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Barbara Anderson Interviewee

Deborah Locke

Interviewer

Granite Falls, Minnesota

May 4, 2011 AL = Aimee LaBree Minnesota Historical Society DL = Deborah Locke Minnesota Historical Society BA = Barbara Anderson AL: This is Aimee LaBree on May 4, 2011 in Granite Falls, Minnesota. Interviewee: Barbara Anderson. Interviewer: Deborah Locke. DL: Could you spell your name for me, please? BA: B-A-R-B-A-R-A A-N-D-E-R-S-O-N. DL: Do you have a nickname? BA: Yes, Barb. People only call me Barbara if they don’t know me, or if they’re mad. DL: When and where were you born? BA: I was born in 1942 in St. James, Minnesota, and my mother told me I was the first Native born at that hospital. DL: Who were your parents? BA: Leonard and Rosalie Marlow; her maiden name was Starlight. DL: What about your grandparents on both sides?

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BA: My grandmother was married twice: Gabriel Starlight was her first husband, and he died from some illness; I think they called it consumption in those days. Another marriage was arranged for her – I think both marriages were arranged. Her second husband was Dan Ortley. They did the arranged marriage through an offer of land to Maude’s family. Her name was Maude Phelps Ortley. That’s on my mother’s side. On my dad’s side was Joseph and Angeline Marlow. Her maiden name was Quinn, and they were from the Veblen, South Dakota area. My grandma on my mother’s side was originally from Peever, South Dakota. DL: Your most immediate relatives, parents, were they all from South Dakota? BA: Yes. DL: And what about your siblings? BA: I’ve got – I have to always stop and count. I’ve got five. DL: Do they live in this area? BA: One does. I’ve got a half-sister, who was my dad’s daughter from his other marriage. Her mother died in childbirth when she had my half-sister, Marian. She’s always lived in South Dakota – oh, maybe took a few years off to live in Alaska, but then came back to South Dakota. I have an older sister, Jeanette, who lives in town here, in Granite Falls. Then I have another sister who lives in Forest Lake, Minnesota. And I have another sister who lives in Rush City, Minnesota. My brother, Leonard, passed away when he was 35. DL: How long have you lived here? BA: In this area? DL: Right. BA: I first moved here to Granite Falls in 1970, lived here in ’70 and ’71. I moved back to St. Paul and then I came back in 1974 and I’ve been here ever since. DL: Are you an enrolled member of a Dakota reservation or community? BA: Yes. DL: Did you grow up here? BA: No, I grew up in St. Paul. I’m enrolled as a Sisseton Wahpeton Sioux tribe member, but I’m also a member of the Upper Sioux Community. I’ve never lived in South Dakota. That’s where my parents were enrolled, and as you know, Upper Sioux is made up of people from different areas.

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DL: Where did you go to school? BA: I went to school in St. Paul at Roosevelt Grade School and Junior High, and then I went to Humboldt High. They were on the West Side of St. Paul. DL: Did you graduate? BA: Yes. DL: Did you go on to college? BA: I went some, but it was in night classes, held at Mechanic Arts High School. I was going there for – they called it bookkeeping back then -- and I went about a year. DL: What were your favorite subjects throughout school? BA: Well, I didn’t have that many. I liked astronomy, and I liked the home-ec classes, and I liked art, and I liked choir. That was about it. DL: It sounds like you can sew, cook, draw, and sing. BA: Yes. I don’t draw anymore, because that I gave up, or just never – I quit, I think, after grade school. DL: What is your earliest memory from your childhood? BA: I have some vague pictures that are hard for me to describe, but I wouldn’t know how old I was. I know when I was five I went to kindergarten; I remember that very vividly. DL: What did you do after school as a little girl? BA: We were raised in a very strict environment, so it was just come home, go to school, come home, and you stayed in your yard. And so we just stayed home and played with my sisters, and we couldn’t go out of the yard. DL: Do you remember what games you played in the yard? BA: Yes. We were part tomboy and climbed trees and we’d play cars and trucks. We’d make roads in the driveway and all around the house. And we had a cat, and we played house and my parents made sure we had the toys to play with as girls do, so we could grow up and be good wives. I think I probably should mention that my mother and father both were sent away to government schools when they were young. My mother went when she was five, and

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was there for five straight years and couldn’t come home. She thinks it was five; that’s what she recalls. My dad went to another government school. My mother went to Pierre, South Dakota Indian School, and my Dad went to Stephan Indian School. When learning my history, I found out that all the Indian schools were kind of different. Some were just awful; very, very strict and mean. Some were very, very religious. So if you went to government school -- and she went to government school and I went to government school -- what we would each say [about the schools] would conflict. I think that was done for a reason. I’d say, well, I went to school and it was just terrible. Someone else would say no, my boarding school treated me nice. My dad’s school was strict and it was Catholic. I don’t know if that’s why his whole family on his side was Catholic or not. My mother’s boarding school was strict. Her brother went there too, and they couldn’t have any communication with each other. I do think a lot of Native people who had to go through boarding schools don’t have good relationship skills because of it. I’m just the next generation out of that time, and so I’m a product of all of what they’ve learned. That is very overwhelming for me sometimes; very frightening. I think [to myself] no wonder I’m a mess. But I also know I’m a big survivor. Dad’s mother died when he was nine, so he was raised by his dad, way out in the sticks with his brothers. He came from a family of four brothers, so they did everything. They cooked, they cleaned, they did all of that. My mother, she was raised out there with her mother. She was a little girl when my grandmother married Dan Ortley, so her memories are vague; most of her memories are from here in Granite Falls. When she came out of government school she had TB, and she ended up going to the local sanitarium for another four to five years. But that was a very pleasant experience for her, because she was the only child in the hospital. I think there was a lot of oppression endured during their time in government school, and that’s how they learned how to treat people. That was passed onto us, and that’s why we were raised very strict so we wouldn’t get in trouble. I was always under the impression that if we did anything wrong we would have to leave where we were. When my parents had to sell their house in the early ‘50s, I was just devastated. I couldn’t understand why we had to move. Then Dad told us it was because they were going to put in a freeway. I didn’t know what in the world a freeway was. I remember when they were building 494. We’d come down 212, which went by the Fort Snelling Cemetery and we’d see them building that freeway. I remember dad telling me that would never work. “Why do they need that – this road’s good enough.” And it’s just amazing. I think about how it was then and how it is now, and the things he said. It must have been like that too for people, when they got a telephone [for the first time], or something like that. We worried about where we were going to live. It was interesting because the freeway wasn’t built for another fifteen years – ten years—yet we had to move. So we lived in apartments, small apartments, depressing places. We had a nice big house before, and a yard, and my dad was a carpenter and he earned 50 cents an hour when he first got

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to the city. When I was growing up, I would see his check and I’d think: Wow, he’s making a lot of money! His check was only about 60-some dollars, but then that was a lot of money. DL: We talked a little bit about the way the boarding school experience fractured Indian families. How could it not, when members would be leaving the household and raised elsewhere, and then come back. So clearly, interpersonal skills weren’t allowed to develop – how could you develop as a family when they’re not there? And that could be carried on for a generation, that inability to relate. BA: What I’ve learned from other Natives-- spiritual leaders--is that when something happens to you, or if we do something, it affects who we do it to for seven generations. So we have to be very careful how we treat people, because we affect them for seven generations. And that just kind of blew my mind. So I think of the things that I’ve had to go through in my lifetime and I just think: I want to be that person that changes. I want to change that so it’s different from before. I wanted to learn more about relationships and things like that, because my parents didn’t talk. It was quiet at home; we always had to be quiet. I taught my kids the same. We couldn’t be mad and we always had to be happy. So with my kids too, if they were crabby or something, I’d say, “You gotta stay in your room until you come out happy.” Well, duh, who can do that? It just now doesn’t make sense to me and I think how awful, how awful, how could I have been like that? But it’s what I learned. I didn’t play with my kids; I took care of my kids. I babysat them, basically. It wasn’t until I had my sixth child that I learned that it was okay to play, it was okay to hug my baby, it was okay to do a lot [more with my children] as I had learned different things by that time. I like to say I’ve only been Indian since I was 40, because I was trying real hard before that not to be [Indian]. I’m so thankful to experience that when I did, and I think: gosh, what would have happened if I’d never met the people that helped change the way I think. I was able to pass [what I learned] to my parents and it changed them too. And it changed some thoughts my mother had in her later years. She died when she was 70-some years old, and she got to see things differently. [When I grew up] we couldn’t go a lot of places because those were just for white people, Indians couldn’t go here or there. But I also know it was just from how she [her mother] was raised, and that’s how people were treated. How can you feel good about yourself when you’re restricted? You’re told not to feel anything. I’d just say, “Guys, be quiet.” And I still do that; I still hear my mother telling me to be quiet. But I use it – or I hear these voices when I think it’s important for me not to say anything. I’ve been to a lot of therapists. I believe in therapists, I believe they’re good, and I encourage other people to see them. But I’ve had therapists tell me, “You need to get mad, Barbara, you need to get mad.” And I think, why? I don’t understand it, because how do I do that? How do I do that after years and years of being told, “Be quiet?” And “Be happy.” I want something so different for my own children, my grandkids. There are some times I think: well, I don’t know, maybe them days weren’t so bad; maybe I wish my kids were quiet, I wish they wouldn’t be so smart-mouthed. My kids from my first husband, they don’t talk

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back to me – they don’t. They just are well-behaved kids. They have learned to express things to other people, but to me – no, because that’s what I taught them. But my youngest daughter; she’s got no problem telling me her opinion. Which is okay, because I’m glad we’re able to converse and resolve issues and things like that. DL: What is the first news event you remember from your childhood? BA: I guess the first thing that comes to my mind is the atomic bomb. When they were testing this bomb out on the Nevada Salt Flats, and I saw that on TV, it just scared me. I thought, oh my gosh! And I think that too was a part of when we were afraid of enemies over in Europe so I always thought: oh gosh, they’ll come and they’ll have that bomb. When I think about it, it still frightens me. DL: Which relative had the most influence on you? BA: Well, I would have to say it was my grandmother and my one uncle – my mom’s brother. My grandma spoke Indian. She’d say a couple words to us in English, but she mainly spoke Indian. I just loved listening to her. She was a peaceful woman and I liked being by her. I remember sitting by her while she’d sew; she was always sewing. And I think I liked that serene quality about her. I learned that more peaceable quietness, other than just being quiet. There are different kinds of quiet. But anyway, I learned a lot from her and over the years have admired her, but I also admire all my grandmothers because we’re a product of all of them. I have this book, it’s about getting old, and this young girl is looking in a mirror and she sees herself and she’s old, but then in the back of herself is all her grandmothers in a row; mirror after mirror after mirror. And when I read that I thought, oh my gosh! I want to be an example of what they had to endure. I want to be better. I want to live life more than they could. And to me, that’s important. My goal is to live until I’m 76. I want to live to be 76 because then I’ll be the longest living one on both sides of my family, because everybody died before that. DL: Who taught you the most about being Dakota? BA: My Ojibwa friends. DL: How did they do that? BA: Well, I got involved in this line of work; I work for a battered women’s shelter, and I got to do different things. I’m so grateful that I was given the opportunities I was given, to be able to attend certain trainings and things like that, and then the encouragement to be a part of a battered women’s circle of Native women who were trying to change things within their tribes -- not to have men abuse them, or their kids. And so I got to go to various meetings, and they were mainly up north because there wasn’t anything going much on around here.

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I got to meet a couple of women and attended a racism conference. I met Angela Davis. I don’t know if you know who she is; she was an activist back in the early years; a Black woman from Southern California. And if it wasn’t for her, I probably wouldn’t be Indian today. Because when I went to this racism conference-- it was held at Sabathani Center in Minneapolis – [Angela Davis] asked all the people of color at the conference to go upstairs to the library, and all the others, or white people, were asked to stay down in the auditorium which was more comfortable. And that’s how she asked us. And so we went. I struggled with it and I thought: Oh, my gosh, I can’t stay here because I know I’m not white – and I sure ain’t going up there because I’m not one of them. I’ll just go to the bathroom and wait until it’s over. And so that’s what I did. I was in there, hiding in the bathroom, in a stall, and one of the women that came with me – there was a group of us that went down there – came after me. She was Asian. She says, “There you are! I was wondering where you were. I thought you had to be up there, but I couldn’t find you, and I thought I’d better check the bathroom.” I said, “Yeah, I don’t feel that good.” And she said, “You have to come up; they’re waiting for you.” I said, “They’re not waiting just for me; they don’t even know I’m here.” And she said, “I told them that you weren’t here.” So I said, “Oh, all right”, and I went up there and we were crammed into this library and we were all standing around the room. A majority of them were Black and a few were Hispanic and there were some Asians there, and some Natives. She had us go around the room and tell everybody our names and what our ethnic background was. I thought: Oh, my God – I didn’t want anybody to find out…well; I don’t think they’ll get around to us because there were so many in the room. But they did. Everybody said who they were and what their ethnic background was, and when it came down to me, I just said my name and just kind of had my hand over my mouth and so nobody heard, because I really didn’t say what I was. They completed going around the room and she mentioned a little bit about herself. Then she said, “I have to go back to this gal over here,” and she pointed at me, “Because I did not get who you were; what your ethnic background was. Did anybody else hear her?” And oh my god, I was just so embarrassed, I just wanted to shrink. So I said my name and I had a hard time saying what I was. I started to cry and so I just said I was American Indian. And she said, “What? What are you – I still didn’t hear you.” And so I had to say it louder, and I had a difficult time saying it. I was so surprised that all these other Native people came up to me and they were all hugging me, and Angela came and hugged me and she said, “It’s okay to be who you are. You don’t have to be ashamed anymore.” And to my surprise, all these other Native people that were there, guys and women, had said they had all felt like I did at one time and that it’s okay for me to say who I am, because otherwise I won’t know who I am, if I pretend I’m somebody else. So to me, that was my start of being Native American, and it was the first time I think I even hugged another Native American because I didn’t want to do that either, because I just didn’t want anybody to know who I was. I was French, or I was a dark German, or I

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was something else, but not Native American. I was so worried if they found out what we were: then our family would have to leave because there weren’t any Indians living where we lived. I liked where we lived, because it was very cultural. It had some poor immigrants living there, so you could walk down the street and you could hear different languages. There were a lot of Lebanese and Jewish people, and then down this old bridge that went by the dump was Little Mexico. We had friends down there, but my mother said never to go down there because it was dangerous and they all had knives. But that wasn’t so. It’s just the things that you learn; different cultures, different things that we learn about each other that weren’t true. And so it just amazed me. I didn’t blame my folks because they learned it too, just like I did.

DL: Tell us more about your Ojibwa friends who taught you what it was to be American Indian. BA: Well, when I first went up north it was by Cass Lake. I was going to go to this retreat; it was supposed to be a Native spiritual retreat. I was at retreats before, always at some nice center, and so I’m looking for this building and thinking: It’s gotta be down this place somewhere. I’m looking for a parking lot, and I’m not finding where I gotta go, and so I call. And she said, “Well, you’ve been on the right road, but you’re way, way past where we are. You have to turn around.” And so I came back and she said, “When you go about eight miles, then you call again, and I’ll direct you.” So then I did that and I couldn’t see nothing; all there was, were these rundown places and I thought: it can’t be there, because those are just Indian houses, it can’t be there. I must be on the wrong road. And so I called again and no, I was just a little ways away and I just had to go up this road and turn up this other road and turn up this driveway, and there was this rundown little trailer with wood piled up outside and dogs running around. And I thought: this can’t be it. So I got out and she came out. She was a heavy set Native woman and her name was Frances, and she invited me in. I went in there and there were some other gals there and there were also white gals who wanted to learn more about being Native. It was just a nice experience. I was there for three days – two nights and three days-- and she just made room for us. We got blankets and stuff and we just laid down where we could, and it was a nice experience. It kind of reminded me of being at my grandma’s when I was younger, and just laying on a feather bed on the floor up in the attic and being cold. But it was real nice because I learned a lot. I learned a lot about me, because here I was, thinking white, expecting order and expecting this or that, and not realizing who I was and that I was going there for a reason. Why shouldn’t it be in a Native setting; why shouldn’t it be with a Native person? She just went by her name and I thought, oh my gosh. When people meet me, they don’t think I’m Native when they hear Anderson – until they see me. It was eye-opening, just to hear some stories from her and to attend a sweat. It was an amazing, amazing time for me; I just felt so good after I left there.

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I remained in contact with her. I even took my youngest daughter up there with me one time to stay there. We stayed there a weekend, stayed with her and her husband, and just talked and listened. They were smoking fish at that time and I got to watch that. It was just really nice. Another time I went to another gathering – I went to four or five of them. One of them was put on by the Minnesota American Indian Women’s Resource Center. That was in a more developed setting, like a camp of some sort. But I learned a lot there, just because of the people who came there and presented. They were all native and everybody who attended was native. I just thought: gosh, all these people were so like me because they had similar backgrounds, where they came from. Some of them didn’t have family members who went to government school and I couldn’t understand that because I always thought everybody went to government school – and some didn’t. And so I wondered why they didn’t. I never found out, but I suppose it all depended on where they lived. Where they lived, where the reservations were, depended on whether white people wanted to live there or not. Because if they were going to live there or be around there, they wanted to make sure that the Indians behaved, I suppose, and so that’s why they sent everybody off to government school. My mother’s sister, she was sent clear down to Ohio. And it must have been awful for her there because she just drank her whole life. DL: Did you ever hear of the 1862 U.S.-Dakota War during your growing up hears? BA: No. DL: Do you have family members that lived through that time that you’re aware of? BA: Yes, Chief Red Iron. And I didn’t learn about him until my forties when we were working on a family tree on my dad’s side. He lived in this area and up in Lac qui Parle. They moved back and forth. My great-grandpa married his daughter, Emma Red Iron. What I heard is that most of the other natives around this area felt that he wasn’t very effective as a chief. And I thought well, he was still a chief, so he must have been effective somehow. But he didn’t want to fight; he wanted to get things resolved. He wanted to prevent any kind of conflict. I think that’s where [my parents] got that understanding from. When I hear those accounts I thought, well, that can explain a lot about why my dad was the way he was; how I am the way I am. It probably isn’t all from government school; maybe it’s just part of what’s learned, what’s passed down. I also have a lot of respect for them, for my ancestors who lived during that time, because it had to be awful times. It just had to be awful times. DL: Did the war have a direct impact on your family? BA: I had a hard time with that one, because I think in a way war affects everybody. I think it impacts everybody’s life. Nobody wins in a war; there are no winners. I just think why in the world did all of this have to happen? I get frustrated with it. And war—all wars-- have been awful on our family. Even the recent killing of Bin Laden has me a

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little irritated because they called it “Operation Geronimo,” just like they were going after a Native. Geronimo has a history, according to them, of being savage and awful. I was excited about what happened. I was excited mainly because I was at the World Trade Center the year before it was hit and met nice people who worked there. I remember the guy in the elevator, and I remember the gal who sold me the tickets and talking to her and going up the elevator with this guy. And then meeting a police officer and his dog down in the basement; we went down there to eat. And just the countless people that worked there. And then way up on top and the gal who sold me my Coke and my sandwich. I just remember all these people and I just thought: It was so senseless, it was just so senseless. And all of them dying and falling. And so I was so relieved that they got [Osama bin Laden] and I thought he really died an easy death compared to what all those people had to go through. But then when I heard them call him Geronimo – now we’re back another century – it really disappointed me. DL: Okay, we’re back from our break and I’m asking Barbara Anderson whether she has ever been to Mankato to the execution site. BA: Yes, I was there. I had to go to Mankato on business, and I thought while I was there I was going to go over and see it. And so I did go there and I guess I was more surprised [than anything]. I was expecting some big place, and it really wasn’t that big. And it was really hard for me to even fathom something like that happening. And I was again, just saddened as to why it had to happen, especially when ordered by a president who was supposed to be so great. And why it happened – I just don’t understand it. DL: You have a copy of the questions, and if you look at number fourteen, there are a number of places listed. Have you been to any of these places, and do you recall what your thoughts were about them? BA: Well, I’ve been to The Lower Sioux Agency, and of course here. I’ve been to Lac qui Parle. Lac qui Parle holds a lot more meaning for me, just because that’s where my ancestors were – they lived around that area at one time. I’ve been to the Sibley House. There my feelings are really mixed. I went there when I was in grade school and I was ashamed to be Indian and I really felt bad about some of the stuff that happened around that area that they said we [Indians] did. They never said anything about what they did. But I remember going there, and then in my later years as I learned more, I just regret going there. And then Fort Snelling; I could never see, why do they want to go visit this fort, when it was just like a concentration camp, really. But also, I learned a lot from stories I’ve heard from other Natives and about other places that are so similar. About why – the main goal was to rob us of our spirit – and nobody could do that. Here at Fort Snelling they had things so bad, and yet the Natives were joking and laughing, and from what I understand, the settlers around there didn’t understand. They wanted to break that spirit and not have us be like that. I’ve learned more about Fort Snelling that has helped

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me understand, too, where our humor comes from, our Native humor. We’re just always joking about something, and I think that’s wonderful. Even when times are bad, you’re having a good time. DL: What’s your opinion of the war? BA: My first response is: does it matter? I’m confused by it because I don’t really understand why; other than what I’ve read and most of what I’ve read is mainly from the white side. I just wish there was more history that was written about how we were, and how did we come to where we were other than what our family was able to find out just through other accounts as to what Chief Iron did. I just don’t really understand, and I think it was just to do away with us, or to have more control. DL: What do you think about the treaties? BA: Well, I think the treaties should be honored, but most of the time I think our government just thinks they’re a piece of paper. And that’s all anything really is, is just a piece of paper, unless they really mean what they say and are going to do what they say. It’s like a contract; either you honor the contract, or you don’t honor it. They have honored it, but then there isn’t the follow-through and now they’re trying to say the treaties are too old. I do think they need to keep their word, and I guess I’m kind of mixed about it. I guess I just get overloaded with all the oppression that has happened. DL: Is it a good idea to commemorate the events of the mid 1800’s? BA: I think for the Natives it would be, because I think the more history that’s shared about what happened, the better. I know I didn’t hear about my own Native history, other than a belief that we were savages, when I was growing up, I know it’s more than that. I think the more we can learn and try and understand how it was, the better we will be as a people. DL: What’s the best way to commemorate those events? BA: Again, through information-sharing, just knowing more. I think when they opened up the Native American Museum in Washington D.C., it was a good thing. I think there should be more information about it. I happened to think about this the other day when I was at this attorney’s office and he had all these books and stuff, and I just thought: wow, there’s a lot of stuff in here, a lot of books on law and things like that. I told him, “You’re going to have to add on if you’re going to get any more books.” And he said, “No, everything’s on computer, so if I want to know anything I just go on the computer.” And I wondered: no, not everything is on the computer, not everything’s there, I thought to myself. The good thing about our technologies is that we have all this information available to us, but again, it’s you – you have to want to be able to go on these different sites, and who’s going to go there if they have no interest in it? The people we want to understand us more; they’re not going to go to those sites. So who’s going to care? Then you’ve got your people that are sensitive and who do want to learn more, and I

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think if we could reach those people that are more sensitive to the different cultures around, perhaps – there again, if a few people do it, it still affects a few more other people. And if we can get the information there and it would be available to those people, then at least we’re accomplishing something. DL: How would you describe Dakota life today? BA: I think that’s a confusing question. DL: It’s a new one we just threw in. BA: I think: by whose definition? Or even when I think of how we got our tribal names; can we even believe that? From what I heard, the Ojibwa named us Sioux. And I just think, gosh, nobody really knows. Why can’t we all just be Indians without having to – yeah, we have our different clans, but is it so important that we have to have the Senecas over here and this one over there? They were all here, so why not, you know..? I just don’t understand. DL: What contributions have the Dakota people made to Minnesota and to the country? BA: I chuckled at that one because I just thought: look around you! You’re here, you know? What else can we contribute? We’ve contributed our heritage, our history. They have all that, and so all we have is bits and pieces. I know the white culture really well. I know about Christopher Columbus, I know all about those explorers. I know about Lewis and Clark and all that. I know about all kinds of non-Indian history, but I don’t know a whole lot about my own, and I think that’s what happened. DL: If you had a magic wand, what would you wish for Dakota people today? BA: I would wish for respect for all of them and more peace and tranquility, and just more understanding from other people. I had an interesting experience just a couple months ago. I and my sister went in town to a coffee shop where we like to go. There were some other people in there; we could hear them talking. There was a wall there, and on the other side was a table, and that’s where the people were sitting. Apparently they didn’t hear us come in, or sit down, and I and my sister hadn’t really talked about anything yet. I went up and got our order and came and sat down and she told me to be quiet. And so we sat there listening. These people were talking about Upper Sioux and how “they” were. [They talked about] a house in town that had fallen into disrepair; nobody lived there, and some windows got broken out by vandals or something. The house was owned by a Native couple – I shouldn’t say Native, because the woman was Native and he was white. During the divorce it got really tangled up because it was financed through the tribe, and the man wanted to have his portion– I’m not really sure. But nobody lived in it, and so they were trying to get that mess straightened out between the couple. The woman couldn’t live there anyway because

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the furnace was busted and they’d have to put a whole new furnace in it, and she didn’t have the money to do that. What we heard at the table was “You can see how ‘they’ take care of… Just look at that house, that’s how ‘they’ are. Have you been out there to Traverse Lane? You can just see how ‘they’ are.” And I thought: I’m in that ‘they;’ my sister’s in that ‘they’. They don’t even know who we are. And then one of the people in that group got up and went out to get a refill of coffee and she noticed us, and then just put her head down and went to get her coffee. Then she came back and then [whispering sounds] there are these quiet little whispers. There was some throat-clearing and then they went on to something else. So I and my sister started talking and I felt bad for my sister because her daughter owned that house. They didn’t know the background with that house, but they just clumped everybody together: “that’s how ‘they’ are.” And I just thought I could drive around town here and look at some of these other houses that have fallen into disrepair too, owned by white people, and say, “well, that’s how ‘they’ are. They don’t take care of what they have. They don’t appreciate nothing.” I thought: gosh, just when you kind of think things are getting better, it hasn’t gotten better. Well, what should I do about this? And it made me think of a poem I read once; I don’t know if you’ve heard it, it’s called, “Who Will Speak for Me?” About, “they came for the Jews, who will speak for me?” I have that at home with my papers, because I always liked it. And I thought: who was speaking for me at that table? Nobody, you know? I always thought I was put in this group – all of a sudden I became this ‘they,’ and I thought: we’re not even individuals to these people; we’re just a ‘they.’ Whatever stereotyped thinking they have of us, I just felt so bad for them. I knew two of them, and I thought: here they’re supposed to be upstanding citizens of this town, very prosperous. Our own people go to them for the services they provide. And they think like that. You just don’t know people. I felt really sad about it. I felt sad for them. That’s what I learned about in my own spirituality, is just to feel bad for them because the Great Spirit will take care of them. DL: Thank you for your time.

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