Steve Jobs || American Indian Friend

©2011 Turtle Heart "Support Group"

At the end of the article is the last email I sent to Steve Jobs, this last August.

So much emotion being expressed and felt by so many people. A very unusual thing.

Two days later I still feel a strong emotion myself.

Some years ago I was struggling near the region of Death Valley, to develop what was the first American Indian WWW presence, in the world. My work caught the eye of a field representative for Apple and he paid me a visit. After it was over, Apple donated a state of the art laptop and color scanner to my project, which really took off.

In return I did a large stone sculpture which was for some years in the lobby of the Apple Regional HQ in Santa Monica. A view of it is in the photo above.

He once said, "It is more fun to be a pirate than to be a sailor"....this spirit is one we shared, at least until the iphone came out.

Steve Jobs passed away. I think millions of people around the world feel closer to death. He was a King of the Golden Tower and also its Shining Prince.

 He fell down for medical reasons at an early age, though he had every medical opportunity at state of the art levels. One by one and all each within themselves pass through this death. Many flavors but only one bone. 

I exchanged a few emails with Jobs. I did not save them. Or publish them online as some people did. One on a Christmas eve and he answered me on Christmas day.  I think he became bored with computers and the innovations he could have made to laptops and desktops is now probably lost in the void as he brought his passion into the little mobile devices and also developed an odd preference for severe controls. In what feels like a darkside move to me, he managed to get a piece of every telephone call people make with his phones. Why should the hardware developer get paid for this reason? Of course it deposited a massive amount of cash into their basket, and if that is the only argument in its favor, then his spirit has a wound much like the one which captured his body. The control thing, at its root, is an evil precedent. I have always thought it was great that for every control move Apple made, hackers broke it, and will continue to break it; as they should. Jobs started out more as a hacker of technology than a conformist to it. The closure of the open aspect, for me, is a long shadow. I can appreciate the devilish cleverness of the scheme; it cracks a smile out of me. I guess he had earned the bones for a few “fuck you’s” here and there. I am not optimistic the crew he left behind can do the job, no pun intended. He was building a new home for his family. Submitted the designs for a new home for his vision of Apple. Both controversial and unique projects of their own. He really liked really fine glass. No one has paid much attention, in the media, to all the patented, clever, relentless things he has done with glass. A grand dragon and a sweet provider.

If it were not for Steve Jobs we would all be using ms-dos. Even now. Microsoft copied Apple to produce the so-called "windows" operating system invented by Apple. Just think how that would be?

My dear man, we hardly knew ye.......


My last email to Steve Jobs, back in August 2011

Dear Mr Steve Jobs…. The period just before you came back to Apple I made a long ceremony in the California desert with an Apple employee named Richard Schlien (or Klien) a field supporter at Ridgecrest California….. we went to a sacred place of the Shoshone and I made a long ceremony with sacred pipe to take care of Apple and to bring you back it was a great ceremony in the California Desert at the China Lake Naval Air Warfare Center…..a place where thousands of years ago our ancestors made multimedia messages in the stone called petroglyphs I am a principal keeper of ceremonies and some of us old indians have held you in our medicine we still do even though you did not do shit for us you are a great character the old Indians would call you a jesa-kid, a man who does healing by juggling light a very honored profession at one time. Our ancient hardware and software works as well as yours… and we worked it that day, all day and feasted together after With a 540c traded from your Santa Monica office for a big sculpture for the lobby (did you ever see my big sculpture in your lobby?) I became the first American Indian in the world to make an American Indian web site, from the middle of nowhere. You read some of my emails. I hope you read this one and it sinks in somewhere that a pricipal pipe of the ancient way of the Ojibwe American Indians went to work for you and remains nearby you have a soul so you might be able to accept that there is something there something you can use the best thing you ever did was stay in your skin and trust your bones and keep your silence and pass quietly through a wall of iron and you somehow managed to take most of the world with you I am the old Indian that wakes you up once in a while from that restless journey you call sleep. Miqwitch man in Jeans. Wave on. Turtle Heart Ahnishinabek Aneeg Wabeeno Keeper of the Four Directions Unity Bundle Keeper of Sacred Pipe of the Eastern Gate World Journey of the Sacred Pipe Pantelleria Italy