Tent of Many Voices: 08250602

many voices in core of Discovery to um we are a multi-agency exhibit sponsored by many different federal agencies you can see many of them on the banner here in front of you um we are managed by the National Park Service and we've been on the road since 2003 we kicked off in 2003 at monachello Virginia and we spent about three years total making our way out to the Pacific Ocean where we ended up in that area last year our last stop I think was Vancouver Washington last year and this is our final year we're making our way back to St Louis where our final venue will be uh the 25th of September in St Louis it's been a very interesting Journey for us obviously it's been a lot easier on us than it was on LS and Clark we've been staying in motel throughout our journey but if you look here in the tenini voices it's exactly that it's a place for people to come from different backgrounds to talk about the impacts of the Lewis and Clark expedition on them also and in addition to that we do have a kill booat display over to my left directly behind us a National Guard set up as well our exhibit tent is to my right and we also have Steve Morehouse and a Dugout canoe to my left and we have an American Indian table directly behind the tenam Min voices so I encourage everyone to experience all that we have to offer here at core Discovery too and without any further Ado I'm going to introduce you now to our next presenter it's good to see her back in the tent again I've not seen Lonna in a couple years but anyhow I'd like to introduce you today to Ladonna bra bull Allard and she is from Standing Rock so please help me make Ladonna welcome he hter wash day good morning everyone I want to tell you a little bit about myself before I start I'm from stany Rock Sue tribe for people who don't know that is the home of cting bull and um I found that everybody can connect us when we say Sitting Bull we are four bands and if you know the separation between the Lota doota Nation we are H and CAD H Papa and black feet ihun and CAD are y originally come from the Jamestown Valley over by Jamestown North Dakota Allendale North Dakota and then the hook Papa and black feet who I'll go into a little background as we we get into the presentation are Lota the reason why I tell you to four bands people forget that there's a distinction between lot Dakota and nakot and T to lump us into one group as Su and we all know we're all different so now to me my name is Lonna Brave Allard in my country you have to give your lineal just scent before you start talking to people you have to know who you are I am the daughter of Frank Brave who's the son of Claude brael who's the son of John brael who's the son of Tatanka otia who's the son of of Ula everybody should know their lineal descents I am also uh a Descent of the German Russians that came to this country my grandma was Eva coun whose father was Frank coun who came over from Odessa my grandmother was born in Odessa and that's as far as I can go because I guess my grand my great-grandfather was an orphan that came on the boat so that's a little bit about who I am I come from stany Rock we have 2.3 million Acres where the fourth largest landbased tribe in the United States we are a unique and that my tribe has always been considered isolationist we've kept to oursel for many generations not that's what my presentation's about the concept that we're all related comes from my nation the Dakota Nation we say that every day in our prayers our way of life we're related to everything around us so we're related to you we're related to the trees we're related to the animals we have a relationship with everything around us but in time and Memorial we have all intermarried with the tribes so you may have Mandan over here Hera Rick R them crows there's always been intermarriage between the tribes first and foremost one of our tribal laws is you can't marry anybody you're related to that's your 302nd cousin related to your in-laws over there so it gets really hard because if you can't marry anybody in your bands or Clans you have to go to other nations to marry our relationships are interconnected between marriage adoption and trade agreements adoption that's one of our sacred rights as theota people lot people we call it hunka that means that this gentleman and me have been conversing we made friends I really like him and so I ask him will you be my brother we have a hunka ceremony he be comes my brother when you're hunka that means more than blood that means you become a relative through God and nobody can break that Alliance so we as Indian people tend to adopt a lot of people still today I have two brothers who are Japanese I have one brother who's Jewish he lives in Hawaii I kind of figure I adopt one from Hawaii they'll take me over there but we still do the adoption C ceremonies the other thing is in our country you know when the contact came and United States came I think they kind of messed up things for people at least for my people because the men always had more than one wife you had as many wives as you can take care of so some of our men had six to seven wives which for me you know one of the keys is they always married sisters or cousins of the sisters so all your sisters would be in one home my husband said that wouldn't work today cuz my sisters are too crazy they wouldn't want to be married to my sisters but anyway that that was the General concept of of the families the other thing we did as tribes uh we have our tribal beliefs about maturity and men and women so women they make arrangements for marriage 13 14 15 years old men the average age for them to get married is 30 we truly believe that that's about the time an average male can mature for a family isn't that terrible there tribal Traditions but the reason for that age was because a male had to do x amount of things before he could acquire a wife he had to show that he was a good Hunter he had to show that he was able to take care of a home he had to show that he could take care of multiple wives he had to have some standing so in order to do that he had to get out there and build up all this stuff before he could take a wife so you just didn't say oh that girl's cute over there you had to have all these things before you can go to her parents and ask for her but men wanted wives so what did they do they went to other nations and they stole women so and you guys all heard the story of sakuya they stole women so when you come to a tribe all of them are mixed because the women came from all different tribes that's just part of our culture this I'm going to say look cuz I say gets fast sometime everybody says what our Dakota way our our family structures are different so all my father's brothers are my dads and I call them Father alala they take all the activities requirements the same as my father so they can get after us they can give us guidance we spend time with them when I was growing up it was my uncle who took me to the movies because he was my dad my father is still there but all of my uncles are still there too and those are my dads on the other hand all my father's sisters are my aunties they take atie roles they get you gifts and help you in your life and stuff my mom's sisters are my moms and we treat them as our mothers my mother's brothers are my uncles so when you go through that kind of kinship you'll find that you'll be related it to everybody then all my cousins are my brothers and sisters so when you come to Indian country and they say oh well that's my dad I thought that was your dad well no that's my dad too all your grandparents brothers and sisters are your grandparents so now you can see how large this Tios this family structure is because everybody's related and then if you're not related you'll accidentally come into the camp and you're new you're from a different tribe somebody will come up and adopt you right away to make you a relation it's the center of our life first and foremost rule is respect your relatives second rule you're related to everybody and if you're not related you will be related it's the way we controlled our societies our camps our government everything it gave us structure now I want to talk to you about how far our people went this man was out in Ohio he is Dakota he fought in the War of 1812 he was the son of red Thunder they now reside on the Spirit Lake reservation one of the BR British agents took red Thunder wife I mean red Thunder sister as a wife and so now we claim relationship with a man named Dixon who fought in the War of 1812 so just by this we know that we have relatives in Ohio and wherever the Dixon family is whether they know they're related to us or not this is where we collected all of our arikara blood of course the Lota Dakota people don't like to claim a rra but we have AA blood you go back to this long history of of um Lewis and Clark what did Lewis and Clark do when they were going home they took two chiefs with them white coyote and eagle feathers eagle feathers was from my area on the Grand River what happened was when they were in Washington or St Louis I'm not quite sure where eagle feathers died he got very sick and he died over there on the way back they stopped in the camp to tell the the people that their Chief died Chief gray eyes and I always kind of think of it's kind of like a misinterpretation because when these people were talking to the Indian people they'd have a french guy who interpreted to AR rra guy who interpreted to Mandan you know and so you go through and I'm not quite sure how they understood that but they thought that oh these guys killed our chief they attacked a man named Inon PRI and white coyote who was on the boat at that time and they end up going all the way back to St Louis white coyote was finally brought home by a man named Manuel Lisa safely well in this whole process along with the the inter Wars that started happening between the uh Lota and the Rara Colonel leworth well Ashley party came up and the raras attacked them Colonel leworth said haha these people can't get away with this he met the Lota Nation down in Pier made an agreement with them that they would attack the riara from the land Le worth from the water it's a big long story so I'm making it really short um with that process the Lota came in they attacked on our winter counts you can see two cornstalks as as a reminder of the event for us because all the Lota filled their horses with corn because the Ricos had huge huge Gardens corn and they also took women it is that time that most of the the tribes had era blood case in point cing Bull's father took one of their R wives Sitting Bull's half brother was named crazy dog he was half AA people forget these little tidbits in history Sitting Bull also took an ARA wife uh no I I'll tell you a little bit about about them re they they for a long time have been enemies of our people so we go back and forth and tease about them that's why I think it's important to make sure people know that we intermarried with them and a lot of us have re blood not me per se but a lot of people on stany Rock because the re they um originated from this nation called Pon you ever heard of the pony a long time ago the pony used to do a ritual called The Morning Star ritual where they would sacrifice a female to the Morning Star they are the only nation that we know of that did human sacrifices in North America and my people we declared them not human and I know if Pon reads this so they'll be upset but we declared them non-human we didn't look at them as human beings cuz we couldn't see anybody who do that would be human second they had the tendency of coming up and stealing our young girls for the sacrifice so we have a long history of of War so the the two bands in the pon e Nation got into an argument one of the Bands refused to acknowledge the human sacrifice and they broke up off and they started coming north and they became the era as they started North they were down Missouri Kansas coming up as they came further up they were on the Missouri River by the time Lewis and Clark came the era were camped on the ground River after 1823 and you can ask the riok this is part of their history too we ran them off the land and we took the land from them along with the women and of course you know stany rocku tribe is named after a rock and The Rock we claim is an arikara woman who sat down with the baby on her back and turned to stone so we have a lot of history with this tribe and we have a lot of intermarriage this year man was Harry chin he has a a great history he dressed up like Uncle Sam when North Dakota had their welcome to statehood and it says because he did that is the reason why he died right after the parade he fell over dead so Superstition with our people they said reason why he did that is cu he dressed like Uncle Sam but with him he and his family all married into the Dakota tribe he was brought up to help the theota plant corn from the Rian Nation you uh I don't know how many have been up at new town where you were um got to see the gardens up there the three affiliated tribes since time in Memorial have been great gardeners they built great Gardens they had fields of gardens and so they brought these people down into staning rock to show the Lakota how to D how to plant Gardens how to plant corn so that's how this man came down became a chief family intermarried all there and you got to understand there's a difference between Lota and Dakota The Dakotas over in the Jamestown Valley planted Gardens they had huge Gardens the Lota were primarily Buffalo and did not plant Gardens so there's a big distinction you can tell even today the lotas primarily are not Fish Eaters and will not eat any type of fish but the dtas eat fish just small um things that we have in the tribes the pictures I'm showing you are historic pictures of staning rock this is the boarding school at for8 this is also a a picture of the the old store and that was the River Bottom there about three days ago I met the the daughter she's 80 some years old whose father owned that store so it's pretty neat but anyway these are just some some uh people from our reservation who have a Ric Rob blood that came from the Battle of 1823 the leworth battle we also have Mandan blood and so I have the list of people's names in here who have Mandan um one of the things that we always talk about is is the small pox epidemic you know and the Mand ANS suffered extreme extreme Devastation from the smallpox by the time Lewis and Clark came across my country on the Cannonball River the Mandan Villages were already decimated there by 1904 where I live not too far from my home is a remnants of an old Mandan Village and it was a huge village there must have been a thousand people in that Village it was gone by the time L and Clark came through they log it in their Diaries but you have to remember the French the French had already been living in The Villages 20 years by the time leis and Clark came up the river they said where' this Hatchet come from the French have already been trading in there in fact by the time Lewis and Clark came the Dakota Lota nakota people already had an alliance with the British and formed an alliance with them we had a small alliance with the Spanish and we had a huge alliance with the French the French men started coming down in the late 1600s into the dtas these Frenchmen all had Indian wives just to give you kind of a background about these people that by the time lwis and Clark came down there were already mixed BL children in the camps these are some more um of the people who are descendants see the bottom line my grandma that's me my grandmother my great great grandma married bloody knife's son as you know bloody knife was kuster's Scout at the Little Big Horn they say we killed him there he was half Sue and half a Rika and also a remnant of the battle of of um 1823 my grandmother married and so today we have land from elbow Woods which is under the water so it doesn't make any difference but this is our link although they had no children this is our link to the Rick Roth these are some of the scouts for kuster we had Dakota Scouts and we had re Scouts with kuster and the reason why I'm showing you this is just to show you the interplay between between the Nations today we can go through and Trace all of our lineage to each one of these nations I myself is iuna and CAD from the yank San from the esante are Dakota hun Papa black feet and oala from the Lota Nation because my grandmothers all come from all these different bands each person who who knows their lineage can tell you this and so even today I have relatives in the Crow Nation I have relatives in the Navajo Nation I have relatives that three affiliate and I have relatives who are chipas my husband's a chipa by the way that's the only relationship I claim with them but when we talk about we're all related in any country when you come through and you're new you walk up to person say who's your family and you bicker back and forth and you'll say oh well I know your cousin here so everybody talks about how they're related even today so when I go to California to the euro Nation I'll say this is who I am and they'll tell me who they are then they'll tell me who they know in my country and we'll see how we're related everything we do is controlled by relations I I I don't find that in a lot of a a lot of today's culture we're back in the schools right now and that's what I do I talk about relationships with the kids who are you related to so that they can carry on this tradition as family structures go you all know that as grandparents and I'm a grandmother and I'm very proud if somebody told me how great it was to be a grandma would have been that first before a mom all grandparents rais raised their firstborn grandchild I was raised by my grandmother and my husband was raised by his grandmother we are both firstborn we rais our granddaughter Mak chant Z our Sky heart yellow um and she's seven years old turned seven last week her parents are still there in a part of her life as my parents were a part of my life but our grandparents raise us the reason for that is through that first born we are taught lineage we are taught history we are culture and we are taught how everybody is related to each other and then we are responsible for telling all the cousins all the siblings and everybody else that comes after us those networks are still in place in the tribe it it is how we keep and do our best to keep our cultures alive and they say that raising your grandchildren keeps you young I don't know if that's true but I think I'm pretty young I have seven grandchildren Now relationships I think that if we spent more time paying attention to our relationships we'd be better people if we became related to everybody and we respected our relatives it would help the social world not only that if we continued to understand our relationship to these beautiful cottonwood trees to this ground we walk on to the animals we see we would have a better world it is just my own opinion to have a relationship with everything around us just like each of you we are now related we have met each other so when I see you someplace else I can say hi I remember you we are now related I think it's a a concept that comes from my people that I really really want to observe to go into the future um this is me I'm one of the uh advisers for the tri uh circle of tribal advisers for Lewis and Clark I am on the Lewis and Clark Governor's Advisory board for the state of North Dakota I'm director of Tourism for the stany rock suit tribe I'm the marketing manager for the alliance of tribal tourism Advocates and I own Tatanka otia historic tours and traditional food cooking on stany rock and I compile all the history for tribe and one of the things I love is history and so I can tell you that there were two brothers in 1450 who came across the prair and came to a place called Spirit Lake which is now called Devil's Lake and at that time they sat down and they fasted and they had a dream there and these two brothers in their dream told them that they would form two Nations one brother stayed one brother went West the one brother formed the mountain Crow people the other brother formed the hiat nation did you know that did you know that these two nations were formed in North Dakota did you know that time in Memorial a long long time ago the Mandan were the mother tribe of the Lota Dakota nakota nation and they broke off and today the Dakota nation is the mother tribe of the Lota nation and nation and the hunk Papa that Pride on my reservation that are from sitting Bulls people well they have a mixed Heritage they started off as ogas and about 1500s they fought the Omaha and they got into a big old fight over a war prize that they got from the Omaha and they got mad at each other so one group split and headed up north they became the Hun Papa Nation but they were so mad at their Brethren tribe here that when they got up here they held the first hunka ceremony adoption ceremony that we know where they adopted a whole nation was a Cheyenne Nation and the hunk Papa Nation had a hunka and they adopted and intermarried with each other so everybody who is hunk Papa has shyenne blood and then in the 1500s middle 15 beginning 1600s they declared war on the Pine Ridge or the aalas and the brues the burnt thighs it's logged in our winter CS as the first Civil War among our Nations and they went to war with their allies the Cheyenne and the ihun the yank people and they fought the ogas and brues and these people stayed mad at each other for a long time it was until after Lewis and Clark came and the influx of the Trading Post started coming and stuff that they actually talked to each other they actually finally baned together and made an intertribal trop truth in about 1850 cuz 1851 they sat down they signed the fort larmy Treaty of 1851 then from there they stayed together as a nation these are all tribal histories that we have that I don't think outside people get to hear our little inter Wars and our battles of course you know we've always always fought the crow always they always been our enemy still today we still have trouble and because we know where they come from we know who they are for centuries isn't that terrible the shon's entered into an agreement agement with us about 1860 before that they were further um West they were in the mountains uh Montana Utah uh Wyoming in that area and there's a a strict line at the Big Horn mountains where we claim our territory and then these are the other tribes' territories and so about in the 1860s we formed a an alliance we signed a treat treat I guess they would say with the Shon because the Shon fought with us at the Little Big Horn these alliances are still alive today the Cheyenne the Shashi and the Arapaho we have Tribal um alliances with them that are still honored today so I can go into Northern Cheyenne reservation say I'm from s Rock and people come and feed me and take care of me and stuff because that Alliance is still there we still are enemies with the cow so that doesn't happen when you go into Crow country just joking I have Crow relatives these days knowing your history is important to me knowing the history of North Dakota is important to me North Dakota I always kind of view both North Dakota and South Dakota as as a place where a lot of history began on Stanny Rock who knew Jim Bridger started his career at the age of 17 there who knew jebadiah Smith first signed on with the Ashley fur trading company and started his career these guys were all in the Battle of of 1823 some of them were with Ashley who knew that Hugh Grant I mean Hugh glass was uh attacked by a grizzly bear on stany rock and crawled 200 miles north to be saved I always say on my reservation we have a lot of history and of course today we know all the stories sakuya died there at Fort Manuel Lisa December 21st 1812 we had the lmh high shishoni come down and and acknowledge that she died there and took her spirit home we also know all the other stories and we agree with all the stories Indian Country we always say they say so that we know that we're not saying anybody else's stories are different than ours we just acknowledge them all because we have Sitting Bull and there are all kinds of stories about Sitting Bull that I have to go through every day cuz Sitting Bull died where he was born many castes was a Cheyenne camp where cting bull was born cting Bull's father also had a Cheyenne wife it's kind of funny when you go through all the wives and stuff and who they are and where they came from and how they came to be we have a man who was named Red Hill and Red Hill he rode clear over to the banks of Wisconsin on the Lake Michigan and he stole himself a wife we don't know where she came from what nation she was all we know she had red hair and green eyes and red hell you know was brother to Sitting Bull's father and his son was Chief no two horns and they talk about this redheaded woman who is the mother of all of these people and we still have that story but we don't know what nation she came from we just know that she was taken on the banks of Lake Michigan so you never know we may be related to all of you too if you have redhead women in your family relationships you never really know I always tell people you know for me I am a mixed blood my grandma was Russian German she was a redheaded woman too we always have these redheaded women coming and so I've learned to be very proud of my loota doota noota history I'm also proud of my German history I'm also proud of each nation that I come from so if you guys have any more questions or anything I I can talk and talk so I always have to watch myself I have a microphone so please if you raise your hand I'll bring the microphone around to you how do treaties affect our between the the Indian nation and and the and the US government what what were the major problems with that the treaties are the supreme law of the land they still stand today they will continue to stand until the United States crumbles if the United States tries to disin vow the treaties they have to disin vow every treaty they ever made with any Nation we are in the US Constitution and until you change the US Constitution you cannot I mean you you can change your treaties every president who's came in including the present one has said how do we get rid of these Indians and these treaties and found out they cannot they in wind us within their legal system so that they cannot cannot get rid of the trees we still hold fast to our treaties 1851 and 1868 we treat we teach them to our children we teach them to our tribes in our tribal office every employee must go through treaty training and we have a Treaty Organization we have a seat in the United Nations the Lakota Nation the Mohawk nation and Navajo Nations have seat seats in the United Nation treaties are very important to us even today and yes we've heard they're broken they're no longer no they're good they tell us our land base and they tell us see when our relatives sign those treaties I always think wow what intelligent people they said you could have this land but you pay this much not in millions billions or Etc you pay education for our children for time and Memorial you pay health care for our people you pay um for our resources they wrote those in the treaties can you imagine what those people were thinking about how they thought of us those years ago so that today we get payment for the land that people live on through these treaties oh by the way United States never gave us anything first person who says we don't pay taxes needs to come pay my taxes I have to pay taxes every year hoping drop a payment I mean a income level so I wouldn't have to pay taxes only tax we don't pay is land tax and because that's the United States government holds our land in trust and the United States will not tax thems other than that we pay every tax every other individual in the United States pays you have a question up here just a refresher for me uh you said that the ARA came from the Panka and it and pon pon excuse me and but they denied the human sacrifice that's the difference between the two so the era did not do sacrifice thank you yeah well I had a question about Young mothers because you mentioned that mothers young mothers were married early where did did they end up having older husbands yes okay in today's society we we notice a lot of very young Native American Mothers how how do those relationships follow out within the tribe I guess that's a good question we're we're dealing with today's society and our old tribal customs and I've I've been asked this question so I had to look at my own history thinking about where do we fit into the new society and their ages um we don't have teenage Hood in our our cultures you become a woman when you you ministrate you're a woman you become a man when you do your deeds and go through your ceremonies you're a man and so we don't have this middle middle age so I started looking at all my grandmother I have to say my my daughter married at 16 which I objected to but nobody listens to me I married at 15 my mother married at 15 my grandmother married at 16 my great grandma married at 14 my great great grandmother married at 13 and I thought well how does that relate to today because today we have different views of how things are done so I started studying about why is this and I thought oh my you know how it is to raise a teenage girl from now on I'm arranging marriages for my granddaughter right now and I'm getting her married right away just joking oh maybe I've had four four people I picked out already um it was it was the way the culture is today we have a lot of young women I always wonder if if some of those things still are ingrained in us because we live in a different Society now and and it's really hard to adapt to the new Society rules for us we have had contact for 125 years only and so for us adapting is still hard although we know how to use internet when you when you say country uh in your presentation what does this country mean to you you say uh the the country and so forth and then there United States ver the country what does that mean in relationship to each first and foremost I belong to my nation lota doota Kota Nation our land base extends from the Big Horn mountains to the Plat River to the har River to the Missouri River that is still our Aboriginal land there has never been officially land claims to take that claim away we still have treaty rights to all that area that is my nation my nation still meets once a year the Lota doota nakota Nation meets on every one of the reservations and North Dakota South Dakota Montana Nebraska and three Canadian provinces it travels to discuss my nation's uh problems and things that we are doing second in 1924 we became US citizens so second I'm a United States citizen third my country has always been my country that's just the bottom line my family has been here since time in Memorial some of the uh before this I used to work with historic preservation so some of the arch olcal sites we have found up to 9,000 years here on the Missouri River I guess I still had a question in terms of of relationships and it would maybe be related to multiple wives how then are children adopted into these families when when there are multiple fathers involved I mean multiple wives well I'm thinking more often of multiple fathers oh you know one one one young woman has children from three different fathers for example how how do they fit into the family structure in terms of knowing your family history you're talking in today's culture uhhuh grandparents it's the grandparents that we have time for about one more question if someone has another question well if anybody I welcome you to come down and visit my country I'll give you a tour I really enjoy talking about my people thank you once again how about a round of applause for Lonna thank you so much for coming out today e for