Projects
American Indian Community Data Profile, 2002
Namadji Youth and Elders Project Report, 2001
Forum Reports
1997 Fall: Tribal Sovereignty and
American Indian Leadership
1996 Fall: Tribal Governments: What will they look like in the year 2010?
1996 Spring: The Threatened State of Tribal Sovereignty
Listening to the elders
"When the elders speak, we should listen. That's the purpose of today's gathering," John Poupart, president of the American Indian Research and Policy Institute, told forum participants. "Many times people from the non-Indian community ask us questions. 'Well, what do you think about this?' Normally, Indian people will sit back and think about it for a moment. But before we can answer, the person with the question provides the answer, as though they know what we think. And from there on, the plan is flawed. Flawed in a mortal way."
"It is time for us as a people to .reach back into our history for tribal customs and oral traditions. To find a place for that which is Indian. It's in the minds of the old people. They're the keepers of the oral history. Those are the words, the stories and the legends that have been handed down," Poupart said.
When the 175 forum participants gathered in four smaller groups, they sat in a circle of folding chairs intently listening to what the elders had to say. As the elders spoke from their hearts, three important issues threaded themselves through the discussions: respect, Indian languages and preservation of traditional values and spirituality.
Language
Albert Whitehat said that the heart and soul of Indian culture was in
the language, and elders in every small group agreed wholeheartedly. One
woman said that keeping Indian languages alive was crucial to Indian sovereignty.
Many elders remember when their native languages were spoken almost exclusively and are saddened that fewer people speak Indian languages with each successive generation. "Because of the great number of young people who don't speak the language, there is a great urgency now," said Mitch Walking Elk, also teacher at Heart of the Earth Survival School in Minneapolis.
"I remember years ago back on the reservation. You go to town and you see a lot of old people sitting around talking. If you didn't know the Indian language, you were out of luck," said Johnny Smith, an Ojibwe elder.
Margaret Sayers grew up in Ponemah on the Red Lake Indian Reservation. She remembers that the whole village spoke Ojibwe. Like many in her generation, Sayers was sent to a government boarding school. Unlike many other Indians, however, she never forgot her native language.
Smith recalls having to learn English quickly when he went to school. "When I started school, I didn't know how to speak English. Maybe that's why my ears stick out because I had them pulled so many times. I remember one time when I started school there was an older lady. We call them wayaabishkiwed-ikwe, chimookomaan-ikwe, a white lady. She was talking. Her mouth was moving, and I heard something coming out. I looked at my cousin, and I asked him, 'What's she saying?' And she came over and (pulled his ear) and said, 'Talk in English!' Boy, I learned how to talk English fast."
Dakota elder, Dave Larsen, cautioned elders against saying that they had lost their language because that puts the blame on the victims, the elders. "We blame ourselves for a lot of things that have happened to us. What I tell my class and what I want to tell all of us is let's stop saying we lost something. People gave themselves a legal right to steal from us. They stole our language by saying we could not speak it. Those of us on tiny little reservations didn't have the privilege of having a whole lot of people who kept the language alive when we went away. They stole the language. They stole a lot of our spiritual practices," Larsen said.
Elders look to the youth as the hope for reviving the language and many other traditional practices. "I really believe in these little kids. No matter if you have been raised in boarding schools. I was raised in the boarding schools, but my traditions have come back to me," an elder woman said.
Respect
Many elders were dismayed that young people didn't seem to respect them
or the traditional ways they represent. Respect is one of the most important
values, said Melvin Eagle, an elder from Mille Lacs.
Eagle stressed the importance of respect for yourself, your elders, your people and for the animals and Mother Earth. Without that respect, people become self-destructive, he said.
Kids want and need discipline, but they don't get it, said one man. Now, he said, "We don't have no respect for people. When I was growing, grandmothers were next to God."
Johnny Smith, a teacher at Heart of the Earth Indian Survival School, tries to instill the concept of respect in his students. "I try my damndest to make sure that they try to respect the elders, but they get influenced by the outside world of drugs and alcohol. And that just drags our young people down."
"(Kids) are too cool to listen to anything we have to say," said Walking Elk. "There's really a huge gap between young and old, but that doesn't invalidate what our old people have to offer. Whatever works, we have to use."
Sometimes, lack of respect comes from adults and not kids. Smith recounted bringing a group of students to dance for an Indian organization, only to find that many older Indians had drunk too much alcohol. "I keep telling our young people 'you have to respect your elders.' And here they were down there drinking," said Smith. "What I'm saying here is we have to be role models for these young people."
Traditions
Traditional Indian ways have been passed from one generation to the next
for thousands of years as young people seek out elders to learn from them.
These relationships are important for the survival of the culture. "The
elders and the children are the ones who make the backbone," said Rudy
Clark.
But in the last couple generations, the unique relationship between young and old has weakened. Many Indian children today grow up outside of the traditional community. They do not know how to approach elders for help understanding visions, practicing traditional spiritually or traditional knowledge, and they don't even realize that the elders are waiting for them to ask.
"We really have been lacking in passing on our traditions to the next generation," said one elder man.
"Our elders were not allowed to practice their religion," said one woman. "So the ones that were sneaking out back to practice their religion, kept it, while the others were not able to. So it is not only our fault that the young ones don't know the traditional ways. For our people to survive, we must again teach the old ways because (non-Indians) are not going to teach our ways. They can't teach our ways, so we must teach our children and our grandchildren," she said.
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Tuesday November 1, 2005