Omaha Archives - Lewis & Clark Research Database

Tent of Many Voices: 08100401F

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:08 +0000

maybe uh their education and different things it’s up to them the idea is you know it’s our opportunity to preserve these things and um uh so that our children may be able to use them in school and identify later on they’ll know this is this is my who is my grandfather it’s my grandma so we’re it’s our opportunity to do that so first um I’d like to introduce my brother here Elmer blackberg and then uh my aunt sitting next to him is wife Nancy and my aunt Grace over there and my aunt Isabelle gin and my sister Blan I wanted to uh they’ll Pro they’ll introduce themselves again but I wanted to say that so but first we’re going to start with my brother here again uh I say good morning to each of you from uh what my brother was saying uh uh I really believe in the tradition about Omaha people but this morning I’ll be going against the Traditions uh What uh my grandfather used to tell me not to talk about yourself don’t brag on yourself people know how you live but just not my brother said to talk a little bit about about our lives Omaha reservation so so I’ll will be talking about myself and what I have done during my lifetime I was born the on reservation in 1921 I was born in the hospital which was named after M grad uh Susan LEF pikot Hospital in Wild Hill Nebraska and I uh completed High School in Walt Hill Nebraska from kindergarten to the 12th grade following my graduation from high school I left the reservation here and uh went to California and found employment that was during uh the war time 1941 when I went out there and sometimes when I tell some people that I had gone to California them I tell them I couldn’t go any further cuz I wasn’t that good a swimmer to uh swim to another country from there but I was out there uh 2 years and uh and then I I went into the service uh some of my high school friends I was um kept in touch with them we wrote letters to each other they wrote to me and said they were going into the service so I quit my job and join the service like they did 1943 to 1946 and all that time when I was in a service I never came back to the reservation I was gone 5 years I was in the service 3 years and following uh my service I returned back to the reserv to visit my parents and my mother asked me one morning what are your plans now since you’re out of the service well since I’m out of service now I’m going to go back out to California and probably go to school at uccla and uh after I told her that at night I’d hear her saing so I finally asked her what the problem was she said you’ve been gone for 5 years and never came home and and uh I don’t want you to leave there’s uh colleges around here that you can go to so she kind of talked me out of it and I enrolled at the way State College at way Nebraska 1946 and uh I knew I had to go to work and earn a living and so I started in the summer 1946 summer school and I went R stated on through finish my 4 years College in 3 years cuz I know I had to go out and earn a living so following uh my graduation from high College uh I taught in a a public school Northwest of your called L Nebraska I majored in physical education so I coach sou Sports at the high school after 3 years there I went to work with the beer of IND Affairs and education and uh got employment in the southwest uh Colorado on a southern you reservation at ignasio Colorado and I was there four years uh teaching and coaching Sports here after 4 years the school closed as a uh boarding school and Ray Town they Consolidated with a public school and uh so they couldn’t find me another job in the physical education so I had enough courses in college and I was qualified as a counselor so I went into guidance and counseling programs in high schools and 1975 I guess 1960 uh I went to Lawrence Kansas to has school IND Junior College there and I was there for 15 years and uh I was a guidance and in a guidance and counseling program there and uh when I retired there I was a director of a that program at that Junior College and retired in 1975 and came back to the reservation uh prior to that I had three more years to be an Indian service to get 30 years in to retire and at that time I planed to retire in Drang of Colorado or Flagstaff Arizona and I talked to uh the tribe offered me a a job back here on a reservation as a director of a program called a action program uh which was a heavy equipment training for our young people and uh so I had opportunity to come back here uh after following my retirement from a Bureau of Indian Affairs I talked to my wife about it and I said you like to move back to Macy so we kind of talked about it at that time I our mother and our mother both mothers were living and they were up in years so we just we kind of determine our returning home again said we said well we might as well move home and be near our mothers so that’s what we did so I had uh com back to the reservation I had some good experience again um following my employment Indian Action Program uh well even prior to that uh uh I told the tribal council I don’t think I’ll would be qualified to be a director of that program cuz uh I don’t know not anything about heavy equipment let alone uh Learners in anything about my car I said well you don’t have to know anything about it you’re going to be a director you’ll have instructors that can teach it so I I took a job and came home and uh I was there for 5 years uh directing the program The Ed Action Program then election came up with Tribal Council or tribal government some people asked me to run for travel Council and I told them about think it’s too soon for me I’ve been gone a long time I’ve been away from here for about uh over 30 years when I left home here so I told him I didn’t think I was home long enough to burun for that but uh at that time uh we were having problems on our financial problems among our Omaha people so I thought I’d go ahead and grun for Council maybe I could uh be of some help to my people that was 19 1980 1983 I was a tribal chairman of the Omaha tribe and uh so following that uh my uh term as tribal chairman a kind of quite on temp retirement again and uh uh I was kind of fortunate to be elected as president of the Native American Church of North America the national Church organization in 1985 to 887 and following that again I returned back to work with the Omaha tribe uh with the vocational education program affiliated with Western Iowa Tech in s City Iowa and following that 99 again I ran for Tribal Council again and uh uh I don’t know whether that was fortunate or unfortunate but I became a tribal chairman again and uh through 1999 to 2001 so that’s uh about my experience I retired and so came back to my retirement and come to work again with Pier thank you talk about yourself where you was born your parents your children you went to school what Macy was like Macy was like when I went to school yeah I’m Nancy Blackbird my maiden name is Miller my parents were Bertha and John Miller both Omaha we were raised on a reservation here I had five brothers one sister and myself but I’ve lost all of my brothers except one and I’ve lost my sister and there’s just my brother and I left now here on the reservation and I went to school here at Macy at the time when I went to school they used to call it Macy Day School and I started here from kindergarten finished to 12th and after graduation we didn’t have any money so I I couldn’t go on to school so uh later that summer I I uh got married and I had four children two sons and two daughters we have one adopter daughter and uh I belong to the Thunder Clan my Indian name is that’s a name given to me by my parents my Indian name but I have a lot of relatives a lot of cousins and right now I have a lot of grandchildren great grandchildren how many stores were in Macy then see there was one two three at Le and there was uh two or three cafes in ma post office was there a post office in Macy yeah we had post office post office talk a little bit about the hanging if you could well the other night yeah you can talk about the other night well my husband and I are handicapped so we don’t hardly go anywhere anymore we stay home and the only time we go is when I go up to get groceries and he sits in the car and waits so I don’t get no help from him I have to pick out all my groceries and when I get home I have to hold it all in again so right now he’s really retired all he does is sit in front of the TV and watch TV all day and I have to do all the work around the house sometimes I get disgusted Stu with him and I tell him I feel like a slave around here all you do is sit around breakfast you come and sit at the table and wait for your breakfast so I guess he’s earned it he’s worked all these years and taking care of us taking care of my family even my grandchildren he helped me raise so I’m thankful for that where did you live in Macy we lived uh we lived west of Macy for a while with my grandparents I remember as a little girl and then from there we moved east of Macy my uh folks to took care of an old man his name was Ed Mitchell he had a home out there but there was no one there to take care of him so he had asked my folks to come out there and live and take care of him so that’s what they did he lived in a l c and we lived in the house but and my older sister used to wash his clothes and get him and bring him to to the house for breakfast for his meals and then when he passed away well uh for doing all those things for doing his long and going after him and bringing him to the house for his meals he went and left the Native American Church staff to her and later on my parents took over that staff so right now that staff has gone on to my nephew Milton Miller so that’s how he uh come in on that staff and that’s all my folks got the staff the Native American Church staff then after we moved to uh after moved to Kansas I don’t remember how many years we lived down there but like in 75 like he said we moved back to the reservation and uh he worked for the tribe tribe and I also worked for the tribe as a uh sh um from Johnson program getting children off to boarding schools and helping them fill out their applications and and uh when it’s time for them to come home I go up there and supervise and chaperon the kids home and after that program ended I work the health center as a activity director and it was too stressing for me to see our elders like they were I keep getting sick so I finally had to quit and I haven’t worked since and I’ve been a hom maker since then thank you you my name is GRA my parents is Harry Walker my mid name’s Walker and my mother is from San tribe Del Walker wolf and I lived in Mas born raised in Mason and I went to school and I worked through all my lives since I was 16 old I worked here and there so that’s how I made my living I worked at the school I worked all over a senior citizen and at um Health Center I worked through all my life ever since I was 16 years old how I made my living and I was married 56 years my husband passed away May 1st he was sick he couldn’t anymore and he worked at uh he working at that one progr they used to work forgot what you call that progr but he worked there that’s all I got to say thank you an Grace my name is Isel and mother Je carival hold it closer and is hold it closer to you yes sir yeah my name’s is my mother is a j CL and my stepdad is Charlie B rais me then I went on and on so I went to work to me Nebraska then and I got three children to live with me and then could tell us what your children’s name are huh what what’s your children’s name are oh yeah Robert and um Carol and Louise and Harris they don’t what said he didn’t dance um sh and got I mean and um Carol names uh shag and my girl name is m time and they don’t live with me they all live in oh I just got two sons living with me and they take care of me that way I was you live in Macy all your life oh yeah I live in Macy all my life where did you all go to school at me you go to no boarding school it’s School in Flo and me and then I went from there on I say thank you to my Isabelle give it to good morning my name is uh blanch Robinson Harvey and I come from the hunga people and my parents were Bice Walker and my dad was Albert Walker I’m Robin and U I had nine sisters and brothers and there’s only two of us left and I grew up in Macy west of Macy and I lived in a a big house first time and then I went to school and May see life was hard for us at the time we had no running water we had no inside plumbing and when we missed the school bus we had to walk when we missed the bus at at night we had to walk home and during storms and rainy weathers we had to walk to school now I seen it now nowadays it’s so convenient for on these kids because school bus goes right up to their door and pick them up and I was that uh our kids here could see how we lived we Tred to tell them because everything is convenient for them now they have indor plumbing and hot water cold and hot water in the house and I wish they could see how we we lived and how we were they it seem like everything is so convenient for them now I I went to school here in Macy and I got my GED and I went to school in Northeast College in Northfork and I got married and adopted four children two boys and two girls some of them were my relatives and one was Sue and I during my I married a Caucasian and his name was Ron Harvey and we were in construction he worked in construction many years when I traveled with him and during those two in two weeks of the year he pick a he like to travel and he pick a place and that’s where he went so I went all over I went to Africa China uh Japan Australia went on cruises so I seen all these people how they live and I wish all our kids here could see how the country is how how it is for them it’s it’s so big and huge and it’s you learn a lot of things when you travel and see different people how they live and all that and I came back here to to Macy to live and my husband’s retired and I live uh about 3 miles from here and I teach school now I teach culture I grew up in a home that my parents talked Indian I understood but I married a non-indian and I never talk my language but since I came back and I grew up I I’m trying to learn my language now and I’m trying to teach these young ones here to carry this on because it’s dying out because our kids are they learn this language at school but when they go home the kids their mothers and fathers don’t speak it so it’s just we’re trying to teach them now and that’s what I do at school I’m going back into teaching and trying to carry our tradition on of our language so it never dies out so thank you to um my relatives here uh there’s a lot more that I know that they can share that uh uh I was just thinking myself you know when I was a little boy my sister over there she used to be the boxing coach for a while my sister blanch I never forget that I say and it’s real hard it’s a difficult thing for uh some of us to talk about or to just get up in front and talk and I really appreciate my elders for coming up and doing the best they can because this is important and I want to say thank you to the uh National Park Service and uh uh for having this and giving us this opportunity the park rangers uh to be able to come to this T many voices and to be able to uh talk and have my elders um uh involved here so that uh uh years to come our children will be able to uh identify with them and they’ll know who they are so I wanted to say thank you like that to my elders my brother Elmer my Aunt Nancy my aunt Grace and my aun Isabelle uh I was thinking about that I was going to help her out because I know one of her sons Carol his got Indian name is the same as my dad’s shun number I was I always call him that all the time when I see him so um I want to say thank you like that round tips um the way we say uh when we end things talking like this we say HEI in our language it means all my relatives and say thank you I that behalf of Elders um uh we want to have some more Grandpa juicy can you uh we want to have some more Elders come up we’re going to set up and uh do the same thing again and ask my sister if she come over and my other sister here if they come up and U share as I said any questions questions yeah if there’s any questions for uh any of my relatives here Wanda there will bring them microphone up uh so you can ask questions if you have any questions for our relatives here I really enjoy holidays of Christmas and Easter and 4th of July I was wondering an example of a holiday memories when you were young uh in particular holidays that you Bree maybe oh you cated holidays when you were young well the holidays I usually went with my parents like here on a reservation to social activities and take uh some of you people came here working with this L and Clark experienced one of those the other night uh it’s about the only traditional uh social activity we have left to called hand game and uh they have that at different uh holidays and even different celebrations birthdays anniversaries like that and uh sometimes uh uh we have a dance here that uh were given to us by the kaiwa tribe we call it Gord Dan we have that too never doubt then that we some family sponsor a traditional War dancing uh so they have that too some of our social activities thank you anybody else have any questions for the elders we’ve got up here very opportunity okay well I would like to thank all of you for coming today and for sharing your stories with us I know it’s difficult um to do that but we sure appreciate it it’s a great opportunity to get this sun film for many many generations to come so thank you so much we go BEC um yeah we kind of he was asking about naming children uh some of our young younger people have forgotten the traditional ways uh when we name them we follow some of our religious ways of uh doing it uh anyway uh we name our children at Daybreak early morning hours we named them and uh uh all the reason uh we were told that uh good spirits around and and they said God we hear your prayers and we use tobacco I mentioned tobacco in our talk about Native American Church the the smoke uh takes the prayers to God so I’ll prepare tobacco and use toac when uh I named him and and pray in language and tell God the name that she’s going to go by and and try the families and other people know her that name so I do that and then after we name the baby uh the mother brings it to me I hold it my arms and I talk to it in OB language the kind of uh life that we live and is not an easy life difficult time and just he will be facing all those problems and uh going to have to make every effort to uh to be strong and yeah and uh and to be a good person to uh help people respect to Elders I talk to in our overall language and that’s one of the ways uh we do that tell them to be good to the parents CU someday I said they’re going to depend on you to take care of them and that’s what uh and we advise the parents side too uh you take good care of them teach them good things and uh cuz someday you’re going to depend on them to take care of you when you get old so and and we want people to respect them so teach them the good ways of life is kind of advice we give them so that’s uh one of the ways that uh is our procedure of David children usually the baby smiles to see they say they are understand when when uh we’re talking to them and the baby will just lay there smile yeah we uh even like she said the the young people they understand you know uh they even understand when there’s lack of security in the home you know the parents don’t treat them right they know that even as small as they are they know that and sometimes you think they not paying attention even when they’re watching TV or we talk about some things they turn around and ask us a question about what we said or tell us something what we had said so there they listen more than uh we realize you know yeah they’re aware of stuff yeah our grandchildren do anyway we think they’re not paying attention or listening to what we’re talking about but they actually are are listening cuz they all say and what did you say grandma or what did you say grandpa yeah they’re turn around and ask yeah now is the if the naming ceremony then is the first ceremony that a child would go through what is like the next stage of life is there like another ceremony like when a young man becomes a man or there used to be a long time ago but but we don’t do that anymore what were some of the older ceremonies that you had as you went through different stages of Life do you remember going through some like when you were a young girl or when you got married or no not really uh a long time ago um they uh named them over again and when when the trial is is uh not well there all right we’ll try and do it again hopefully it won’t be too much Jingles going on oh come some more maybe some more jingle we’ll turn it back on we’ll see if we can do it maybe it won’t be too noisy it doesn’t happen very of but once in a while they rename their child you might be having a a discipline problems they renamed it give them a name that somebody has a good reputation and they want it to be that way so a different day and they pray like tell they pray do that and the other one is they may have a health problem they may be having a health problem and uh uh they Chang their name they give somebody’s name that’s a good house and may God will answer will recover from whatever heal probably they might have that’s what all the time they renamed their children do you remember other ceremonies that you went through as a Young Man I mean as you got older did when was like I know this they’re getting ready for the Sundance and often like did you go through the Sundance as you were getting older like what was the first time you went to a Sundance well the sun dance uh we don’t really fly get involved in the sun dance they come from Another Side just new here now oh okay the uh Su did that subject but some of our people went up there participated and uh uh they were authorized to do that here on our reservation so in recent years they were doing that but uh we go to it go to the subes here any way and maybe one or two away from here because some of our family members were involved in dancing in it and to kind of give them moral support we get involved with it and those have sometimes dance sacrifice for sh die on our beh we get involved with with or maybe you sponsor somebody who’s going through the sun dance some people do that was something they did here not did not so it is Sue like the sweat Lou ceremonies has always been here since the beginning of time of the Omaha people and I like my on Native American Church in this early 1900s we start that religion was shared with us by the way of people and uh so that did originate uh here on that reservation how old do you have to be to go into the sweat lunch is it and I do men and women both go to sweat obviously they don’t together in the same they take turns yeah they how old do you have to be to the fames can participate in there’s there’s no uh age uh requirement or no age limit to participate if you believe in that way of worship uh uh you go and uh just like my son uh I was away from here and uh we lived uh away from here uh I was getting involved in our Native American Church on Omaha reservation and uh that’s what one of my sons asked Dad how old you have to be to participate in the day American church we have worship and I said there’s no age once you want believe in it and want join you can go any time so he start to go with me whenever I go way he got involved in how old were you the first time you went to a sweat do you remember to a sweat mhm I really did U she and I moved back to a reservation in 1975 and uh and the sweat LS was here then and uh and she uh uh start having health problems uh she couldn’t walk she was in chair and uh so one family was having a sweat l a sweat ceremony at their home invited us said to might help her so that’s not we started to go that must be about what 1976 or 77 we started to go to sweat L ceremonies okay but uh Sunday we start getting involved in it maybe about uh soon after that yeah about 20 years ago cuz we had an adopted son uh in fact he adopted us and his parents and uh he was Su dancing and sacrifice for us so that’s how we got involved with sances oh so there’s no uh no uh age requirements okay whatever they feel like they want to go and participate I didn’t know if they had to go through certain stages or learn certain things before they would be allowed to participate they learn while they’re in there ah okay so their participation they learn oh and we teach them what little we know about it you know and we’re not fully uh involed in a subance uh some of the rituals that they go through but uh but we’re where’re Le they too yeah well that’s good now when you two got married did you get married in in the church in the Native American church or did you get married out in the white world white man’s church or justice of peace I didn’t know and following that uh uh we had one of my elders uh in fact uh he’s closely related to her as a spiritual leader and we went to him and told him that we got married and we’ like to have our marriage blessed in the Native American church with so he did that for us oh okay but some do get married in the Native American Church way and we have a nonan uh he was a Methodist preacher uh asked her and I about it uh the ways of the UN American church prayer service so we shared that with him and uh he uh uh sat in a prayer service with me it’s all all night service and uh I explained to him each time they did something uh in the uh uh service T night in the service and then even our prayer songs when they sang those prayer songs I interpret to him the Omaha words that were in there they’re comparable to the hymns that you have in your church so that next morning uh when we came out of the TP uh I asked him I said well my friend uh I said what do you think about our uh humble way of worship he said you know uh I can’t find words to describe how I really feel spiritually he said I have never felt like this and so my own church he told me so that made me a feel pretty good but God must have showed him something through that alter I was talking about and he believed in it so much that he even got married in a Native American Church way can you tell me something about what the marriage ceremony is like in the Native American church or is are you not allowed to talk about that well we never got married that’s just uh what the procedures hard in there uh only I thing that uh I assume the marriages uh in a uh uh sometimes uh after midnight uh they have a special prayer for them they come in front of the altar but like they do around the in the church and uh pray for them and tell God about their marriages and and uh uh uh uh they can bless them in two ways one with a uh Cedar smoke bless up with the cedar smoke or they use water too we use water at at American church too and uh so that’s all the way I I know uh uh and they usually read the marriage vows to them too in there oh okay now does somebody else read the vows do you write your own vows know the the one that’s marrying you in there he’ll read them to you oh okay okay we went to one in Wisconsin one year that was pretty cuz he was dressed in all by bu skin they dressed traditionally yeah Buck get dress bu get l sure it’s very nice I think they did that uh hours after cery there we go um now are there other like ceremonies or anything that you do in your home on a daily BAS basis like when you get up in the morning are there certain prayers or rituals that you go through or at the end of the day is there anything that you have from your culture that you do every day in your regular life well we don’t do it every day but uh every now and then holidays and uh uh birthdays for our children grandchildren but we say a Grace at the table uh we burn Cedar follows some the native americ churchway burning Cedar and blessing our family with the c and even bless our home with it too when we do that that’s about time but we can pray whenever you know like before we go to bed I usually say say a prayer before I fall asleep and then uh in the mornings I used to get up and go out to our fireplace and go out there and pray but I haven’t been able to lately so just haven’t been doing it right yeah and I’ve met other people from other tribes that will um every morning we’ll do like a purification ceremony or smudge or you know burn something they have sort of different little rituals that they do to keep in touch with you know their culture yeah traditionally too uh I’ve always heard our elders uh say that uh a long time ago our omahas uh start start today with a prayer but I think so many of our young people we don’t do that anymore you know we just get up and go to a breakfast table and give thanks and pray for the day that we’re going to enjoy and and the kind of a day that God has given us blessed us with uh I think just like uh the water is real sacred to our Omaha people they say it’s life lifegiving has healing powers but uh so many we take it for granted we we don’t uh uh think of it that way anymore even if not made it the same way you know right and you said about going out to the fireplace you know to say prayers and stuff is fire or is it smoke that’s used more in the ceremony is it more is smoke what’s in our teepee they build fire in there and that’s what we call fireplace we have a teepe ground out there okay that we take care of and okay I used to go out there in the mornings oh okay just stand out there face East and pray right you know one of the things that my wife and I do too since she talked about that fireplace uh well I go on long trips or vacation or something uh I take tobacco we go out to the fireplace and offer a prayer for safe journey that we might meet our friends and relatives in good health and uh ask God to protect us and reur us in a safe Manner and uh leave a to back over there at the fireplace and that and uh I have a adopted brother in Oklahoma he’s a p Indian he’s he’s about 96 years old now wow I think he’s 92 or 93 but he’s up in the years and uh uh he honored us to pray for his family uh in the Native American church wayway so we went down there and we did that for him so he tells us not says uh you did that every morning I’ll go to the fireplace and offer a prayer he said so oh that’s good so he has that much respect for a native amican churchway and a fireplace uh when you review the uh my presentation on the Native American Church uh why we feel that fireplace is real sacred because the fire is sacred we we feel that it’s life lifegiving it also has healing powers so uh that’s why we uh believe so much that way and the respect that we have for the fire in early years uh uh before they had gas and troped and all that uh people here go to Timber cut wood for their home for fire like lot of people still do today have fireplaces they go cut W for that before he cuts the tree down he prays and tells God what he’s going to use that word for for fire light and to prepare food and probably for healing purposes they do that today I don’t think a lot of our young people do anything yeah wouldn’t they do the same thing like years and years ago when they would go hunting same thing if you were to take another the life of another living thing it was to do the same thing as to have a prayer as to why you were going to kill this Buffalo or this deer or whatever the same thing yeah yeah they they did that uh there might be a few that do that today I don’t know but uh ask God for forgiveness to take the life of the animal to they to use it for food food or shelter or whatever they can use it for they tell God about that right now they go deer hunting most of time so I think they I’m sure they pray see before they kill him or when they’re going out there while they’re sitting out there waiting I’m sure they pray and tell God what they’re going to use that for yeah animal now when you were very young did either of you like learn how to ride horses or anything like that did people were people still riding horses out in this area because I’m guessing there were not very good roads or anything like that for automobiles to get around or anything so did you all ride horses around when you were here when you were growing up do you remember riding horses yeah we used to ride horses yeah did you m in fact I don’t know how uh my parents did it but uh when I was growing up I had three ponies and uh one was in between a Shipman and a a big horse and I had one of them and I had a pinto it was a black and white pinto and a sorrow Pony and uh and I used to ride along the river up north here uh with uh three other guys and after we moved back to the reservation here uh uh one of still living that I used to ride horses with but I didn’t remember him I was little boy about like these kids went they riding horses he used to say well remember El how we used to ride horses up there and they had to spring up there to where we rode our PES and we’d water our pis there W he talk about that too but uh he’s gone now it’s where the old mission was there that spring was there the Old Mission Old Mission that’s where our school used to be when the missionaries came they build a school there teach our well how long ago was this it’s like the 1920s or something or before that yeah imagine it was in uh around uh in early 20s probably and where was this this you said there was an Old Mission that’s what they called it Old Mission School it’s north oh okay is it closer to where the wneo where the Mission School is up there or not that far no not that far it’s just out out in the country north of uh Macy there oh okay it’s not very far either later years that’s when they call it Old Mission people inever uh some of their parents went to school there grandparents went to school there they call it Old Mission uh did they have to go to school there I mean was that you know like a boarding school type of thing or they went there that’s what it was a kind of boarding school they had to stay at that mission go to school yeah yeah that was probably the only school at that time on a reservation yeah that was on the reservation yeah other than that how far away would you have to go to go to school well later later years you had these country schools you know different sections like uh prob from here to decater uh I know there was one before you get to deater it’s South South near uh near these Indian homes that’s where most of them were built did a lot of your friends go to boarding schools or did they mostly go to the the little country schools that were nearby I think most of them went to boarding schools uh our age group most of them went to boarding schools uh real far away I mean it’s quite I don’t know how far Genoa is maybe 15 miles out yeah they go there and a pipe show in Minnesota used to be a Bard school there yeah and some of our uh uh tribal members went to school there and South Dakota place they called flandro South Dakota and Pier South Dakota they have Bard schools there right and they had a mission schools that a lot of our tribal members went to even up here Wago was Catholic School right they went and so the Mission schools would have been on the reservation and the boarding schools would have been farther away a big town just like just like now a lot of our children go clear to Oklahoma to boarding schools W California yeah now is that by choice I mean that’s a good thing to be able to go to the boarding school like that or it’s not not that good that’s a long way for a young person it is to go but they want to go yeah it’s not mandatory they they want to go they put it out applications they accept it uh they go there but uh I think it was uh but middle 1970s uh well I guess during Reagan’s Administration guess he he was too much for idiots rean uh while he was a president uh they closed several of federal boarding schools uh some were in towns and they became affiliated with the public school there and uh like in Oklahoma there several Bard schools that were closed by the government there no longer barding schools and uh even at that time uh uh even a uh Public Health budget uh uh President Reagan was having his administration cutting budget did at he programs yeah so difference hang on one second I’m going to change the tape again e for

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Tent of Many Voices: 08110406T

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:07 +0000

Louis and Clark it’s a story of them the men that went with them on this Expedition the woman who accompanied them to the Pacific Ocean and back with her baby it’s a story of all of the Native Americans that they met along the way and the ones they didn’t get to meet who were out doing their buffalo hunt it’s also a story about all the people who have come along since then and this tent of many voices is a place where all of those voices can be heard so that people from different perspectives and different walks of life and different stories to tell can come here and tell their story we are very fortunate to have with us today the Omaha Lodge singers so thank you very much and we’ll turn it over to you now high high High oh high high good afternoon those of you most of you here know who we are we got a few here that don’t um as you mentioned we are singers and that song that we just sing there is uh one of those songs we sing for the grass dance and all the stories probably been told here um the grass dance as it is dance today Rec had it start here at the Omaha tribe it was originally called U the Omaha Dance by a lot of the tribes and this is one of the song that we sing throughout the PA circuit all that we travel to we seen uh different styles for for the different styles of dances and at this time I want to uh introduce members of our group here um to my left here starting here will be my brother Heaven next in line will be my brother Dustin Griffin my brother Quinton C my nephew Paris C my brother ever Baer Jr my brother Tony cuddle my brother Daryl Blackford and my nephew Justin s and we’re going to sing a few more songs here uh if you got any questions feel free to ask away on w High oh any questions any questions what kind of song was that that was the interner title song here D dancing AR it’s made by my nephew Bradley today in our drum group here u a lot of the songs that we do sing are composed by uh the members of the group here we all have a little part and all the songs are made and whatnot um and um we also sing other uh drum group songs at five songs and stuff like that um our singers are Diversified in a way that some of the singers here they T Su dances they 10 Native American Church meetings um and we also have swe Lodge some of us participated in that and we sing songs in there too so it’s not just out and with the big drum that we sing uh if there’s no questions um gentlemen any questions um all right can I would you introduce every oh you did and I missed it sorry can I a comment sure that gentleman over there in the red shirt I think you really have a nice voice oh thank you well you all sound very good oh thank you uh if nothing else we’ll continue to our next song Awesome it’s all where he I oh can you explain the why the drum is different it’s not sitting on the ground the difference of the drum you’re holding on to the drum what kind of a drum is that I’ve seen drums that sit on the ground but never that people hold on to can you explain that um it’s not really IG different you know any significance anything just the way that the drum was built it’s like uh some of these drum makers they try different styles and this is more like one of the other drums that are used is like what you call a hand drum smaller handheld them and just kind of like a variation off that um as far as any kind of real significance it’s just you know it’s just not as thick as the regular drums it does have a different sound because with the bigger drums you know uh they have the bigger you know resonance inside and all of that so it willing come off with a different sound and uh one of the things that uh is important for the drums is that you keep the hides tight so that you can get the residance out of them so they can be heard out there and right now the living weather and things like that the Drum areen Real solid so but yeah answer your question is that it’s it’s just a different style that somebody May and it’s up to the the drum groups I guess what type of sound they prefer uh this really isn’t our regular drum reg Dr like the ones that you mention the big Dr down this is one we to bring out of the shair this uh this drum particular drum here happens to belong to Tony here uh this had come from his um uncle who has uh Gone on to the spirit world and uh he ended up distro Tony here so uh that’s other thing that a lot of our uh members here you know they do have their own problems it’s just a complete way of life really that uh We’ve adopted we’ve adapted to and uh it’s it’s just like almost a everyday part of our life somewhere somehow uh even within the group here we are always doing different things together you know we go to different places together we spend a lot of time even away from the Dr you know with each other so that kind of you know that Unity that that this drum builds it’s very important it’s very sacred and and it’s you know giving us um support any one of our members you know we have one of them has a hard time and know the rest of us are there and try to back them up and uh just Goose them down enough you know so we we you know we love it we keep doing it you know we probably all keep doing this until we’re ready to go you know so with that you know we’re going to sing one more song we’re going to sing a round band song and um those of you that we’re get up in dance you’re welcome to dance and that will conclude our program thank you h way way high way he oh thank all of you that attended that will conclude our program here I’d like to thank the Omaha Lodge singers for coming to our core of Discovery to in the tend to many voices and like to thank everyone for coming to the core of Discovery T the 10 to many voices this is our last program for the day that we do but we do open tomorrow at 10:00 many voices in the core of Discovery too it’s been great being here uh in Macy in the Omaha Indian Reservation uh today in the Ten of manyi voices for this hour we are going to have standing Eagle native song and dance troop so let’s welcome them and uh thank you for being here and sharing with us thank you we want to say uh welcome to the Louis and Clark core of Discovery group uh from St Louis Missouri walk to the OM tribe we’re the standing Eagle singers of the OM tribe uh we got our start singing about around 1969 of my father older brothers older relatives and has transpired down to uh what you see today uh today we have like about 20 members within our group but due to uh school and uh work commitments you we couldn’t all be here but those of us that are here are here and we try to share a little bit of our music with you um like I said our family comes from a a culturally oriented family of song and dance and also religious uh police through our Native American church but what we’re doing today is with our big drum and our grandfather we have to thank him Mr Paris sa who uh made a way for us years and years ago uh unfortunately none of us had the opportunity to uh be here when uh my father was still our grandfather was still here he had passed on before uh we were brought into this world world but yet he’ already made a way for us within this big drum as well as our small drum with the da American church and today like I said we’re the stand eago singers were uh a family group come from Mostly from the bird Clan although we have others that are in the Thunder Clan and other uh Buffalo Clan but yet we still from in one family um today we have my daughter here Holly holana Sheridan uh my nephew here Fred my brother Sean my nephew Aon nephew Mike and my grandson conceiver um and today we’re going to try to share a little bit of our music and try to uh let you know what the song means what the meaning is and why it was why it was uh composed and and hopefully maybe when it was composed but um like I said we’re very happy to be here and be a part of uh history here maybe some years down the line when we’re we’ve already gone on to uh that place that God prepared for all of us that you know our Our Generations to come will be able to look look at these things and maybe use some of what we’re leaving behind here so today we want to say thank you to uh the Loa par core Discovery committee and ask us to be here and being a part of the program and we’re as om people and as a family we’re more than thankful to be a part of this as as a history of the Omaha people thank you y go the song you just saying was was uh is known as the Oma Nation flag song was composed by my grandfather Parish sasy after um the first world war and the song talks about my brother you gone across the big Waters to fight for this flag that we have flowing uh monstar tribe today so that’s a little bit about how that song was was composed um and now we’re going to move on to a couple of older songs that are not really say when the song was composed or uh how long ago but uh we’ll try to elaborate on that a little bit finish that song hey heyy happy day heav the song just saying is known about all people as the half GRE song um my mother told me years ago that uh members of the Lamson family and there’s a couple others that came to my grandfather uh Parish s’s Camp during the PA when when one uh one morning and asked for uh something special to signify the the half re members of the tribe and I think I don’t know if it was that day or the next day that my grandfather sang that song was composed by Paris it talks about uh being a mean half white you know that’s the way it is but it’s good today and be strong because of who you are so uh we have a lot of half reads amongst our people and that song was composed by my grandfather for them to use whenever uh they felt that uh they were being honored or sometimes it sung and all the half will get up and dance to that song so uh it’s a little bit about where that song comes from and composure another song that um my mother tells that my grandfather had a hand and composing along the way and it talks about uh a little soldier in this the song and that’s uh the exact date of when it was composed or like that is uh I’m not known to myself and I doubt any others do but it’s one of our older songs that we do have amongst our people um unfortunately you know our people were dancing some 200 or more years ago um but yet uh I don’t know whether we have songs from those times or not maybe the tunes are still here they put with different words put to them but these are some couple songs that we sing are a couple of the older songs that we do have you know from Years Gone by early last century so um now we’re going to kind of move on to a little more update you know uh my father started singing uh back with our group back in 1969 like just started with my older brothers and older relatives and what you see today has been a product of that our mother and father was really instrumental and raising us in the city in Lincoln uh my father retired after 38 years from the uh VA Hospital there as an employee and they always taught us that we need to know you know where we come from who we are and always be be proud of who you are because you came into this world with Maha and you’re going to leave the same way um and along the way you know being raised in Lincoln we had to we had to live in two different worlds and um when you came into our yard it was we had to do things in our Maha way with our M bels yet we went out of the yard to uh play with our other friends of other nationalities we to live in a in a whole new new different world as well as going to school and trying to compete and and academics as well as Athletics and um so it was it was a little tough during those times but after I got older I understand that there’s a lot more to uh being Omaha or native or Indian however you want to you want to call it whatever word you want to use and at a young age you kind of get get away from those things not thinking about them as you get older you become you start to get to feel that belief of being proud of who you are and that goes for any nationality but today you know we’re uh a product of uh Clyde Sheridan and William S Sheridan our drum group and they also paved away with singing and dancing as well as just big drum in the small Dr the Native American church and uh we’re trying to follow along those ways and it’s been U some 30 30 almost 35 years that we’ve had a drum group within our family maybe not the same name but the name have changed over the years but uh uh we’re still a group and we still sing as a family we try to encourage all of our younger ones um one time we counted all the singers in our our family alone on both sides of our family and there was over 50 singers that we have amongst our family so we’re kind of proud of that fact I don’t think too many families and many other tribes can can uh make that statement and also with my grandson and uh my nephews and my brother here and my daughter other relatives we also as known as the Rough Riders when we first started as the younger group and we were the first group back in 1992 we were the first group drum group Native drum group that sang with the symphony orchestra on stage when we did the uh that the lead Center at the University of uh Nebraska at Lincoln when we did the West meet West and we did a composition with the Omaha Symphony on stage as well as doing that with the Oma Symphony in Omaha so we have the distinction of being the the only and F first and only that I know of a drum group Native drum group to sing with the symphony on stage so uh we’re very very proud of that fact and uh so today we’re still continuing with our music and uh we try to stay together as a family stay strong so from now we’re going to go on to more of a modern style of singing where the beat up Temple and the songs are a little different than uh most of the songs that are composed I composed by myself for our group

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Tent of Many Voices: 04250402T

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:05 +0000

because we have many voices that come here to talk about Lewis and Clark to talk about the Native Americans that they met along their way and to share different cultures and today we’re very fortunate to have with us Pierre Merrick and Dwight how from the Omaha and FKA Nations to talk to you a bit about their culture and share that with you today so at this time I’d like to introduce DWI and Pierre well I guess I should turn my mic on can you hear me okay I guess it on we’ll just sit here kind of casual cuz there’s just so few what we like to do is uh we’re here to talk about our Native American culture we’re not really no they now we’re not performers are entertainers actually we’re uh myself I’m an educator I do cultural presentations I’ve been doing them for over about 20 years now my relative here Pier mer is from the Omaha tribe as well and uh he works with uh he Human Services Human Services and works believe the Indian Child Welfare is advocate for Native American children he’s also a singer he sings around this drum uh drums like this we uh we hold this is a very sacred instrument uh I’m Omaha and PKA My grandmother raised me since I was about 10 months old so my earliest recollection of my life grown up was around Elders older people and the omahas and pkas are the same tribe we came up from the Ohio River Valley we Eastern Woodlands Indians the Kanza quapa oage and PKA we all One Tribe generations and generations ago maybe before the time of Columbus we were One Tribe and we migrated from the Eastern Woodlands uh High River Valley up to Missouri and finally to where present day about 90 Mi uh north of Omaha Nebraska is the Omaha Indian Reservation a little bit further up the river is NAA Nebraska and that’s the original homeland of the punka so we lived right next to them we didn’t move very far from our NE our relative but uh during Andrew Jackson’s era and I guess it was right after uh the battle of the Little Big Horn with the kuster getting uh Mass wiped out you know in the battle of the Little Big Horn there was real retaliation towards Indians and the society as a whole wanted to put a stop to the Indian Wars and even though the pkas Never were in that battle or even at War they were one of the tribes picked to move to Indian Territory so they were forcibly removed from Nebraska the Homeland down to Oklahoma and that’s where I grew up but that’s my relationship with my relative here kind of went off the course but I was talking about this here this drum drum is symbolic to us it’s a sacred instrument I see some tobacco here that uh maybe John had left here and I’m sure before John even sang he put some Tobacco on that drum I I just I wasn’t even here but I can almost guarantee that he probably did we hold that to be powerful among the punas and I can speak primarily from my upbringing which is a punka culture uh and it’s similar but yet different from the Omaha they talked about this being a very powerful instrument and you can just imagine they sang These Things sang L this many years ago when they had to go to war war and it sort of like a pep rally in a way it recanted those stories of their grandfathers of U uh of U Wonga big Soldier W shinga Little Soldier kakuni um uh smoke maker those men way back there who who performed Brave Deeds or courageous acts they made songs about them and they put them songs to this drum and they said the way I was told is that this drum if taken care of and if you as a as a singer take care of yourself and you remember those songs in a good way you’ll make sad people happy when they hear it if you ever hear a drumbeat it’s like the beat of your heart and and if you ever get close to a drum when you’re dancing that it vibrates within you it just shakes you it moves you it becomes a part of you it’s a powerful instrument and it evokes strong emotions it makes like I said uh sad people feel happy it makes old people feel young and they forget their troubles for a while it has a medicine and about it and itself that it can touch you inside I believe that I I really have high regards for it among my people uh the punas not anybody can just pick up a drumstick go out there and start hitting that hitting that drum you have to pay your way to in there you have to you have to give away to have that right to be around this drum you have to show the respect for this drum then you also have to learn the songs you can’t sit around that drum and this he was a head singer and he had his drumstick and he’s sitting there and all he’d have to do is just point to you like that song that family is asking for a certain song you have to be able to start that song otherwise you’re not contributing to that that whole thing that’s going on there it’s a powerful thing to see everyone dancing all around this drama recanting those songs the way I heard it is that they had uh um heard it heard it sound like thunder it’s man heard sound like thunder way off and he went over to the sound and this woman had a hide stretched out on the ground they stretched that you know I’m taking that back it was a log and she was hitting that log and she was singing these songs and she said if you sing these songs take them back to your tribe they will help you and so that’s what they did they they stretched a hide out sted it to the ground and that was their first first drum then they turned into then they made it wood and they made this kind of drum here uh out of a a log but through those songs that they were given by that woman was was um creation thoughts emotions all those things that that evolve in life they center around this drum and we as P of people gather once a year uh in August and we dance and we gather and we have camps all around the PA and everywhere at the camps there’s prayer there’s laughter there’s Fellowship it’s like reunions and then we all come together and we dance around that drum there’s no alcohol there’s no drugs around this this is something saf well at least let me say there’s not supposed to be there’s not supposed to be uh but as far as I I’ve known I’ve been to many pows and I camp and everything and I don’t see that very much I know that that goes on in other places but uh powers that I camp at where I’m at I don’t see that and around the drum I don’t see that they have a lot of respect for this thing they have it evokes a spirit when um when our when our men when our men folk went to war the way they explained it to me and the way I was told is that we were a small tribe we were smaller than the omahas but on all three sides of our borders were enemy there was the Rika the Mandan uh the yankin Su Seven Nations and the omahas were our only border that were our friends and they had the Missouri River guarding them on on two of their sides so we had we sort of we a buffer zone and we were always kind of on at rage I had to be on alert our men the hoska were always on guard and the way I was told through in the song say that is that they were like um uh comma what I would what I consider like kamakazi they were a warrior a group of men that dedicated their life for the people and as soon as there was an alarm as soon as there was danger they would just run into it I mean they would just like throw themselves into it and many died but many many lived and any anybody that came within our borders knew that if they met this tribe there was going to be trouble when when Prince maximilan came up looking for the cities of gold or whatever it was he was at the paon E camp and he asked them who lives up that way Northeast of you and they said don’t go that way there’s bad people up there don’t go over there needles say they traveled that way they want just wanted to keep going they when be went down and they went up they came to this border where they found these three poles in the ground they were 9 ft High describe them sticks that were 9 ft high and on top of each one of them were heads and that was the Border it was pawy heads were up there the punkers had decapitated them and put their heads up there symbolically saying if you come over here this will happen to you and that’s sort of the how they how they Protected Their their area their their hunting grounds um time went on it never used to the way my grandmother said it never used to really be that way all the time but uh when when game was scarce when when times were lean we had to protect our hunting grounds we had to protect our burial grounds our our our traditional Gardens we had communal Gardens so there was a need to be vigilant to watch your borders um just so much like we do today uh with the National Guard and things the same concept but um I was I was told that that the hoska these songs they would talk about that they would recant those things that would happen that that battles there was even a time when when they had uh uh when they were traveling and there was uh a group of lotas and they had encountered the women and they took some hostages they took some people and uh uh that were gathering and some of them ran back to the uh tribe and said uh they’ve taken our women and a couple of our children as captives and the the pkas got got up together and got their horses and stuff and ran after them and they followed them almost all the way up to their border all the way up to their to their uh camp and they and they they ran into them and they and they fought him and they got those women those children back now there’s the story there from that point on it was a running battle all the way back to Nera from like almost the Black Hills was like many miles it was they would run run run then they would stop and have to fight and they’ fight and then they back and they take Skirmish and they take off again and all along that way at every Skirmish that was Bloodshed a sue would get shot in the leg with arrow a Ponka would get shot in the shoulder or get hit with a an axe or something or or or one would be hurt and another one would try to save him and he would get killed trying to save his friend another one would grab him and pick him up and carry him uh there was a they told of a a man that could really run fast and a a a one of them got shot he got shot in the neck with a bus musket ball and then the other pker was shot in the thigh and so he picked him up and that Indian put his the other Punker put his thumb on his neck so he wouldn’t lose his blood and they ran things like that happened all along that way they got to a gully a low spot and they stopped they were tired but the punk stopped they going to fight again and the Su stopped on the other side of the hill and the Su stopped and they sang a song cuz they recognize this as being something sacred something significant sort of like out of respect they said you must really think a lot of your people to that’s what they basically that song said kind of an honoring song and the punk has made a similar song about how how how many Brave Deeds that ensues what Brave Acts were done there along that trail all the way back on that day and we and they put it into words and they kept it ours is an oral tradition it’s not a written language it’s passed on through stories like this and it’s passed on through songs like what my brother sings without that we’d lose so much of our culture being raised by my grandmother she’d often would tell those things over and over and over who I am where I come from what my descendency is who where where my people are who they were so I could be know who I am and I can in turn give that to my daughter I want that to be that way for my myself uh I could recount early in my earliest ages as a little boy I could say that uh my grandmother’s my my great-grandfather the name was gun and that means headman his father is named wepp weas sappi’s father is named Tao Tao’s father is named Manu Jinga Manu is be and Jinga is little I know that to be true my grandmother raised me with that saying that’s who it is on the same on same and along the same lines she would say who uh my father’s father was and that his name was Oliver how and that he was a northern PKA from Nia and that his father was the first episcop minister in NBR by the name of Edward how and he was half Dutch and half punka and that his father was named George Washington how and that when he was 17 he came from co uh he came from Pennsylvania on a with a surveying crew to the Nebraska territory and married a pun a woman and uh spent his life with her and uh he had an Indian name by the name of Duma scaran and that that’s my ancestry and that he came from Pennsylvania his father was named AO how and he came from Copenhagen Denmark on a steamship that’s several Generations back my grandmother always was telling me those things over and over and over every time there was snow snow winter time the stories came out again when it rained it was time to sit in the stories would come out she saved things she would do things uh she had a way of looking at it I think what she had was a sense of urgency she wanted to retain the culture she wanted to see that our culture didn’t get lost when she was young and she had all her children the government sent them to boarding schools and she didn’t say nothing about it her oldest boy Wy how was born 1910 and in 1920 they sent him to seagar Oklahoma to all Indian boarding school at 10 years old can you imagine your your child at the age of 10 being taken from You by a government agency and said we’re going to teach them to live a c different way we’re going to teach them a different language we’re going to teach them something else something better and so she let her children go they all left my uncle my my dad went to shello Indian School my Uncle Junior went to Paw Indian school they all went to government boarding schools my dad talked about it and he talked about it sort of fondly because he said when he was born he grew up in the depressions so it was a poor time it was a hard time so when he went to a government boarding school for high school there were three Square meals a day there was jobs he could work and there was people and he liked it it was like a Letterman’s Club the boarding school that he went to at Sho he was an athlete played sports played baseball boxed did all those things he enjoyed it but he said uh he missed home but uh he enjoyed it because it was a better better life you know than having to sleep on a hard floor and little two room house with with four or five other brothers and sisters uh so he he looked he talked about shalat fondly in fact he talked about it so fondly that when I got old enough to go to high school the high school that I wanted to go to was the same that he did so I graduated from shello Indian School uh back in 1976 uh and just shortly after that in the 80s they closed it they closed a lot of the government boarding schools down but I attended shello Indian School to kind of continue that Legacy that my father had talked so fondly of but uh my his his oldest his oldest brother Wy who was 10 years old and was sent to Seager Oklahoma didn’t talk about it very fondly he said they were uh they were punished if they were caught talking their language if they were T if they were caught talking punka they were punished and he came home only twice a year and uh uh Harvest Time and uh I think it said R Christmas he got to come home but while he was gone his grandfather died and his grandmother died he didn’t even get to go to the funeral he just came home and they were gone and that must be devastating to a young Indian or anybody who would be attached to their grandmother and then be sent away to school and then come home to find that she’s gone and not even be able to go to the funeral and mourn the loss of a a loved one that’s what the Indians had to endure that’s what uh in a lot of times that’s what a lot of the Indians felt like what LS and Clark helped represent a changing of the ways and uh uh some were good and some were bad our relative that we come from we are both descendants of a gentleman by name of car La flesh and car flesh’s father was named Joseph leesh and he was a chief among the omahas he saw it as something that was inevitable he said change is happening it’s coming like a flood and we have to prepare ourselves this is something we cannot avoid we need to learn these ways so in fact he was so adamant about it that he sent his kids off to school and one of them became an anthropologist and later became a lawyer his name is Dr Francis Le and his other daughter his other child was a young lady who became the first Indian woman to become a physician and her name was susette the Flesh and she was a country doctor in Nebraska so that’s where we come from on the Omaha side there he even had a a village built of houses wooden houses square houses and they called that the white man Village he wanted the Indians to adapt assimilate cuz he saw that as being necessary we have to be like the white man we have to change our ways so he tried his best to encourage him to do that he was very Progressive man he believed in it a great deal that times have changeed and we need to change with him and so that’s one of the reasons why Pierre and I come to do cultural presentations because we want to share our culture and heighten people’s awareness about cultural relations about who we are I don’t really talk philosophically as much as I do when uh when children are here when there are little kids here sitting in these rows we talk about games and we talk about what I like to eat and what they ate back then and the houses and we we talk about games but when there’s an older group here I I like to take that opportunity to share Indian culture I like to a perspective mine is just been one you ask if you ask 10 Indians one question you’re going to get 10 different answers uh there are over 511 federally recognized tribes with over 300 different dialects so there’s different languages different ways different beliefs uh today there are over two there are over 2 million Native Americans in the United States today but that’s still less than 1% of the total population the significant thing about the Indians today is that um over half are 30 and below because of poor health care our elders the average life expectancy is 10 years below the national average and if you’re a diabetic like uh my brother and I then add 7 to 10 more years off that so if uh average life expectancy for an Indian male is 65 then uh average life expectancy for an Indian male with kind of illnesses that we have it’s 55 so at 45 right now we have about 10 more good years St statistically so that means basically theoretically I’m an elder because maybe in 10 years I might be gone so it’s like that it’s like that for our Indian people it’s uh uh I guess they’re working on changing working on better Lifestyles but that’s statistically that’s the way it is for for Indians today and I want to share a little bit about that maybe uh we could uh sing a song and then we can talk about a little bit sure yeah this is my brother Pier Merritt my relative maybe he might tell you uh his Indian name and introduce himself I say good afternoon or good morning to each of you I take a moment here to acknowledge the elders that are out there customarily back home it’s the right thing to do it’s a custom to say that to people that are sitting that we’re going to be talking to or addressing in a either a ceremony setting or otherwise that we first acknowledge our that asked for their forgiveness for pardon us pardon me for speaking before you uh this song that I’m going to sing is a song that was composed for my uncle uh who returned from World War II he was a Darby Ranger and uh when he returned uh home safely our people one of our composers are uh composed this song for him and uh like my brother was saying you know a lot of our our songs that have words are prayer songs are songs songs of thanks to the Creator where we where be that song the words of that song means it’s me speak this isn’t speak speaking to the Creator speaking to God addressing him looking for acknowledgement asking to be looked at it’s me the that’s word means look at me me look at the next verse is he went peras stood on foreign soil and faced the enemy the came home that was the song that was composed and that’s the meaning of that song the story behind it before him uh at this time I would like I guess uh car you about myself a little bit my name is I’m a Cas amongst our people I Come From the Black shoulder Buffalo my name means uh Shaggy Waring Buffalo and uh what I’m going to do here now is I’m going to show us picture slideshow of my daughter this is my daughter her name is Emy she is a senior in high school at the sou sou High School in Nebraska she will be graduating next month she’s your average kid she loves to be on a computer go to the mall her mother CH to be sent her to school although there was a school available to her on the reservation a public school her mother and I chose to send her to the school that’s about 25 miles away north of us off of the reservation where there’s probably three or four Indians I high school she attends there’s like 2500 students that attend the school so it’s a very competitive world that we placed our daughter in and she has succeeded every summer she goes and she attends a uh summer program at the University of North Dakota called idence and Medicine the school is a unique school that requires that a student be uh uh at least a honor student not a uh having a high grade point average while they’re in school she’s been attending the school since she was in a seventh grade like I said and this year is her final year at this school she’s looking at going into the field of medicine as a following her mother uh my wife her name is Kim she’s a nurse and she’s also in the commission Corp uh the military uh medical field she’s a lieutenant commander at she works at the Wago Indian Hospital in Wago Nebraska we have chose to give our child our children and a lot of families amongst their native people push our children to to the challenges that are put before them in the life that they’re going to be living we push them to compete and uh take every educational opportunity that comes to them we encourage them that way we also try to instill in them the traditional values and Customs that we have within our tribe in our school on the reservation we have native programs that we push ask our children to be involved in these pictures here are pictures of my daughter when she was uh selected as the Winnebago veterans Power Princess the dress that she wears her mother wore that the crown that she has we had made for her because that’s an appropriate thing to do when she holds that position as a princess for a year she’ll represent the wio veterans association as you see that was in 2003 the B that she the feather that she carries uh and she dances this feather I gave to her when she was just a young girl it’s a a winter hwk feather and the bag that you see was given to her by her mother who was uh given to her uh by her mother grandmother she also attends Taekwondo in classes back home this is a very uh big part of her life she’s been attending this for 4 years very consistent with it her mother it’s either her mother or her auntie that takes her up at least uh four times a week she attends us after school travels home to the reservation or sometimes we go up there and have her stuff in the car but she attends these Monday Wednesday and Friday nights after school in the evenings uh and then on Saturday morning she gets up and she goes and uh does this again her and her brother her brother’s uh 15 he just turned 15 he’ll be attending this school also the summer school and medicine program this coming year this will be his first year so what I’m showing here is trying to uh let you know that our our children are the same our children face the same problems and also we encourage them to set their goals high in life and to be a someday when they become an adult there’ll be a positive figure amongst them our Indian Community or wherever they may choose to live in this world that’s the kind of parenting that we like to do to do with our children across the country this is done all in all reservations um as my brother Pi said it’s it’s a balance that we’re looking for with our children we want them to be Progressive and and have all the opportunities that every children has but yet in the same hand we want to help be sure that they retain some of the cultural things that are significant that we consider important um an example one example is is being of service U being able to be a provider for the people when after coming out of the service in military I was inducted into a warrior Society Andy those society and they talked about that and uh to me and saying what my responsibilities were and that was to be a protector and a provider for the people and I think that um that is uh a way of life that I will always have with me instilled in me and I hope that I can do that with my children as well we can pass those type of things on I often use an example when there’s kids here we talk about shell Society among the omahas and it’s the same as the the U Clan or chiefs clan that my grandmother was a part of and they say that you should be able to count to 100 to be a member of that society and they don’t mean 1 2 3 4 it would be they would have to come to the society in order to be a member of it bring them bring with them 100 Willow sticks and each time they laid the willow stick down they have to recant something that did a good deed or something that was worthy for the people let’s say uh he laid a willow stick down and said last summer this uh Man passed away on the Buffalo arm left a wife and three kids here all winter I’ve been C I’ve been providing for my family but I also have been providing meat for them or let’s say a widow lived in a shelter and it was stared to fall apart and he would go over there and him and his wife would make new hides and they would uh um uh they would uh fix her shelter all up he can count that as one uh another example would be uh another story on top of that uh is that this woman came among them to the lodge and she had all her her clothes were all raggedy and worn out maybe maybe like a homeless person in the streets today we might see and he he came to that she came to that Lodge and uh he saw her and he invited her in and she sat in a place of honor she sat down there he told his wife we need to help her so they combed her hair fixed it up he reached back and he asked her get some of your your clothes and they gave her a beautiful uh beautiful bug skin dress and they cleaned her up her daughter and then got water and cleaned her up and they fed her they gave her a beautiful fan and then she walked out and she left and then she walking I said look it was that Homeless lady look at look how well stressed she is who did that for her and I said that good man over there he could count that as one something like that 100 times that would be imagine if if this room was filled every seat in here was filled with somebody that did 100 good things for each other what kind of society that would be if we all did 100 good things for each other each of us the Omaha practice that kind of culture before the time of Columbus we were good to each other tried to help one another how much time do we have Mar what I was about 12 more minutes are there any questions that you might have if not we might be able to sing another song and maybe explain it or describe it after the questions and let us know that I’ll sing a song question um when you were naming your ancestors you didn’t name any female ancestors is that normal or was it just you weren’t thinking of them today I just weren’t thinking of them but by lineage we we follow them men we are a patriarchal society not that the women aren’t significant in fact my grandmother there was certain type of protocols that would happen among Indian people like uh um um mother-in-law never talks to her son-in-law there comes a certain age where she doesn’t talk to her brother uh when when her brother would my uncle my my grandpa Kenneth would come over to visit I’d have to get up and sit there because they need I need to be present and it’d be like it would be like uh um I’m wanting to talk to to him through you and I’d say tell my tell my brother that I need we need to lease that land and 40 acres over there because our lease is about ready to expire now he heard he heard that and he go back and say tell tell my sister that uh that’s okay with me cuz we need the money they don’t need to do that but they’re sitting there but that was out of respect there were certain regulations or protocol that was uh established that they didn’t talk to one another and in the same way with my my dad and then she never said anything publicly but whenever there was a crisis in our family Whenever there was a major decision that had to be made it was my grandmother who made it she was in charge that it wasn’t so I guess publicly it maybe it look like she wasn’t but the women are are really the strength of our families they are the lifegiving and they are the mothers they are they are the she is the one who was in charge when there was a decision that be made what does Mom think what what he you know so she had she held Court when it was when it was a decision that need to be made so it’s not disrespecting her but we are a patriarchal society that try to follow the men’s lineage so that’s how you we that’s why I mentioned the men folk with within our tribe uh in our involving our Classics uh we follow our father and my father he was a aate from the Buffalo Clan his father before him and so on it’s been handed down but because of our children and around is married outside the tribe if our one of our daughters uh marri somebody outside the tribe that uh does isn’t a part of our tribe well their children won’t have clan names or won’t belong to specific Clans within our tribe so that’s kind of how and our names our naming ceremonies you know our names apply to our clan gender or our clan clanship like my name is referred to the chagy part of the buffalo’s ankle um it’s referred to the Buffalo because that’s where I come from if your daughter marries outside the her children don’t have PL but your son marries a woman who’s not in your clan do they have clan names then yes they do she becomes a part of that Clan she has right there are times when certain tribes have enrollment requirements like up in the north in the northern like in Canada in the north Northeast where they are a patriarchal society I believe the iroy are a patriarchal lineage they follow I mean the matriarch they follow the women they they inherit the women they when they get married they go to the women’s family uh uh the naming it goes to the women and sometimes uh it can counteract each other because if if you happen to be a man and your you marry a woman that your kid kids follow hers they kind of can negate each other and you can be you could be neither tribe you could be a full- blood Indian but not be eligible to be on either tribe because one would negate the other because of the the lineage thing saying well you you follow the you follow the on his side you follow the women’s and on on her side it’s only the men that side that can be enrolled in the tribe so end up being a full-blooded Indian but not enrolled in any tribe because of the Mator artical the men and women thing it’s kind of uh complicated any other any other questions that we could uh hey hey we hey hey oh High hey hey oh that song we use at the end of our Gatherings it’s an appreciation song for today for your your attention to me and my brother as we uh did our presentation I say thank you does anyone have any other questions no well let’s thank Pierre and Dwight very much for sharing your culture with us and I’d like to thank all of you for coming to our tent of many voices that’s how it got its name this is a place for many voices to be heard and we’ve heard from Dwight and Pierre talking about the Omaha and Ponka cultures our next presenter is

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Tent of Many Voices: 07270403T

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:59 +0000

is a mobile exhibit exhibit with the National Park Service and we are moving across the country over the next 2 to 2 and 1 half years stopping in different communities along the way sharing different parts of the Louis and CLK story today you are inside of the tent of many voices and the tent of many voices has been set up as an opportunity for us to learn from different individuals with different backgrounds different areas of expertise and today we very we’re very fortunate to have have with us members of the Omaha nation and they will be giving a demonstration of a social game a hand game that name Americans play if you would please help me welcome Maxine ruus and Brian White thank you uh first of all I would like to tell you a little bit of our our game that we played we have which is called a hand game um to you I guess it would be button button but we keep score on this we also at one time had a game called shimy game and then as we see it today it’s the soccer game but we had it way back there with our ancestors used to play the game but this is one that has survived along with the generations is our hand game um we used usually play this game um on different occasions like for birthday parties for graduations for appreciation of anything the family wants a welcome home this is a big event you know now that we our service boys and girls are coming home from the war they come home while we have this game so that they can enjoy themselves and this is our leisure time where we can forget everything that’s on outside of the doors and we can just concentrate on the game and have fun with it we usually have sometimes have this um when we have wedding parties this is held and the little kids like it for birthday parties or do we have our masquerade at Halloween have this game and afterwards but in between the games they sing a song and everyone gets up and dance but this is just one of our games that has survived along with the generations I have come down the line we play with we keep scor with sticks like this each side has four sticks and you’ll notice that their color different even the tops are the same up here but down here the handle part is a different color and this means that this side has the core sticks and and the for sticks are on this other side here but um we got these Mexican boards we don’t have the guy that they used to play with at that time so we set up for these and we use these to play with we get uh two people on each side there’ll be two over here that will be able to hide these Stones here to to play button button and then we’re going to have someone go and get the feather on this side and one on this side and they’re going to try to guess and see which side they have the stone in and we have ways with this feather this is an eagle feather we have ways with this feather that to tell you which side we’re guessing now if I couldn’t guess on on the right side of my right it means both of your hands on your left so I’ll be going this way with this and then for my left side which is your right I’ll be going this way that means your two hand his and her are both the ones that are hiding the stones on this side and then if we want to guess your stones are in the middle that both if you have them in the center of your hands then we point the feather down like this that means we’re pointing at the middle of your two hands here and then when we think you both have it on the outside like my outside and her outside we’ll be holding this feather this way this means that we’re selecting the outside to see if you have it and then if you don’t have it in the hand you know you show your hand is empty and you show where you have the stone like any other game we sometimes say well some of these cheating over here they’re not showing the stone they probably get it but um this is a a little illustration of how we play this we’re going to be asking for some Volunteers in the crowd of my little Auntie over here is going to take these Stones around of Christine is uh knowledgeable of of this game here and she’s going to be taking these and giving them to certain ones before we start this song This Dance we usually sing an opening song and after we sing this opening song and then we’ll begin our game at home we us we have four games to win now this side’s going to have to win four games and they become winners but and sometimes it goes back and forth until one side finally wins four games but we’re just going to do one game and let you see just exactly how this game is done and after we get started here they’re going to be singing songs that we they use while we’re playing this hand game you can keep up with the drum however you want to some go this way whichever way you want to go with that stone you can do it the idea is to let them not see and concentrate on your hands to see which P you have it in are you going to sing the opening one version yeah he’ll he’ll start um my husband Rufus and my son Bri F where our son I should say will be singing this song for us we’re going to sing a f song of the opening song of One verse of the opening song but what we us how we usually have these games is um as Native Americans and I’m quite sure you all we always have our creator in mind what whatever we do it’s usually with our people we usually sacrifice and we’re showing God that we’re thankful we appreciate for what he has given us and by me saying we’re thankful and we appreciate what is given to is is the family that is sponsoring this puts out food um enough to feed 100 200 people will gather at these kind of occasions at home and the family provides all the food and we say we’re sacrificing putting this food before God to let him know how thankful we are of what he has given us but and right now um my husband and my son will sing one verse of our opening song he hey watch when I was saying how to use this okay guess okay you’re going to guess this because you’re a team over here that’s a team over there he’s going to guess her ready see the music stopped and we’re taking our stones from them because she got them on the very first time h woo we got two good feather guessers here oh you it’s going one okay they got one point over here the idea is to get all eight of these sticks on the other side of this G here that we at all over there that oh got you we got to take this guy home here he’s good I can’t and put them get super okay she got him I thought we were going to win here only had four sticks to go hand want to see what inside your again they one those four sticks back that we barely got they want to back here h you oh all that dancing around all let’s go this way or this way got one more stick you got to get them if you don’t get them they won the game you are Sav got up to you the carrier what two they the north side beat the South Side you have a little time would you like to try another game all right so the one that had the feather on on the North side keeps the feather because you are the winner now you get to keep it till the next game so the idea of this game is to get all of these sticks on one side all eight of them goes clear over here and each time if they make one then we bring that one stick back over here sometimes it just goes back and forth like this and they finally get them but that’s the idea of the game and what we do at this time one game is one we sing what we call a round B song so they’ll sing one one verse of a round band song and then we’ll say again just usually it’s in a big building and a circle is large but with the space that we have we’re just going to dance in a circle over in this area here but this is how it’s usually de okay now what is done now is that since this side got beat and caused our feather carrier to sit down we’re going to go out and we’re going to look for another Fe feather carrier that we kind of think might have a good chance at winning this game will’ll go with an adult this time and then um before this part is taken of the hiding the stone what usually happens the Two Feather carriers they hide the stone and if one of them is missed that means that your side if they can’t get you that means your side starts first and if you can’t get her that means her side starts first and and this is how it’s done we’ll do that this time we didn’t do that the first G but this time we’ll do it okay now you hi this part here the idea is to guess the first everyone is this first but that’s the side that gets to start the game all right okay the South Side gets to start the game yeah this side here these two little ones here look like this cut your hands on the North side you got this the outside hallu okay oh my goodness you’re good you want try okay come on let’s go right oh Christine right now it’s even got three stick on five after get yeah open one St left I be on TV she wants to be on TV she want to be TV okay we got the one last stick so we won the game let outside won the game thank you and this is this was just a demonstration of how we play our hand game for our social activities there’s times that we may start early sometimes it takes four or five hours to play this game to win four games on one side and sometimes it only takes an hour and um we skunk the other side when they’re stunk everybody’s so happy and they’re Luling and hollering and whatever noise they want to make they do that at that time but at home we have um some groups get together like we have a a Senior Citizen Center where a lot of our senior citizens go and sometimes the senior citizens are playing against our church the Native American church or they’re playing the um Veterans of course but and then sometimes it’s even the schools at different times of instead of the children having a recess to what playing this is what they do this is they’re having a hand game the older ones there that are teaching our Indian culture and our language in our schools they are teaching our children how to play this hand game and the young boys that go to school there like my son they sit there and they sing these songs with them with them Elders sitting with them so that they can also learn the songs but we just wanted to demonstrate to you to see that we have games along with everything else that we’re doing in this world today but I want to thank you for participating and being here with us this afternoon if anyone has any questions we can open up for um questions here for a couple of minutes if you like if you have a question just put your hands up wait for me to get to you with a microphone so everybody can hear I know there are dozens and dozens of different games that the Indians used to play years ago how many do you still practice today the only one that we practice today is this game here that we had we have they used to have the shiny game like I said before but that’s has gone along and um I guess I’m not sure because I wasn’t there at the time like Paul was but they to use the Buffalo fur and they make it in a ball at so big of a size and that’s what they used to pick around and for their rope their string it was the the intestines of the Buffalo dried out into a string and it was rolled around the Buffalo hair so that it could be a strong B yes I am an Omaha Indian from the Omaha tribe I some prefer to be called Native American but I it doesn’t make any difference long as they know I’m in Native American how long have you guys been playing these kind of games well for centuries from what I hear it’s been here a long time our old people our grandma and grandpas used to play this game and our great grandmas and grandpas played this game when Indians existed about how she asked when Indians existed how long did they exist well I heard someone say the other day that the um average age for a Native American to be considered a senior citizen or an Alber is 55 years old but I passed that Mark so I’m still here and since we still have Native Americans around us they still exist any other questions out of all your games which one do you prefer that you guys like more this one here this handing here of sometimes people are waiting around and another thing that is taking place on our reservation when we lose one of our tribal members um we don’t play any games at all uh showing respect to the family that are in sorrow and we don’t have any kind of games on the reservation at all in your language what is the name of this game that we just play can you repeat that think we’ll take one more question it’s the stone how old are you 21 she’s more than 55 she said I pass 55 okay I’d like to thank everybody for coming tell your age give a big hand to our thank you thank you very much project that I’m involved with I do work for the National Park Service and I do travel with this exhibit across the country we are stopping in different towns along the ls and Park Trail sharing different parts of the Louis and Clark Story with members with citizens of those towns we have in addition to the tent of many voices and exibit tent a keelboat a small version of the kelbo and a TP that you can enjoy today as well inside of the tent of many voes where you seated right now this is an opportunity for us to learn from and today we are very fortunate to have with us Christine Gerber and she is with Omaha books here in Omaha Nebraska so if you would please help me welcome Herber than so a little bit of background of why I’m an Omaha historian and tell you all a little bit about Omaha history for uh seven years I worked for the Omaha World heral and I had the wonderful pleasure of doing a series of books called Omaha times remember I was to the Project Director for law all of them and Ashley was the one who came up with the idea what they were were they were a series of hardbound books and what I did is I got the great pleasure of talking to thousands of older people in Omaha about their memories of Omaha and got to look at for the three books I looked at over 18,000 pictures of Omaha from 1854 all the way up to about the until about the 1970s and of those 18,000 I chose 900 that we put into books so what I’m going to do today again I don’t claim to be an Omaha expert I grew up in Faberry Nebraska went to school at Carney State College so I’m kind of dating myself now it’s known as un and K but moved to Omaha in in 1992 have always loved history my first uh Choice as a profession was as a history teacher but instead became a journalist and but I’ve always loved history I’ve always loved photography so I’ve been able to now for the past year help local people put together um local interest books so anyway what I’m going to do today is I’m just going to share some stories having talk to these thousands of older people in Omaha I’m just going to share some stories with you about what I learned as a non Omaha native and hopefully you guys walk away with this and learning some more stories and some more history of so first of all we’ll start off and one of the first things I found out that there was a little controversy regarding who was the first person born in Omaha now first of all there was William Nebraska Reeves now William Nebraska reevs was born October 2nd 1854 just south of what was then the city limit so he was declared the first White child so not Indian Child the first White child is defined demographically but then there was this lovely happy couple here this is James and Margaret fery and James and Margaret fery lived just south of Omaha near where dur Western Heritage Museum is today and they gave birth to a baby girl Margaret faery who was born December 16 1854 and if you guys know any of the vaguely families here in Omaha morard Family Shanahan family for the Ortman families they’re all descendants from this happy couple nowaha or the first territorial capital in Nebraska was located on the about duas streets right on this shores of the Missouri River so that was the first territorial Capital but then they realized they needed a real territorial Capital so they looked they looked West to the highest hill and they chose 20th and Dodge streets and there they built the territorial Capital well then in 1967 those Lincoln I sto our Capal away from us so what were we going to do with the building so we decided to make it into Omaha high school and the building served for a few years as Omaha high school but as Omaha progressively got bigger they built another high school and again Omaha in the 1880s 1890s was booming so we had to we realized at that time that we were going to have to build another high school so what we did was is when we built the high school this was the existing Omaha High School okay so then what they did is they built the high school around the existing ones so they could still have classes in the existing ones at the time so they built it around three sides and then once they got the third side done they tore down the high school and then they built the four side so for many many years for those of you that attended Central High School there was an open atrian in there and today it’s now it’s covered over but if you ever go into Central High School and notice this you know no Central Atrium part that’s where Omaha High School used to be now again you know we talked about these high hills you know we had just like Council Bluffs we had some huge Bluffs going west Far West you know in Omaha in the 20th Street range and the 48 Street range the Far Western parts of Omaha there were some very high hills and when the street cars started operating they couldn’t get up these Hills so they had to do something so they actually had to lower the stre streets it took them over 20 years to lower Dodge Street and so this is kind of an example of what they’re doing tearing away the ground and and lowering they slowly just low they put the buildings up on stilts and then just slowly lowered them down a great example of to see how the streets were lowered is if you go to Mary Magdalene Church which is about 19th in capital streets no Douglas douas streets no thank you now 19th and Dodge streets if you look up there seems to be this doorway on the second story that’s just kind of floating out there that was actually level with DOD Street at one time this is a picture taken in joggers Canyon area where it used to be many many manufactures were located in the area this is Fairmont Dairy and I found out that Omaha in 1927 LED all cities in the nation in the United States in the manufacturer of butter butter and that was made in Omaha was was served all over the world and all over United States we had a lot of Danish immigrants come in we had a lot of dairies at the time so many huge manufacturers of butter and cream and milk were headquartered here in Omaha now of course many of you if you’re from Omaha have been many times to the to the uh Old Market area well the Old Market used to be known as the city market area and it’s where I heard stories about people that were truck gardeners and as a truck Gardener what they did is they raised uh crops at their home and then every morning about 400 a.m. 500 a.m. they would get on their horse and wagon and come over to the city market and sell their fruits and vegetables I also heard from grocery store owners and restaurant owners that they would come down at 5 6:00 in the morning and buy their fruits and vegetables and then bring them back to their restaurant to serve to their customers and also to the the of course grocery stores brought them back to sell to their to their customers well the city one of the kind of a very well-known celebrity in the city market was a guy by the name of EJ Campbell he’s pictured right here and EJ Campbell again was kind of known as the Zar of the market because he was a big guy and also because he had a choice location his location was right across the street from the firehouse the firehouse is now known as Upstream Brewery and his location is now the site of the farmers market that you can go to every Saturday morning and Wednesday evening you know I learned of the importance of the Stockyards the union and the railroads because of the Stockyards and the railroads Omaha really became a Melting Pot we had immigrants come from all over the world and sell into Omaha and you became you here in Omaha you had especially in the South Omaha part and the North Omaha part you had pockets of the Irish neighborhood you had the German neighborhoods you had the PO neighborhoods the Czech neighborhoods they all had their own grocery stores their own churches their own meat markets and it it just you know people married within their Community I mean it just it was very interesting and kind of developed the whole look and the feel of Omaha the Stockyards are of course were very significant in Omaha’s history and this is a story of Ted stalinsky instead Ted stalinsky he was a Polish immigrant that came here and he started out as an office boy in the livestock Exchange building now you realize this is before you know you could smoke wherever you wanted and there was a lot of smoking going on the livestock Exchange building and he had some respiratory problems and his doctor finally said Ted you got to get out of that building you got to work outside Ted was scared to death of animals but he overcame his fear and eventually opened up the stalinsky livestock Exchange in 1928 and then after his death in 1948 his sons art and Ted Jr took over and art is on the left and Ted junor junor is on the far right you know people always ask me God Chris you looked at 18,000 photos which is true what were you looking for you know how did you decide what pictures you were going to take and I always tell people first of all I look for pictures that were pretty good quality I look for pictures that we know something about I don’t want to get pictures that you found at a garage sale and they’re great photos but you don’t know who they are where they were from I want the stories behind the photos sometimes I would take a med for photo photo because it has such a great story I was also looking for pictures that showed a lot of detail and showed what life was like back then and you know this is kind of a this is kind of a good example of that this is a very rare photo it was given to us by a grandson of one of the people that is pictured in the photo this is a picture of uh the lon Packing House the lpon packing house was actually started by Sir Thomas Lipton of the Lipton iced tea family and the lon Packing House opened up in South Omaha in 1886 now one year later um Sir Thomas Li ended up selling it to the Cy and the armor packing houses because he had some Financial losses but mainly because South Omaha was really really wild at the time and he was like I got to get out of here this is a wild town but anyway again we talk about you know the detail you know I’m looking if you look up on these stairs here we’re looking at little kids working and this is 1886 we’re looking at little kids seven and eight working in the in the Stockyards and in many businesses that you don’t see today and look at these knives you know I we’ve got some big big butcher knives so I again like I think it just kind of transform you to a different time and then look what they’re all wearing okay now guys when is the last time you went to a packing house and saw people in hats in suit coats in uh vest you know I mean so dressed much differently than we you know people are today you know one of the pictures that I got for another book that I don’t have in my presentation today is the Blackstone building and what they’re doing is they’re putting the crown molding on the black on the top of the Blackstone building and again we’ve got these Irish immigrants in shirt ties you know I mean it’s just here these are construction workers you know dress look you know really look to the nin like they’re going to church so different time different time now one of the things I do is I give talks to third graders in Omaha cuz in third grade Omaha Omaha students study Omaha history and I asked them okay everybody where do you go and get ice and of course most of them say they’re freezer sometimes they go to the gas and Shop to go get a big bag of ice but you know it’s pretty readily convenient what they don’t realize and what I tell them is you know at a time when there was no electricity people got their ice delivered to them and this is One S such company this is the cural ice company and what they are doing is they’re breaking off ice from the Florence Reservoir and again and their ice from the forence reservoir was 6 cents a pound now you could also get ice from the Missouri River out there but not quite as clean so it was only 5 cents a pound

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Tent of Many Voices: 11080601F

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:54 +0000

he is our mentor and our teacher and is he here he’ll be here tomorrow he’ll be here tonight all right well if not tell him hi from howdy from Candy from Candy we traded out at uh West Virginia uh with the culture there was like three like a circuit of three days we traveled around West Virginia with the cultural either the cultural State preservation liance something like that fantastic oh it’s you guys have a great program good thank you we appreciate that we’re trying to do our part by talking up just the hair oh good yeah it’s I think they’re up and coming I really Do’s good research coming out of there got a beautiful region I just love St thank you I’m sorry not to be there right now I got to tell you Omaha’s a big difference but I love it too it’s something about every place you get where do you carista what time do you have is this ready it was nice to meet you C nice to meet you too I’m to hang the more all right well don’t feel like you have to stand now okay like to welcome everybody we’re going to um be pres give your visitors this facial treatment and before I get into our names and everything I just want to say thank you for coming that means the world to us we have really poured a lot into this and we hope that comes through in our presentation and also just thank you for supporting ni supporting it’s really important to our field and we hope to be there you know for many many years big thank you thank you to everybody who has helped us in little secret ways you know who you are you are out there so thank you for that and so with that I I’ll start with just kind of a quick introduction I’m chisa De Carlo and I currently work for the Louis CL National histor tra and and so let me we’ll kind of move in I’ll let Heidi go ahead and introduce okay just a little bit about excuse me about myself first off there’s some more seats up here that you you like to come forth go right ahead there’s three or four or five up here there’s four seats if you’d like to come on up don’t be shy my name is Heidi and I just graduated from West Virginia University with my masters in recreation parks and I have a bachelor’s degree in geography which is what got me interested in math in the first place and I worked for a short time summer seasonal at the Louis and Clark interpretive Center in Great Hall Montana so that’s sort of my interpretive background and I focused my Master’s thesis research specifically on Geographic interpretation and a lot of that and our presentation comes out of that so I’ll turn it back over to Carissa so um as you can see I’m Carissa de there I’m pictured in front of our illustrious math of our illustrious mobile outdoor exhibit the cor Discovery 2 which the Lou and Clark National Historic Trail has been um heading up the past four years and just put the bed but we’ll talk about that a little bit a little bit about me um I grew up in Louisiana I got a yes renable resources from the University of Louisiana so I’m a raan Cent and then did my Master’s works at West Virginia University I’m also wrecking parks and um we we got through that together that that’s something that is really cool that’s how we kind of established our relip and I’m the theme junkie how use the map junkie I’m the theme junky if if you’re trying to do something without a theme I get really weirded out by that that in here quite a bit but um just to give you a little bit of background of where we’re coming from there that’s that’s our story and where we come up with all this walking around the gym at the student recreation center at West Virginia University so exercise can lead to some really good things um and with that I want to talk just a hair about the uh recent Lis and Clark National Historic Trail exhibition that was going on um we just put this to bed but the point of it is I’m going to use it for an example and a touch Point um throughout this program so I’m going to give you a little background um 200 years ago M Clark traveled across the country and came back there’s a really huge key of what they came back with they came back with a MTH but we’re going to say that for later this is what our exhibit looks like from a bird I view and the thing about Core 2 which is really special is that it was a mobile National Park we actually went to different communities set this thing up we experience the landscape of the leou and Clark Trail which is no easy feat being that it crosses 11 states with its Western Legacy and if you want to talk about Eastern Legacy well it gets bigger this exhibit was actually set up in aluer in 2005 so um we’ve been here before and it is heralded by that potato chip look intent right there called the T of many voices and inside of there was something going on that was pretty unique and pretty special for National Park Service we invited speakers from all different cultures all different walks of life all different agencies to come in there and speak freely about their connections to the trail to the story to the landscape and to their little town um that is pretty amazing we’re putting our name on something thing and yet we did not have anything to do and so with that kind of giv you just a little feel for what Core 2 was travel for four years we just ended in September and at the end of the day we hit 93 communities across the us and we also heard over a yearly 5,000 presentations of that so you want to talk about getting spatial Geographic go to the source go to those places but with that no good present is possible without and so I didn’t want to hide our theme you know sometimes you don’t just write out bring it out and say it but this is what we’re striving to be today in here um we want to kind of encourage you to think about geographic interpretation we want you to take this home to your site to your place where you work and you’re doing these things um we want you to think about the power of a MTH and we’re going to back this up we’re going to give you some good things that will really bring this home and really it’s about stories and for in W here we are sharing the stories we want to help you share the stories on your landscape and so where are we going I’m going to give you that little outline help you kind understand what we’re going to do today we’ll start with the virtual tour of Albuquerque it’s going to be geographically based and we’re going to give you the little nuts and bolts in science of the case for Geographic interpretation we’ll go over a little bit about how we learn from maps and then we’ll talk about map design so when you go home and you look at the map at your site May pop up with some after that so um with that we’re going to turn it over to Heidi who is our virtual tour Guru on this collaboration we’ve had a few more people come in so please come forward there’s a couple of seats here and a couple people here want you to be comfortable I know it’s after lunch so if your neighbor starts fall as sleep just give a little elbow for me I’m going to start off by giving you a little virtual tour of the Albuquerque area and part of the reason that I’m doing this is to let you know that this is a resource that you can use at your site I used a program called NASA World wind has anybody heard of this before one person all right well good we’re two people we introducing something a little bit new it’s a lot like Google Earth how many people you are seeing Google Earth okay a lot of you the problem with Google Earth is that it’s a commercial application in many of you if you work at government sites you may have been told you to not use it NASA worldwind is very similar but it’s a government application and it’s completely three and so you’re welcome to use this at your s I’m going to use this initially to orient ourselves within the landscape and then we’re just going to quickly explore how the geography of the Albuquerque area has really made this city what it is today so while I am going out to this I’ll just share a little bit with you about this program that I used you can use it interactively right on the internet so if you have a computer terminal set up in your site people use this um real time I had to record this video actually because they don’t have internet in these classroom so it gives you both those options whereas Google Earth the free version you’re not able to record any of the images to come off the web so since we’re from all over the country is anybody from outside of North America one person okay well a couple of people I apologize then that this doesn’t Encompass everybody but for the most of us came from somewhere in North America all right here we go we’re going to zoom in to this lovely planet that we all know as planet Earth right into North America and to the desert Southwest that little star right there in the middle is centered right on where we are at this moment the Albuquerque Convention Center you’re going to see the colors change we’re going to be looking at some high resolution images of the City of Albuquerque and we’re going to zoom from outer space all the way right down to the aler convention center anybody recognize that right just to orient you a little bit this is the Eastern complex the Western Complex which is where we are right now and the plaza that’s outside so now you can kind of get an idea of what it looks like from a bird’s I view and we’ll even see some pictures kind of up close here oh my God these pictures are all from the Whirlwind um the satellite images are the ones I just showed you I inserted from a website called local live weite what’s it called local live and we’re going to be handing out um something later that we’ll have these websites on there for you oh great so as we’re zooming back out again kind of get your bearings do you see maybe the hotel you’re staying in or the road you drove in on to get here today perhaps you can see where you put your car these images aren’t real time so you wouldn’t be able to actually see your car the road across the top that’s lus anybody have any idea what this road is Route 66 right okay so that gave you a little overview of the city and now we’re going to travel down to Oldtown how many people have been to Oldtown right now several people good once you get out of here today go down there have Margarita kick back and enjoy it Oldtown when was Oldtown established 300 years ago this is the birthday of Albuquerque this year so please wish it a happy birthday now we’ll get a few shots of the San felipi church and the plaza there in the front have y’all seen that the ones that have been down there okay if you go down there remember these pictures as we Zoom back out again I want you to notice where Oldtown originally developed on the left you’re going to see in a minute the Rio Grand River which flows through here there have been many many cultures in the Albuquerque area from the PUO to the Spanish to New American many many others they’ve all shared one common need and that’s water if you have notice already we’re in the middle of a very hot dry desert it’s not so hot right now but it can be look at the size of aler now quite a bit larger than Old Town originally was 300 years ago the Rio Grande river does not supply enough water for the people of Albuquerque what we’re going to look at now is we sort of zoomed out to a different scale here we’re looking at a landscape scale and we’re going to see how the geography of this area has enabled all of us to be here today Apple turque wouldn’t be what it is today if it doesn’t the geography of this area so right now what we’re going to do we were looking at a bird’s eye view of the landscape we’re going to sort of rotate that up and we’re going to see the landscape from sort of an oblique or a side view does anybody know what this feature is here Mountain I see if how many people were at the presentation this morning um do you remember what Sandy be watermelon right just to the south of that down here are the monzano mountains what does that mean apple apple I encourage you this week to catch a Sunset and look at these mountains of sun because that is how they got their names beautiful color that they display Sunset the Sandy mountains I talked I said we were going to look at the geography of this area they are essentially a big black of granite that popped up out of the Earth’s surface and formed kind of a lip or a rim to this Valley here it’s just like if you were to walk around your patio and you had a loose brick you stepped on one side one side pops up in the other sinks it’s kind of the same effect it’s just a big block of granite that’s popped up out of the Earth surface you can kind of see why the city has developed here because that side that’s raised up is very dramatic and beautiful because it’s so um steep you can see on the back side that it slopes away much more gently so again I want you to think of this as sort of a rim or a lip on maybe like a big sink or a big tub now we’re going to rotate our view look out across the valley you see the Rio Grande River snaking through the middle there and then out to the West on the other side there is What’s called the West Mesa if you’ve been in say the Double Tree Hotel and if you’ve looked out your window can you see the West Mesa the rim of it take a look if you get a chance to get up high you can actually see the rim of the West M it doesn’t show up well in here but this is it this area has also been lifted up not as dramatically as the sand is have you seen any other evidence over on the west side of uplift or moving of the Earth’s crust volcano right there’s five volcanoes that are along the skyline of Albuquerque and those are right here they don’t show it very well in this imagery but so if you get up into the Double Tree or someplace hi take a look at those five volcanoes they are now extinct so don’t worry what’s happened now is you have the lip on the right or on the East and then you have this lip on the west that was formed by the West Mesa so as the Earth lifted up and pulled apart what happened in the middle right it’s kind of collapsed and sank down now you probably think well Apper is really not all that deep that’s because of the real gradley River we have the Rio gradley to thank for that we normally think of rivers flowing through an area and gouging out of deep valley the Rio Grande has done the opposite its main function through history has to been to come through here and deposit sand silk gravel and it build up this great big trough or hole in in the earth that formed here the reason that’s important is I want you to think again we were talking about this like a big Basin or sink imagine now laying a towel or a big sponge in the bottom of that sink there’s lots of little porous areas and air holes and what does it do fills up with water right it trickles down from the it fills up with water it’s formed a great aquafer beneath aler so this the reason I wanted to show you this was that it’s the geography or the arrangement of these features the mountains the Mesa the Rio Grande river that have allowed that Aqua Aqua form Albuquerque receives 100% of his water from this Aqua so next time you take a shower turn on the tab think about that it’s the geography of this area that’s allowed you to do that otherwise they just probably could not be as many people the S as are with that in mind it’s not an unlimited resource it’s renewable but not unlimited so please conserve a little bit so that’s the end of my video here we looked at how the Sandia Mountains on the East the West Mason and the Rio grandi River how their particular spatial Arrangement has created this very valuable resource for people here so with that back right on back to the PowerPoint and I don’t know if we mentioned at the beginning but if you have questions during the presentation if you could jop them down and we’ll address them all at the end that way we can make sure we hit everything okay and just to check if you’re listen who remembers what uh mon means okay or somebody raised their hand and screaming because I have give WS all right apple apple you’re student you need things right okay all right CIA all right there we go got watermelon there okay there you go you got to write home about your tour okay um what’s Mesa mean table T table okay somebody 66 just my so what we’re trying to get across in this presentation is that geography is important because what happens wherever you guys are what happens is directly related to where it happens and this is just a little side view if you were having trouble visualizing the aquifer there’s the West Mesa SAS Rio Grande and aquafer all right so at that point I will turn it over to Marissa oh man okay well thank you for coming and of course giving us a chance to give you a little bit of that special treatment we wanted to promise you a little spatial today so there we go that’s kind of part of our goal there but we’ve got to get into the nuts and Bol and we got to make the case for this um with that research background we’re trying to do it so we got to do it and um we want to start with the big picture and that’s just geography as an idea geography is related to everything doesn’t really matter and so I love to look at this and think of um the seven degrees with Kevin Bacon how we can all somehow find a relationship to Kevin Bacon we can but we don’t have time for that today but we can well geography is like that but it’s even better it’s like 7° like quadruple PL so remember that this is a good thing for you and everything is going to come back to this I don’t care what site you’re working at geography has played a role there it’s really important because so many of us are trying to interpret large Landscapes these days we’re trying to talk about these really big scale ideas and um particularly you know habitat corridors a fire regime I mean if I’m just you know a regular visitor that’s really hard I’m not a regular visitor I guess anymore and it’s still really hard so this is the kind of stuff that we need to talk about here how can we do this better um this is not just limited to Natural phenomena cultural landscapes all the new Heritage areas popping up how are we going to sell this idea yeah because it’s hot right now so we got to think about this and battlefields are totally included in this ecosystems it doesn’t matter Seashore you name it we are all part of this really big landscape and it has contributed to why our s’s important and let’s face it we preserve sites for a reason um and so with that thinking back to that Geo you guys have probably all seen this when there’s something that’s a really hot term you attach it to everything kind of like um you know extreme exed FedEx well that’s backwards but still you know there’s there’s these things where there’s these catchphrases goo is no different we put that little prefix on there and oh my goodness we’ve been the new term and so geotourism I like to put this definition up there it’s really nice National Geographic sums it up quite well and I I think to me this is the kind of stuff we really want to talk about you got to have local buyin and I love how this definition encompasses that idea get that local landscape FL go on and so we thought we would be bold enough to propose a new term because you know that’s what interpretation means Geo interpretation um but really it’s it’s a good idea it’s a good idea to think about this we are in the business of fostering connections that’s what we do and so we want to propose okay let’s keep doing that but the particular attention to geographical aspects landscape aspects let’s take a look at maps and some other tools that you can use today we’re going to concentrate on maths almost everybody here’s got one we’ve all seen one we’re going to go the math way but there is there’s a strong need for this and really you didn’t think I could get this in there but I did oh yeah Louis and Clark have a lot to do with a M um I love this this is from a rest stop in North Dakota but the story of a m really does start it all think about where you are when you don’t have one put yourself put in those shoes that’s a bad place to be um and so really just a little info about Lis and Clark here when they were kind of beginning their planning for the journey they’re getting ready to leave it’s 1803 and they’re putting this all down this is the best available map they have to look at at the time I know it’s kind of tough to see but I’ll give you a few little landmarks there on your far left there you’ve got the Pacific coast um right here we’ve got a range anybody know what mountains those are Rocky Mountain Rocky Mountains I want you to remember what those Rocky Mountains look like and then right here we’ve got the great LS what is glaring at you on this map that whole like lack of uh information there no big deal right well that’s really important um and so Louis and Clark have a huge amount of things on their plate but one of the the big things that come out of this Expedition is a map and so um Clark is the token cartographer of the he is the man in that sense and he’s doing all this with very very simple tools he’s got a sexon out there he’s got five compasses cuz he keeps breaking them he’s got a chronometer that well it just go up in North Area I believe so it’s you know he’s got problems but he perseveres and if you notice right here once again on the left hand side there You’ got the Pacific coast look what happen to those Rocky Mountains what a difference it makes when you think about the landscape you actually go on an experience and then try to translate that back I can’t believe those guys ever forgot going over them and coming back over those guys again they’re pretty confident and you see a lot of other information on there waterways if we had a glass we could even see the names of tribes that they met along there and we would also see the reputable X number of souls in this map what’s really special is how accurate this is and this is something we still need to try strive for today this map is accurate within 40 miles of today’s redone GPS version of The L TR okay that’s what I I’m not going to try to do that with the SE anytime soon but um with map once you have it you’ve got this great place you can you can go there you can find the treasure and think about it once we have the map where can we go and so we’re going to go there now um a little bit about how maps and visitors are going to interact and I will turn it back over to hiid right I have a quick question for all of you most of you just arrived this morning maybe a day or two ago how many of you have looked at some form of a map that you’ve been here oh my most people in here okay now how how many of you have already excluding these uh programs that you’ve been to because this is an interpretive conference how many of you have gone out and sought an interpretive exhibit or program so far okay very good you probably notice most of the room raised their hand to map not that many have people have seen a programer exhibit yet I promise this the only graph we have in in this slideshow but I wanted to make a point this was done at National Park you guys have all seen these national park maps that they hand out 90% of visitors say that they use this resource now look all the way down at the bottom 8% of people say they go to talks for programs 24% say they go and look at exhibits 90% look at the map okay so this is an interpretive opportunity that we should not be missing this may be the only thing your visitor looks at and maps are everywhere they’re tacked up on every trail head they’re in the brochure racks maps are everywhere they’re on the on the website they’re in the uh the local tourist guides maps are everywhere and so we should really be focusing on them as an interpretive tool so let’s just look really quick at what a map is now this may seem a little simplistic but this is going to be important a little bit later so bear with me a map is basically just a picture and it’s made up of a bunch of little dots little lines and a bunch of shapes and those dots represent places the lines represent roads or Trails the shapes tend to be areas of land cover like a lake in the middle of that one what we’re trying to get across here is that landscape has a meaning of its very own that large landscape has a meaning you probably wouldn’t have mapped it in the first place or you wouldn’t have preserved it in the first place if that landscape didn’t have meaning it could be cultural it could be historical natural even an urban area could have meaning to it has anybody ever heard of a drel not one person one person these are commonly made for kids but a drel is a picture that just it’s made up of a bunch of dots lines and shapes and it doesn’t make any sense until you get a clue like a puzzle oh she got a prize for being the only one that’s rare man that’s this is an example of a droel it’s hard to tell what it means just looking at it does anybody have any guests oh got it it’s a spear standing at the top of very good very good what do you think number one is you guesses it’s is it a shark and Mickey Mouse it’s a shark leaving Disneyland very good all right how about number two these guys are good all it can mean something different to everyone but we’re looking for the meaning that the artist hadly drew it this is a bare climbing tree oh my God I didn’t see that what we’re trying to say map is like a Dro it’s got all these little dots and lines and shapes and colors or whatever but people look at it and they don’t know what it means you got to give them a clue to what that map means they will make more sense if you provide visitors clu in their meaning so this kind of begs the question well how exactly do people learn from maps how do they learn about large space it’s basically a three-step process these are fancy terms that geographers have come up with but it’s it’s really pretty simple we talked about a boming dots lines and areas well the process that we learn about large spaces is kind of similar to that we learn landmarks first then we tend to learn roots and only over time do we develop what’s called service knowledge and that’s just sort of the knowledge of a landscape or an area as a whole and I know some of you are furiously taking notes and just so you know a lot of this is in the article that’s in the Source book as well so if you miss some of it in there yeah where is sense of scale fit into this sense of scale yeah as far as your knowledge because I always what visitors correct um part of what we we Advocate with using um maps and interpretation is the fact that people don’t have map skills they do have a hard time in scale and this is one way Geographic interpretation is one way that you can get encourage people U to look at different scales so that’s a very good question because there’s very small scale and very large scale so just to define those a little bit more Landmark knowledge simply your ability to recognize places or landmarks you know the church on the corner that type of thing you’re able to describe what it is and why it’s meaningful or significant root knowledge and I’m going to test you on this so pay attention right this is knowledge of roots or paths it’s very simple that just means that you know how to get someplace you know how far to go and where to turn to get there this is the one that’s harder this is where you comprehend the overall layout of an area you understand the different spatial patterns or the relationships of different places to one another you’re able to give people directions you’re able to figure out shortcuts this is the tough one now said I was going to test you what level of knowledge is this child achieved root knowledge okay good she’s achieved landmark and she’s achieved one high knowledge some who said root knowledge somebody did think I heard that was of our grand in the honor of being at root 66 and um guessing the word root correctly we would like to give you the proper traveling gear for all your other or you can sell it after give to auction it’s a m it really looks important thing to remember about it the important thing to remember is that this is a step-by-step process we usually identify landmarks first and we do this quickly generally we identify a few landmarks and then how to get between them think about when you got ask her you probably figured out where the airport is the hotel the convention center and the local bar right then you figured out okay maybe the bar but that survey knowledge is really tough to achieve and so Geo interpretation can help you get there because it gives you more experiences to help you learn that landscape that LGE scale place so turn it back over to Carissa let get into this let’s start creating our maps in an interpretive way um and so the map design process we are adapting it from Sam Ham’s environmental interpretation Bible much used love it and uh he has a great method in here for planning and comparing exib it’s very simple um and so there are just a few steps and we’ll do them real quick and then we’ll get into them one got a theme before you design have a theme in mind take that home with you that’s a good start um the type of map that you’re trying to look for here is it handheld is it something big is it something little there’s there’s a lot of things to talk about there the levels of information that you’re going to include the design again you’ll see more about that when we get to it the text do you include it do you not where you put it what do you want to do with that visuals what kind of Graphics are you going to go with here and um there’s sever really there and then finally interaction you really want to plan for this you know it doesn’t just happen on its own you guys know that in life I mean they say love preparation meets opportunity so you got to prepare um and so we’re going to rock on to here and we’ll start out with them and I can’t believe this is my slide oh my gosh no this is it I like this um example right here give us St Helen’s a little um prop St this is a one their way sides and um it’s got the Thematic title at the very very minimum put a thematic title on your map take a few extra minutes come up with a good one because if a person if all you’re looking at the is the map and they’re trying you know the dad’s leading the family around and the mom’s leading the family around then they have something there to ke key on key in on really quickly that’s great give them that 3 second Advantage there um I like it it shows the landscape it shows it from an oblique View and if you’ve actually been to St Helens you would recogniz it’s because it’s on the viewing deck so you’re standing on the patio you’re overlooking it we can’t do this with all you know things but with a Wayside particularly important make sure that’s a part of the them um themes are something that we can sometimes get muddled up in and argue about because there’s a lot of different little schools of thought if they’re all related so I’ve got a few different ideas on here essentially you need one sentence a complete sentence that’s concise to the point if your theme is like bordering on like I don’t know 22 words and you want two sentences reevaluate what you’re trying to do and you’ll get a clear picture with that you’ve got that orientation you can go um these are all related though you know ham NPS Lew anybody the big idea there too is I try to include a universal concept try to include something everybody can key out and I know that’s um repeat but it never hurts to hear it and um so I want to encourage you please please get enlightened hair put a thematic title on your map fight for that and you know why we had an incredibly hard time finding an authentic fold out map the thing that you’re handing out left and right front and backwards with the Thematic title on it we looked we looked we looked I had the privilege of being at the Midwest regional office and access to a billion brochures it wasn’t there guys so finally somebody read my mind and I was so happy and it was Glacier Bay National Park up in Alaska so we have some fans out there and they just went through this whole big process where they developed in that they went through Harper’s faery and you know what they said oh my gosh we’re going to have a theme on this m and even better um they pulled out some little VI to kind of give it a little more in depth and they got a thematic title on there and I was so happy because I thought I work for this agency I really hope we have one map up there with the Thematic tide on it so I think glaciers retreating lay rebounds hey that works for me because that’s a step in the right direction so try to include that please and minimal and then with ls and Clark we found some different things different ideas about this what are you really trying to do with your map um this map right here take a look at take a look at the one on the wall they are the same map there is a difference on them though and the difference results from some input from people who were visiting our exhibit um many of our American Indian Partners were kind of concerned that we didn’t really highlight their culture and that was a big problem and so you want to talk about the landscape and you want to talk about the scale of things and yet we we missed out the people that’s a huge problem and so Lewis and Clark said well what can we do we can’t redo our whole gigantic tent we can make a patch map so we did and we hung that out over it and there are some words on there so don’t be afraid to use text on your M um there’s nothing wrong with that so here’s Ranger TR po to where we were Warm Springs Oregon when that switch happened so with that we’ll throw it back over to Heidi and give you a little bit ofo on that pipes and once you have your thematic title in mind then the next decision you have to make is what type of map am I going to have am I going to have a a flat map am I going to have a model topographic model maybe some sort of a an animation that is on a computer screen that type of thing and you need to decide the size of your map I know you’ve all seen the brochures where the map is like 2 in by 2 in okay it’s very hard for a visitor to take that and to translate that into the huge landscape that it represents now I understand that there are budget constraints but here’s an example of a map that attempts to do that this is the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon and they’ve taken that and they put it on a great big piece of paper and it’s beautiful it gives you a much better sense of a landscape than some little tiny two or 2 in x 2 in map can do you need to decide how the map will be oriented it does not take very long for visitor to look at a map and get confused the key is to orient it to the visitor and you do not have to put North at the top of your map okay now notice that these two are standing in a building it’s kind of t-shaped one of these is oriented to the environment and one of them is not which one’s oriented corre right one right see how it’s shaped just like the area that that other person has to look at that map and mentally rotate it or kind of do one of these things to figure out where they need to go right here in the convention center I’ve seen this they’ve got the convention center map on both sides and I know I’ve been lost all week so here’s an example of an upside down map this was that a trail head the parking area is at the top okay we’ve got the map oriented to north what happens you get out of the parking area you walk across the street and you’re standing here at the trail head you are now facing south this map was hanging on the trail head and I stood there and I thought the trails were behind me because of the way this map was oriented so think about that when you make a map it might just be a matter of hanging it on the right wall um printing it the right direction you do not have to put North talking map here is a map from Gatlinburg Tennessee it’s the northern entrance to Great Smoky Mountains and so they’ve made their map oriented to the South because people are coming in from the north and that really um I guess the point I want to make here is that people associate the top of a map with forward movement when you have a map you think of the top as being forward it’s just they’ve done research on this it’s it’s a fact that people associate that Bo movement so think about where your Visitor Center is that’s probably where the person’s going to get the map so put the visitor center at the bottom of the map and then have them go out into the landscape couple other cool things about this map most maps are Bird’s ey views where you’re looking straight down if you can get a little bit of an oblique or slanted view it gives it a real threedimensional effect and that’s how we think so you can see these buildings are drawn sort of three dimensionally you can actually see the physical shape and size of the buildings and we’ll have I have that map here so if you want to look at it closer afterwards you can so once you’ve got your theme and you finally decid the type of map you want to have how big it’s going to be and all that you need to consider the levels of information that you’re going to provide with your map I think of a map as an exhibit with too much text we’ve all seen those exhibits that have huge long paragraphs and you just walk right by those right a map is very similar you’re putting tons of information all jumbled together and people are just like it’s way too much information break it down just like we do we chunk that information in little bits and pie for people with text break it down show location then show Roots then show whatever Geographic concept you’re trying to get across a wed Battlefield Etc here’s an example from Lou Clark of just a simple root map so moving along to design I’ll turn it back to Chrissa okay this is um a real life situation here um this map really what you want to know is this is ochre Coke Island it’s barer Island up North Carolina for k National Seashore I got to be seasonal there I also found another really big problem um we need to be accurate remember how William Clark was accurate within 40 miles with that amazing this map as best as we could tell we’ve been handing out since 1978 as best as I can tell we’ve been copying it since before that and um the problem was we would give this to a visitor and they would instantly say but you know what when I came in on the ferry I didn’t see that hook on the end and then you had to be like back padding s you know oh yeah yeah that doesn’t exist anymore okay so you’re thinking oh my gosh I have this big problem and maybe my site doesn’t change as much as a Barry Island really take a look things change all the time we know that’s a concept that’s a great Universal concept can’t think of anything go would change it’s good it’s safe but this is a problem so we didn’t have a budget we had two seasonals and and enough lead there that’s it Oka Coke island is basically unstaffed during the rest of the year and so what we what we did I took it into Photoshop I cleaned it up I took out all those nasty little marks all over it and I took off the hook and I made it a fist which was actually what it looks like and you know what that was a lot better it’s hard enough being a visitor in a new place it’s worse when you hand them a map that’s wrong so make sure take a look at things and do it and clean it up don’t hand out things that look like that that’s really bad and so just give you an idea you don’t have to be a guru maybe you should get an intern from a graphics arts college or something anybody can come come in and do this with Photoshop or page maker and clean things off it’s not that hard and um is it geographically accurate No but it’s meant to be a representation so I think that’s okay at least we’re telling the truth um the other thing with maps is that the colors of the features in landscape can really lie to your visitor and you got to think about this so here we go we’ve got a nice um tobo bandana of gler what do you guys assume is green trees okay well what if you didn’t really know squat about Glacier and this was just anywhere you might think that’s grass field ples I mean you got no idea what about um Brown um Blue Water okay blue is pretty standard but then you have to throw in that little Glacier problem here at Glacier you know there’s no snow on this map so be really um truthful about what you’re doing is think about that and the relative size of symbols is very key if you put the big old star next to something on there and you make it a really big font it does exactly what you wanted it to do it draws attention right there and somebody assumes that that’s more important than something else so be really careful and be really um be cheap about how you use that don’t go overboard because people get confused um the other thing is we got a few things we need to talk about here one is we need to talk if you’re going to do a map talk to other people about it you need to show it to other people so you need to test it too so we’re going to talk we got to test it on other people I mean this is this is really easy stuff but so often it doesn’t happen and then finally we got to think about text so often we just think oh my gosh map is already overloaded anyway we’re not going to put text on it yet there are times when that’s truly appropriate and good to explain the typical Park Service handout there is text included on here well if you’re writing about what you see on the map depending on what culture you’re in talk in English here we’re going to read left to right and we’re going to typically go from up to down so when you’re describing something visually in the text describe it that way in your MTH okay um that’s kind of a good little tip there and don’t be afraid to use it I mean I realized that the ginormous L and Clark Banner over there or it’s a lot text heavy but you know what we got a little learn about the culture in there so I’m willing to work with that and so finally we’ll get a little bit about visuals in here this is probably my favorite part I really like to encourage people to put the art back into craphy if you’ve ever seen an ancient map they were beautiful I they had um calligraphy and they had sea monsters on them and they were just beautiful works of art there’s actually people that collect these and frame them and put them on the wall I’m sorry but today’s M boring you go and make something on a map quest or you just pick up a map out of a brochure wck is probably pretty dull try using pictures we always use symbols little stars and squares and stuff why we don’t have to do that we’re being interpreters here so interpret that landscape you can be funny they used cartoons um kind of caricatures of the different plac in this example here’s another kind of cartoony example if you looked at this shape on on a piece of paper you probably wouldn’t recognize it but because of the illustration I bet you know what this is close Scotland take a look at that skirt or that kir sorry I’m going to get beat up for that you can make your map eye catching draw attention to it this is a case where they were showing a route that was all right turns they made it into a spiral this very ey catching this is the Napa Valley in California they’ve made the roads look like a branches to a gra Pine here’s a case where they’ve taken topographic maps and looked for patterns in them we’ve all done this we go out look for patterns in the clouds you could do that on a too map and they’ve artistically rendered it so that it looks like an animal this would awesome if you were trying to interpret the landscape of a bear or a fox or some other animal you can even extend this right into the architecture of your place this is the Yellowstone River flowing right through the visitor center they’ve taken that map and just Incorporated it right into the architecture of the site and last but not least we’re going to talk about interaction because that’s really the heart of interpretation is getting a visitor involved this is kind of my pet peeve but this is always what we do when we want an interactive map push a button lights up push a button lights up you see this everywhere push a button push a button it lights up it’s the right idea we’re trying to get the person to touch the map and involved with the map but we can do more than this I know you are all creative people we can do more than this now unfortunately this would be a whole another hour presentation going through all the different interactive ideas that we have but prepared a handout for you that will start around there’s an entire page of interactive ideas in here as well as the process that we went through and there’s also a page of different websites I can email this to you we’ve included a web or an email address on here just email me and I’ll send it to you so you can just kind of click and go because you really don’t want to type all that stuff in it has the resource that we talked about nassa worldwind the local live there’s even a a map of Springfield which is where the sson CL it’s a really cool interactive map that I found online so go check that out what we’re trying to get across here is be creative take your visitors on an adventure through your M and with that I’ll just turn over to really a final idea I want to at least give you something that you could do next week I want you to go home to your site and not fret over oh my gosh we need to update our math I want you to have a good idea and that is just simply thinking about scale which is really important brought if you need a new idea if you need a little jol in your interpretive programming try to visualize or think about your site in another scale it’s a really good trick to get a little bit of um in your program it’s also really cool if you have some beginning interpreters who aren’t quite finding what they want to do tell them well you know what look at it from this angle and this is a really nice trick um so we got the little VW um man there and I was so lucky this picture I can’t believe but we’ve got the cool size ww in on the far left there you see the little tiny ww bus um like the big one we often get stuck in that little bw+ world this is our site this is our place this is what we do and we are stuck in that box let’s take it out bigger let’s go and tell them the whole story the full siiz man we can make that impact and that’s just a matter ofing about scale there infusing a little Geo interpretation into your story so we want to be good in so we want to go over just what we told right um we did do a virtual tour of Al does anyone remember that all right U we did give you a little bit of reasons why we think interpr Geo interpretation is important and going to be a forr thing um and then we talked about how people learn from mths so that’s always key and then finally a little bit about map design and we want you to run and make your own creative ideas on that but kind of just um in a final closing thank you for coming thank you for giving us the opportunity to talk about this with you um really do appreciate it we want to give you something you can take home and um with that I think heid and I will be able to entertain any questions that you may have and they have about eight minutes go for it is there enough water coming into the Albuquerque aquafer to support this population or are they drawing off of it there is a lot of debate over that they used to think the ocer was much bigger than it actually is so they’re still doing a lot of research into that uh they they do address this in City Planning and that type of thing um I think currently as long as there’s a severe drought or anything that it’s okay but they have to um carefully control that and conserve water and there’s a lot of act conservation programs going on because they are on a F line there so it’s definitely not the unlimited thought it was yes and you probably know more about it um yeah but I um I work at the Natural History Museum here and just a little plug I brought two maps that are called Albuquerque geoscape that I added to the silent auction upstairs so keep your eye out and B for them it gives U the whole um Geographic picture of the AL Park area thank you I’d just like to point out that if if you ever get a chance to go to the top of the Sandy Crest you get that bird view of these mountain ranges and it was almost like your satellite pictures it was amazing I I was lost until I went to the top and I really understood where all these mountains are did you take the tram or is that the best way to we drove well drove we drove the tra almost broke down okay I think there’s multiple ways to get up there all right far back sir have a ma question for you um as you know scale when you’re dealing with large area like this and a hand out man paper size how big is too big this I would not want to get to the no no no you know they’re going to be trying to unfold it in their car um in the Park Service they have a certain size and that is the max limit that they go to so I know our Lou and Clark Trail one is an accordion one like that and it goes out about the width of you know your arm spread to me that’s kind of the Dizzy limit there don’t want to get much bigger than that I do have thoughts on that I haven’t seen any actual research on you know what’s too big um I would just experiment with different sizes to see what your visitors prefer this one is made to be sort of arms length like she said you wouldn’t want it any bigger than that because then you wouldn’t be able to hold it so I don’t know an actual answer or a scientific answer to that if they stud arms length is a good one right but this yeah this one’s arms length I think I think is pretty much very similar and I don’t know service Harper’s fery get on there they can tell you everything about this and there are certain templates that you can work with oh wait let me go to just wanted to add kind of a PL for this concept of De interpretation that um for those of you who are also working with Educators in in formal education system the fourth grade level is the level at which almost universally across the United States geography is taught so if you’re curriculum based interpretation in your site um geography is a great place to bring students into capturing the landscape approach to interpretation and then I just also wanted to mention I happen to work at at Nasa with the land sat satellite team which is what underlies Whirlwind and we’re very very interested in partnering with interpretation and education if you’re interested in that and talk to me or just visit the lat website few gole I just want to add to what she said that mass I I just really discovered it last week when I realized I couldn’t use BL Earth so I played around with it and it’s a little confusing at first but once you get it it’s pretty easy to so they’re working on making that available on the map as well um in your research have you found any py taking the map my thought is you got a theme on your map you got text that fits into that theme and then going a step further and actually doing an orientation program follow the map of your site you find anyone doing it you we took an interpretive class um at West Virginia University and we were shown a video actually of a woman using the sort of the topographic model at the basis for a program and that’s an excellent way to get people involved in that Map There’s also living Maps has anybody heard a living map that’s a where they take sort of a base map and paint it on on the floor or on a big sheet or a big piece of canvas and spread it out and then it actually can crawl around the map and add little landmarks and use yarn and stad to make streams so there is some of that going on in programming but we think there could be more that seem like yes if you if you’re being about yes it’s e to build upon and if you’ve already got to have a plan for your interpretive process use it there but those things to good new for you to know and I know that most of you don’t have the money to go redesign your map build around the one you have if you have one in your Visitor Center put a thematic title with it um try to add some visual elements to it try to work with what you have in the meantime until you can design that or if you if your Park Service generally you’re on a rotation to to do an update demand that you want thisa process it’s it’s starting to happen so how any more questions well and Before I Let You Go I want to know that the pins on the back table are pretty special U one is of course the Len par National histor CH the second one is a core Discovery two pin you guys are getting a really special pin with that that is something that we only gave to presenters who talked inside of the Ten of many voices and so I beg my boss could I please have a whole bunch of those and I wanted to share that with you so please um kind of wear that with some pride it’s a pretty special thing one more thing somebody here at the conference lent me that other map there it’s a 3D map that use 3D glasses with so take a look at that on your way out of thank you where’s the evaluation still oh shout out oh really we do USBS put out including sha and by the time I start wanted to catch it it’s just something about really Human Nature no I didine icked I’m moving on so I’m thank you so much thean very frustrating

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Tent of Many Voices: 08100402F

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:54 +0000

this part of the T of many voices this program that we’re having is U we’re giv our our elders an opportunity to talk about themselves talk about their life being here on a Maha reservation growing up what it is and it’s also a great opportunity for us to um be able to question them even to talk about the uh time that they they lived and the hardship they might have seen and um it also uh these this video tape here is going to be uh recorded and stored at the National Archives Library of Congress so this is something that is a a very good that the uh Park service has brought to my people the Omaha people has given us a opportunity to talk and uh them a time to share so later on 100 years from now there are children the ones that are unborn they’re going to be able to find them and they’re going to be able to identify with them first one that’s going to talk here is my grandpa yeah Lord’s cook uh want to say I’m really glad to see each one of you here and uh I was asking my grandson here that we have Tribal leaders and uh I was thinking when I come in ground here that I would see them here and uh I’m glad that uh some of the people that works from from my relatives are here and uh we uh we had om people my uh my position here amongst the people is uh two number two second in command life and my wife’s here is f is first day they’re the on that uh are in charge of Omaha W is here and uh they’re they’re the hunger Clan they’re the one that uh prays for whatever happened to our people my grandson here books are number four here there they kind of person that goes around and gathers things the uh they Happ them to go ahead and do things like this and uh my grandson here is one of them today I was telling him it’s good you know that you got yourself involved in in the mallway I know his dad they part is my nephew in a relationship that way and uh I’ve been uh healing for few days and uh last winter I was telling him that I caught bad cold and I uh sickness settle in my lungs I have a hard time breathing and I I I try to sit still and try to be calm and uh I believe in in the religion way quite a bit and uh I want seeing my people that way too and uh it makes me feel good we’ve had hard time amongst our people all more people had a hard time in the past we are still that way and we try to uh pray to God pray to a great Creator more of challing about that too and uh seem like uh the more we think about think about our great creator you know things works out pretty good for us gr better that way that’s St Le of our people our great leaders we have uh our great leaders buried uh the the old people that uh kind of kept us together I would say not kind of they’ve kept us together this way as people on our homeland uh we have some of our people that’s off amongst people I have a a daughter one of the oldest daughter that’s in Farmington New Mexico at this moment with her family that way now we have uh different uh uh relatives that way they are off somewhere amongst people uh we have uh today the gentl was here one of the boys here I think he’s gone he was asking me questions about my family uh he said how many grandchildren do you got great grandchild I say roughly right off hand I said about 32 uh I just turned 80 years old last November 11th and uh you know I’m getting up to the to the point where I just can’t go on anymore like I used to and uh because of the the illness that that’s got hold of me I’ve been sure having a hard time at home and I I really uh appreciate something like this uh the someone could gather something like this it’s good our people we never done that so they were our people were very strict and uh it’s good that uh we someone could do this we are I guess you almost need to be known we we here on on our homeland here been here a long time uh I heard someone mention 1854 we’ve had some treaties years and the treaties among different people that come uh again I’ve been trying to study the history of our our people for about 12 years now and uh it’s uh it’s always kind of hard for me to gather information so I yeah papa um could you share some of your uh uh exper your military experience when he was young man I know he was you’re a veteran service Serv yeah I uh son here as question I just I’m just so hard hearing too that I can’t pick out the words pretty clear what I ask yes I’ve uh I think I had the my relative here within service and uh I went into the war in 1942 into the war with uh Germany and I uh spent most of my time 22 months over 22 months that I’ve been in Germany and so forth we got shifted up from Texas after we took few few weeks to training we were ready to go guess so this they Shi us across took us 14 days on the ship to get there and when we got there it wasn’t very good reception uh we have been on uh the in a waterer for oh probably six seven days in the battle and some of the boys you know they off from the ship they just threw themselves off into the ocean uh got all excited but then uh he was in the Battle for over a year and a half in Germany and I whereever they’re having issues now I’ve been there and seen some of the some of the un unexpected things that happened and even to to some of our men today you take your little children they just coming up you know things happen to them over there now right at this moment probably but then uh we see there’s a person watching us is our Creator dear we hope that things will turn out all right calm down yes yes I’ve been involved in in the battles out there doing World War II even got captured for 63 days I was in German hands you German soldiers hand we wasn’t treated too good if it was very lack of food also too you know that uh Keep Us Alive uh keep us going giv them strength like that so and then um about month before you know war was going to be over with I lost my brother out there he was involved in Japan and because I was going to be shifted to to Germany you know he had priority because you kind of had choice to pick out where he wanted to go so he picked up the war in Germany where I was going he was home uh he waited I guess few days extra too but he had to leave and I came home for emergency leave because I was going to be going really soon well anyway this these are the things that happened you know uh so but if there’s any anybody got questions too I try to answer them a bit more they’re going to uh when we get done they’re going to ask questions you go pass that on to yeah sistant okay you want to say something I’ll passes on to my well I’m glad to see everybody here that there’s quite a few here and I have I had appearance like Mrs uh uh Harvey had they were my mother and father but I figured that I only had the only group was six but she said there was nine but I don’t remember that but I lost four of my uh brothers and sisters two brothers and two sisters so just her and I that now but we had a good life brought up good teaching things that was told in Indian we were brought up that way and then we knew from right from wrong and we always stayed home and we had my father farmed there for me we be few years and we had life doing things with him in every way and my mother was a a woman that stayed home and did a lot of good things like canning and and cooking and stuff so we were all about that way everything was good for us when we never knew what Macy was as a young girl as my brother and sisters we went to school in a country school called it Webster Schoolhouse we went there quite a few years until a bus came out came to Macy school then after that went to school and walk in nor toota then they brought us teaching of relationship who were related to them there was a lot of old people old men’s that knew that went things like that had and they had powers but we never really took in Powers either maybe very few then they had hand games and they had other kind of doings but kids were allowed to go in so we stayed out most of the time but we had good time that’s all I have to say thank you thank you um good good morning or good afternoon uh my name is Karen cook Tindle and these are my parents and uh I’m honored uh to be sitting here today amongst my elders and uh my elders that spoke before me and uh as uh growing up uh my I remember uh living with my grandparents um Albert and Bernice from Robinson my mother’s parents and uh we lived in a three- room house and there were I’d say about 20 people living in there it was a big you know was a family unit my uncles’s um um maybe my aunt and uh we seems like we all uh got along for living in you know 20 some people plus kids living in that household but it was you know it was a normal thing for us that’s what you know what I remember and I could remember uh uh you know my uncle’s going out and uh hunting all day and bringing back rabbits and my grandmother would cook those rabbits and that’s what we’d have for supper I mean and then Ducks I remember wood ducks they brought uh one you know back when one day and you know we we uh she cleaned them and we ate them and they taste like fish you know I remember I I didn’t like that but we ate it squirrels you know it was uh it was um I guess hard times then for us but you know it was also you know a good good time because we were all together sitting at the table and um today um I’m uh really uh honored to be sitting here with my parents um I’m a grandmother my husband and I have um eight grandchild and uh I’m uh I guess pretty soon I got a couple more years and I’ll be considered an elder but uh uh growing up it was uh it was hard it was a hard time for us and uh but it was a happy time and U right now I um I’ll be working with uh the at the Omaha Nation School in the culture center and um teaching uh young children um a little bit about their culture with the help of my elders and I’m uh really looking forward to that and I’ll be working uh teaching in the classroom I recently graduated from the University of Nebraska and I have a teaching certificate an elementary Ed and also an ESL endorsement through the university so I’m going to put that in good use this coming school year thank you good morning uh I want to tell you my in name first my in name is how and I belong to the Buffalo Clan I’m in the Elder I’m 80 years old so I lived a long time when I asked my brother what I should talk about he said talk about yourself so I love that so uh I had five sisters and three brothers and we grew up very poor I don’t ever remember of living in a house till I was almost a teenager to the government come in and build us a three- room house so there we lived in a three room house till we all grew up I remember going to school at Macy there were a lot of D Indians who went School with a lot of non Indians I never knew of discrimination till just a few years back we all played together and we didn’t know we were a different color I don’t remember that anyway but we all they were farmers that lived among us and we just grew up with them uh I have the five sisters and three brothers we all went to school here in Macy and when the school uh burned down when I was in high school then I continued down to flandro South Dakota which was a boarding school and from flandro I went on to another boarding school called hasco it’s called hasco Institute now or hasco university now from there I went there and from there I got married I married a man in the Navy and I spent 23 years in the Navy with him brought my children up as military children uh I enjoyed that life very much cuz I got to see the world I guess traveling I did a lot of traveling and after he retired from the military I came back to the reservation and but all those years that I was gone I never forgot my language I speak fluent Omaha I never forgot it so when I come back I started teaching the uh language to our student I’ve taught there about 20 years now at the Macy public school and we are trying to revive our language I will be working with this young lady she’s my niece uh we’ll be working to try to bring our culture back but it’s very difficult because we teach them but when they go home the parents don’t know how to speak the language so it does become kind of hard but the kids remember and they teach him a lot I tell you a little about my upbringing we were like I said we were very poor we didn’t have electricity and no water we had to haul our own water we had to ha water heat it to wash with so I grew up very poor but I was very fortunate to have a mother that believed in education uh my brother left my father left us when we were all quite young but my mother raised us and she stressed education so today we are all educated uh we have degrees in fact most of my family’s in the field of Health we have um doctors I have one sister that has three doctors in her family a brother that’s a doctor and we have a surgeon and pharmacist so because of my mother we have attained all these yeah good Beginnings in life so right now part of my job is when I talk to young people I tell them to get their education cuz I feel that it’s part of my work that I’m doing at the public and I one of the things I remember about my life I also am a trained pargal I was a tribal J here for many years too so I did a lot of counseling to our young people too so I’ve done many things I guess I just 80 years I’ve done a lot of things I don’t remember some of the things I did but I love to go to concerts and I love the casino I love to do a lot of things this morning I was learning how to play Blackjack so I’m I’m going to go over to the casino and I’m going to play blackj with all the men so uh I’m very happy that many of you are here too you are interested in us we’ve been here a long time we have our own Casino that’s our land over there but yet our casino is across over there I guess that’s part of our land I lived over in Hawaii for 3 years when I was over there they accepted me I dressed like them I just everybody thought I was Hawaiian Chinese so that was okay cuz they treated me very nice so I want to thank all of you that are interested in us so we must all get along thank you if any of you have any questions for my relatives here Ranger will you’ve mentioned uh your losing your elders uh as we all do but I’ve never heard anything about your burial grounds or or anything and I haven’t seen any that I know of and could you speak about your your funeral tradition and your and your burial grounds and so on traditional funerals burial grounds yeah uh these are some of the issues that uh you know we uh won’t talk too much about but uh our areas I know um there’s U one area up there by uh on the other side of wo awesome and uh in that area our people north of Homer NE Baska there uh about a mile and a half you you go Dr V City you see that telephone was leading right to that that farmer and there’s a high ground there and uh 1795 is where our our people lived there along that Bluer on The High Ground they lived in what you call a uh uh the name the HS out of mud they used that mud for concrete that way there was uh people there you know how to handle that you know but they they took it took that the mud with grass and platted that on the wood that way we had a a group there the uh population was perhaps about little over 1100 uh the reason why they lived there was that there were that area it’s all Lake around there and a lot of fish was in there goes by buy them like that that’s why they stayed here and uh a lot of them are big tall birds like of course the duck came too it lived off of them too in that area then we had other group down there by Omaha town called south of Omaha there they Nebraska there some of our group live there also I’ll be about 900 population with and here in that area there the small Fox came and took uh uh probably over 200 of our relatives you know the thickness CL got to them and uh the rest of the men folks were gone at a certain time of year come into a place where they call Pima in that area there’s that Alor River there there was a lot of lot of buffalos uh roed in that area and they came down there went down there and and uh took some of the Buffalo and used them for food and got them back all the way down and back up to to the area where they were at but but I guess a thir here of the year uh probably 17 20s in there where sickness come and they when they got home with the all the food were the family was gone uh the men wondered what happened to them but the sickness got MX and it really took took the family down even to the children too well these These are the hardships that we had today the seem like the uh hardship is still with us our people are not in a real happy mood all time today we lost a lot of our our fames that way so but then I tell my grandson here that it’s good that you uh brought something like this you know and family individual CH to explain their family’s life and so on that way it’s good I’d like to i’ like to see our tribal leaders in here also you know help help of the grandson here this way but there’s various ones here that uh are willing to help you know contribute their time too thank you very much yeah uh thank you uh Grandpa yeah Grandpa LA and my sister my niece and my other sister I say thank you for being here and thank you for sharing with us um at this time uh we’re going to be having another program here do we have time for one more question sure okay yeah when you said as a little girl you didn’t have a home until you were a teenager where did you used to live We Live uh is it yeah turn this way uh I I guess the government gave us these Army tent it was this huge army tent and I remember it was Square uh we had we cooked and everything in these tent like I say uh that’s how I grew up poor till the government come in and some kind of program that built us these homes here yeah I want to say thank you to all of you again thank you for the U your kind attention to my elders here on behalf of the National Park Service and the core of Discovery 2 and everyone who is here listening today we all appreciate you coming out and sharing your stories with us thank you each very much for stopping by and sharing with us today Next program inside of the tent to many voices will probably begin in about 10 minutes or so and that is going to be Maxine and Rufus white and they will be talking about the social game the hand game so you may have heard some of our earlier presenters daa for dear dear CL are both of you fluent in the language do both of you speak Omaha well we don’t always speak Omaha at home but we do talk Omaha but sometimes you forget words we have to think about it or ask one another yeah yeah yeah we can speak Oma language but but uh are there very many people left anymore that can speak the language real well or there’s only a few people well just a few I think few years ago we counted uh she and I talked about this and uh we counted what about 40 yeah about 40 uh omah ladies and men that speak it near fluently right but uh there’s probably less now since that time quite a few of our elders passed away and so there’s not too many uh Elders left on our om reservation right they’re all young people and just like uh if you noticed the other night uh I don’t think nobody brought it to your attention maybe you didn’t notice cuz all those on the east side of the building a hand game they’re all young people just uh maybe three or four Elders sit over there MH and uh on your side I think she and I were about to was over there yeah there are a lot of young people yeah yeah and they talk about our language we’re losing our language which we are uh uh at all our uh social activities like the hand game uh lot of English has spoken very little Omaha language is spoken right and even our religious ceremony is like that there all young people in there maybe one or two Elders may be in there and uh just like our annual PA we call Pa we call it Harvest Festival celebration but uh the MC’s uh during the celebration they all speak English hary har Omaha they spoken yeah so do they still use the Oma language mostly in the church though when you’re saying prayers and or when you’re singing songs they yeah they do do but they don’t always speak it you know when someone gets up to talk they always speak English speak English yeah there’s uh only a few of us uh pray in our Omaha language yet and uh there’s a lot of young people that they pray in English English language yeah yeah we do we speak in Omaha when we pray yeah now the children are learning are trying to learn Omaha language taught that in school how long have they been doing that is that been going on for a while they’ve been trying to keep the language going or well last 15 years or so they been teaching in a public school even up to Junior College but uh uh I I don’t think uh they remember those children especially I taught for a while at the public school and uh uh they’re junior high level and uh some of them have uh they have forgotten what I taugh them yeah I said don’t you talk to your mother and Grandma yeah should they don’t know what I’m saying so they don’t get to speak it and use it so as a result uh they forget and like she was saying we don’t speak it enough uh there’s a lot of words that uh uh we forget we have to think about it before we uh think about the N the word that we want to use right uh for example of some uh names of animals in our overall language or some of them we’ we have forgotten and uh CU we don’t use it every day and uh I one year uh we were invited to uh by the uh Apaches in New Mexico to a weekend celebration they invited us over our Omaha down and uh we went down to the van and we had some Elders in there uh we was almost there and uh we saw heard an anope and we couldn’t think of what our Omaha called called the antelopes and uh you’ve met Paul BR uh he made a great study of the Omaha even the language and uh he know quite a bit of our Omaha language and uh anyway he lived in Albuquerque at that time and we weren’t too far from Albuquerque so we went down there we stayed overnight in Albuquerque and we went to visit him and we got talking about uh we’re losing a language up here so I told him I said well uh on the way down I said we saw an anvelope and heard an anal we couldn’t think of the name and uh all the elders in the van couldn’t remember oh and I and I knew that name too but I just couldn’t think of it and what if I has that name too and I try to think about him and but we couldn’t think of it start talking to Paul B about it and yeah he said they called him dauga he didn’t have to think about it man remember do yeah so he knows the language fairly well then he’s studed he knows where we all came from too yeah he knows everyone’s family treat the Clans what Clans they belong to yeah and uh uh Omaha personal names uh he knows a lot of people by their Omaha names yeah yeah he’s a bright man he is that’s a lot of important information that he shared with with the Omaha people cuz isn’t that isn’t all that information he’s gathered available for people to look at and study and yeah I guess he got interested in it uh way back uh late 50s and early 60s our our tribe were making a land claims to the government and uh they uh hired him to I think the Omaha probably hired him uh he came back here and uh uh took in roban of the whole tribe and uh from that time he was involved with omahas he was learning their traditions and language and and clients they belong to and he knows the uh names the Indian names that we have he can uh translate tell us what it means what it really means so he’s some pretty intelligent when you’re given your Indian name how how is that like how old are you when you’re given your indan mon I mean 4 days 4 days traditional traditionally 4 days following their birth uh they name give them names now who does the naming is is there a ceremony involved in it or is there a particular person within the family that gives the name early history uh one clan did that but at the years went by uh the families uh honored uh some Elders probably even within a client to uh give them names and uh name their children but uh we don’t fully follow that today uh they they honor some Elders who they sometimes the most of the families know the name that they want the children to have and they honor the Elder to name them so uh she and I uh we honored quite often to name children yeah now how did you name your children did you select their names or did someone else they were uh named by their Grandfather at the time he was living so he picked the name and translated it told him what it meant yeah but right now since I’m the oldest in our family my nephews and nieces come to me to name the children oh so that’s I tell him the name and he names them for me that’s good though that they still do that that they still turn to you and there’s a lot of respect for elders with I noticed that within American Indian groups I mean they really honor their elders and take care of them more so than other cultural groups do you feel that way that the that the community really still looks up to you for guidance and like with the naming ceremony and that there’s a place of importance for you within yeah I I think they do they uh honor the elders like uh our close relatives and our grandchildren they always come to us and ask us things and like naming the children mhm sometimes they already know what what they want to name them but then sometimes we have to go back and think who we could name that child after and we usually go according to how uh that person lived and that’s how we pick names up for them yeah traditionally uh they give them four names to select from and uh the person uh tells the family the life that each uh person lived U even healthwise where they were good health or have health problems and the kind of life that they had lived so the parents make their selection from uh the four names given him so were these names ancestors names so they’re they’re named after somebody from long ago so it’s not like like it’s a new name it’s not like created okay okay yeah a lot of uh our people car car their uh great grandparents is name the grandmothers and grandfather the parents that name them after them too well it’s usually the oldest one that’s born that’s named after their grandparents great grandparents right now how many grandchildren do you all have Jee we C at one time I forget yeah we I think we probably have more than 30 H yeah wow I would think so by now yeah yeah that’s a lot and uh we have about eight nine uh great grandchildren wow there’s about uh three or four of them maybe we haven’t seen yet our great grandchildren wow there’s uh D ok and uh the mother parents who live in Oklahoma they live away from here so right tell we haven’t se it yet now will they come home for powow do a lot of them come home you lot of them came home let’s see we uh hadn’t seen one of our great grand CH child until just last month he brought him home they live in Arizona so we got to see him yeah yeah but but we’re uh a family adopted us as their parents too so we have all of them grandchildren oh okay so we must have over a hundred including them children there I adopted the uh adopted one of the unfortunate things uh in recent years uh we named a lot of children uh fourth day some of we even named them in a hospital after they were born but uh today I saw my young parents and we tell them call them by their Omaha name so they’ll know when they grow up what their Omaha name is and tell them what it means and uh some of them haven’t done that and they come to us and they said uh uh do you remember what you name our child that we name so many that we forget what name we gave them yeah and uh then sometime we ask them uh what does the name mean that they forgotten that too oh just like I was telling a little while ago like a deer Clan and uh they forget that too yeah so it’s unfortunate it’s like that and I think what we she and I should have done but uh we didn’t know this all this is going to happen uh we should have took the name Nam of that child uh English name and also the uh Omaha name and have it our file when somebody comes to us we can look it up if we didn’t know right yeah yeah we didn’t do that we thought about it after was late yeah yeah now what is your Omaha name mine is uh me I belong to the Thunder Clan and what does that mean it means a uh sacred yellow moon and are there special qualities that came with that name that you somebody’s told you you’re supposed to have special qualities that came personality if they did I don’t remember it just like my great granddaughter one of them has my indan name okay okay and then the other one we have uh three three great granddaughters they’re close to us because uh they were born in Pender and when they came back they came home to live with us and they’ve lived with us for past oh they finally moved away 3 years ago so now they call me every day Grandma we want to come home can you come and get us I have to go get them and bring them home yeah they still consider our home their home oh technically it is anyway whether they grew up there or not right they spent a lot of time with you so yeah they do and they’re a lot of company to us and now they’re getting old enough where they can help me like setting table and clearing the table off mhm I like that how old are they now they uh the other uh the younger one is four and the older one is six the angel is 11 huh yeah I have a grandson that’s 11 years old and and their mother we raised her I guess that’s why we feel closer to them because we had raised the mother too right now it was the mother someone that you had adopted or no she was the mother and the Father the father was in a service and the mother wanted to go back to school so she brought them back to us oh okay and we just took them and kept them and raised them oh okay okay they went they went back to their mother for a while but they came back yeah so we’ve had them ever since over were babies so uh just like the mother she’s like our own because we had her since she was about 6 months old oh wow yeah this is another generation so you raised the mother and now you’re raising her children as well wow they they come back and then they go home to their mother and just going back and forth and one of the things those two little ones you mentioned one’s four one six uh when they come up and stay with us a couple days or a couple nights and when they want to go back to their mother downtown uh they don’t say uh take me home to a mother they said take me back to mother’s house oh they don’t say CU home is with you yeah yeah yeah now do you spoil them when they’re with you I guess we do when when they ask us for something just like the little one uh our daughter came back and uh she says uh Grandma I’m Lonesome I miss them she said so let’s go for a ride I said you go tell Grandpa see what he says so he says all right let’s go so we went up drove up to Sous City with them yeah now who’s more strict with them are you more strict or do they twist him around their finger and get old the older one does oh does but the younger one he she bosses me the older one mosses him the older one uh I really felt sorry I was just teaching her uh uh she got off a breakfast table uh got through eating and and I don’t know what she did but uh I just joke it uh kind of rep her or just scold her it really hurt her feelings she just cried cried real hard she felt real bad because she felt real hurt first time oh first time yeah so I don’t do that with her inmore don’t like to see her cry yeah that’s hard it’s hard to to raise little ones that’s a challenge for both of you you know being older and having to raise The Young Ones what are you teaching them about being Omaha I mean there things I know they’re very young but have you been trying to teach them some of the language or yeah um we taught her how to count the older one in Omaha and uh but lately we haven’t been since they moved out yeah since they moved away we haven’t really been teaching her but she uh knew how count to 10 almost 20 but that was about it but when we go toi uh Sous City or someplace we see something we say it in Indian just like the River Missouri River so she know she knows so she knows how to say a river in Omaha yeah and she P she surprised my oldest daughter she drove us up there one day and she calls her grandma Auntie Grandma Auntie this is a Nish day she said that’s what we call the river Nish day is that what they call it she said she didn’t even know she was surprised that’s good yeah the older one she was trying to teaching her to count to 10 and uh I help her too and uh I C was my fingers one 2 three four five like that and uh I teaching her kind of reminding her so I went I went the opposite way I said yes this is I said at Omaha 1 2 3 4 5 no grandpa this is five so she knew oh I’m going to stop one minute I’m going to change

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Tent of Many Voices: Mark Weekley on TOMV

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:49 +0000

Hello, I’m Mark Weekley, superintendent of Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. This is my 15th plus year as superintendent of the trail. I’m here in downtown Omaha, Nebraska. My backdrop is the Missouri River looking north towards Iowa. I am a white male with thinning hair. Well, actually not much hair on

top anymore. What I do have is whitish blonde and I am wearing a National Park Service uniform which consists of a gray shirt, a green tie and green pants. Well, the most recent teneed many voices project and in order to understand that you got to go back to the beginning and the be beginning was 2003 2006 with the Louiswis and Clark bsentennial commemoration under the leadership of the superintendent at that time Gerard Baker. A venue was created called the tent to many voices. This amounted to a stage and a tent and this was set up so it could travel and be transported across the trail and across the country. And the genius behind the

ten of many voices is that speakers were invited to come in and they were given an opportunity to speak in an uncens unc uncensored format. This was particularly valuable for many many tribal speakers and indigenous people coming in and telling their stories and their knowledge about the Louiswis and Clark trail. And what our project is now is to continue a multi-year effort going back over 10 years to make these tapes and videos available to the public as easily as possible. Initially, these were available through archives. National archive has a set. We also created a

website called lc-tribal legacies.org where you can see many of the video recordings, but not all of them. This project that we’re celebrating and excited about now represents the the kind of the final phase of making the stuff available so that they’re readily available on the web that they’re closed captioned, audioescribed and easy for people to get to. And I would have to give out a a real shout out to our leader and manager at Lewis Clark National Histo Trail for integrated resources stewardship, Dan Wy. He has been passionate about this for over 10 years and I think without his persistence and without his passion, the project that we’re at today would not have been achieved. So Dan, let me say a sincere thank you to you. Really

appreciate your efforts and all your hard work and keeping this important project in the forefront and helping us keep our promise to all the many presenters. Thank you, Dan. I think the legacy is maybe most important and most significant for the fact that the tenement many voices really embraced and acknowledged the need to when you’re talking about history, when you’re talking about historical events and circumstances and people, you need many voices talking about it, you need many perspectives. And while that is kind of well understood and and kind of common sense in the park service, we talk a lot about, you know, facilitated dialogue, inclusive interpretation. 20ome years ago when this project was started and these recordings were started, that was not the norm. In fact, if you go back to

the bsentennial of our nation in 1976, uh it was referred to as a celebration. Gerard Baker came forward and led this effort to bring in tribal speakers and other experts and and individuals and citizens to talk not being censored and to start this process where we’re going to have open honest dialogue about historical events. And it was George Baker who insisted that the Louiswis and Clark bsentennial be called a commemoration, not a celebration. And recently I heard some conversations and some presentations about people preparing for the 250th uh anniversary events related to our country and the National Park Service and they’re saying and we’re going to call this a commemoration. We’re not going to call it a celebration. And so I

think in many ways a lot of the things that were started with the Louiswis and Clark Trail have expanded and actually are becoming commonplace processes now. And people have no idea that a lot of this goes back to Gerard Baker and the Louiswis and Clark trail and the Louiswis and Clark commemoration and the standards and expectations that were put in place then are now kind of the norms of today. I think the answer is definitely yes. The the legacy and the perceptions of Louiswis and Clark has changed. I think what has happened is we look at Louiswis and Clark in a much more holistic way. We recognize them as real

people and I think we’ve taken them down off maybe the pedestal they were on as these two great heroes that went out into the empty uncharted wilderness and recognized them as as part of a very complex process. Uh and not all of it positive. Uh both these men owned slaves. York was a slave, an enslaved man on this expedition. And I think that process or the process of understanding history in a fuller, richer manner matters a great deal. And

I think that is one of the things that’s changed. We we understand the members of the expedition. We understand the consequences of expedition which in some cases were not positive. Many members of tribal nation refer to it as the beginning of the end for native people in the west. Uh many tribes continue to thrive today but they suffered greatly with westward expansion. And so I think

we need to be able to look at all those conversations and look at history and look at the full spectrum of of really what the expedition was, what it wasn’t, instead of looking at it as some kind of a a glorious event led by two charming heroes. It it’s much more complicated than that. And I think that is one of the huge legacies of the tetamy voices to be able to look at the full richness and complexity and some of the uncomfortable truths associated with history in the history of the expedition. I think coming out of the bicesentennial and the tenement many voices has had a significant impact on how we Louiswis and Clark National Historic Trail operates today. I think again going back we had kind of a simplest somewhat romantic view of the Louiswis and Clark expedition before that time and now we look at it through eyes wide open or hopefully wide open.

Uh there has been also a great deal of research that was done in preparation for the bicesentennial as well as after the bicesentennial and I think that has affected how we are able to look at things. uh the the book regarding the the letters from uh William Clark to his brother complaining in some cases about uh York is very insightful and it changes our understanding of that. And so as a result of this we are engaged right now in a project called the York project or possibly we may call it big medicine for the name he was given by tribal people. Uh we are also involved in a project called uh the Chicago project. Same thing we’re trying to take a hard look at Chicago. And recently uh a book was

published that shows a very different history and legacy of Chicago and who she might have been or who she was. Uh it’s called uh Eagle Woman. I think the subtitle is they got it wrong. and it argues different historical perspective that maybe hasn’t been uh thought about or people have paid much attention to. And so I think one of the things that has come out of this is more research and the fact that we at Louiswis and Clark National Historic Trail are embracing this. I also think one of the

things that you know early on in my career at the trail uh I was looking at ten of many voices recordings and one of the things that really struck me very quickly was the Louiswis and Clark expedition and the Louiswis and Clark trail was in fact people traveling on routes, trails, highways if you will and riverways that native people have been using for millennia. Lewis and Clark did not go out and cut a path through the wilderness that was brand new. What they did and what their route was was a compilation of native trails and native routes. And that really changes the way I understood the trail. And it is again recognizes that Louis and Clark role in this and participation in this is more complicated and what the Louiswis and Clark trail actually represents is different than a lot of us were taught when we were in fourth grade.

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Omaha

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:42:27 +0000

The Omaha people occupied territory along the Missouri River in present-day eastern Nebraska. Although the expedition passed through Omaha territory in August 1804, they did not manage to arrange a council — the Omaha were away hunting buffalo on the plains.

Clark visited the grave of the recently deceased Omaha chief Blackbird, who had ruled his people through intimidation and was said to have used arsenic obtained from traders to poison rivals. Blackbird had been buried sitting upright on his horse atop a bluff overlooking the Missouri — Clark paid his respects at this dramatic grave site.

The expedition noted the Omaha’s recent population losses from smallpox and expressed interest in future trade relations. The Omaha would later maintain a complicated relationship with American settlers and the U.S. government throughout the 19th century.

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