him or about that whole experience is inappropriate or violates any strictures of what is made to be made public or not. And I don't really know. And as I want to also end saying, I'm not a student of the Sundance. I'm a white guy who's been very grateful to my Indiana friends and went to one and had a life changing experience.

[37:13] JOSH SLOTNICK: How was it life changing? What was different afterwards?

[37:19] ROGER DUNSMORE: Well, I don't know. I couldn't point to just did this. I couldn't with the peyote meetings either point to that. There are certain moments, but my life changing, I think it just affirmed my connection to native people and my own longing for wholeness as a human being and to be able to partake of a really ancient and powerful and elaborate and beautiful ceremonial expression of that rather than changing something in specific, it sort of is a. It helps stabilize me internally, you know, it's part of where I get some of my stability from, you know, as much of stability as I am. Anyway.

[38:22] JOSH SLOTNICK: Well, thanks for sharing all this, Roger.

[38:26] ROGER DUNSMORE: Have you heard all of that before?

[38:30] JOSH SLOTNICK: Yes, I think so. Slightly different twists and deeper in some places and less deep in other places, but not as an entirety. We talked before, it was more specific incidents rather than this as an entirety. And we're talking about something that happened 40 years ago.

[38:49] ROGER DUNSMORE: Yeah. 84.

[38:50] JOSH SLOTNICK: Yeah. So going on 40 years, maybe 83.

[38:53] ROGER DUNSMORE: I'm going on 40 years, and it's very present with me.

[38:58] JOSH SLOTNICK: That's quite amazing that it's present with you now. And I like what you're saying about a longing and a kind of a sense of completeness as a person, a wholeness as a person. And I want to believe that we all really need rituals and celebrations and connections with other people that seem, that are outside of regular life and special and so really importantly, genuine and real. And it feels like we've substituted that with kind of a fake version of these things that people, quote, celebrate. But they're, there's a lot, there's not a lot of realness there. And you're pretty fortunate to step into something that was all of that.

[39:49] ROGER DUNSMORE: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[39:51] JOSH SLOTNICK: And to carry it with you to now to be an 84 year old man and this is present with you.

[39:56] ROGER DUNSMORE: Yeah.

[39:56] JOSH SLOTNICK: Yeah. May we all have something like that.

[39:58] ROGER DUNSMORE: Yeah, I hope so.

[40:00] JOSH SLOTNICK: Well, thanks again for coming all this way.

[40:02] ROGER DUNSMORE: Yeah. Oh, no. It's always a pleasure to be with you and to be in Missoula.

[40:10] JOSH SLOTNICK: There's the heart right there, man. Thanks.

[40:14] ROGER DUNSMORE: Yeah.