Reclaiming Spirit Lake Dakotas’ past bolsters their future Conference aims to preserve language and history
Reprinted from the Dakotah Journal April 11, 2006 FORT TOTTEN, N.D. – Oliver Gourd was taken away from his family at age 7, he was forced to attend a Catholic boarding school, in St. Michael, where his long hair was cut short and he was forbidden to speak his own language. “I saw a lot of terrible things,” said Gourd, 62, a member of the Spirit Lake Dakota Reservation. “If you spoke your own language the sisters would make you eat soap.” Gourd was one of about 75 people who attended a two-day conference Friday and Saturday, March 31 and April 1, to help preserve and teach Spirit Lake Dakota students their own culture. Gourd teaches young students the Dakota language and history because much of it was denied to him. The event was hosted by faculty, staff and administrators of the Cankdeska Cikana (Little Hoop) Community College, on the Spirit Lake Reservation. The conference brought together Indian experts to lead discussions with community members on creating a cultural learning center and issues of cultural competence. “The children are hungry for their culture,” Gourd said. “They come into the classroom excited and ask me, ‘Mr. Gourd what are we going to learn today?’” Gourd teaches the Dakota language to third, fourth and fifth graders at the Four Winds School on the reservation. He said the U.S. government tried to force the white culture onto his people and assimilate them into it. His parent’s would have gone to jail if they hadn’t dropped him off at the steps of the boarding school. “Family is a big part of our culture,” he said. “They wanted to take that away.” But this conference and other projects on the reservation are helping the Spirit Lake people reclaim their history. “I tell my students that one day they will teach their parents how to speak Dakota,” Gourd said. Cynthia Lindquist Mala, the college’s president, said the event was also a launch pad for designing a cultural center for the college, to archive and preserve its peoples’ history. “We are a tribal college,” Mala said. “We have a responsibility to preserve our language and culture. Everything we do should be anchored in culture.” Mala added she’s not just trying to fit culture into her existing curriculum. “We want our culture to permeate everything we do,” she said. “We want to incorporate indigenous thinking and knowledge into our teaching.” Many Dakota people living on the Spirit Lake Reservation don’t know how their families came to live there. However, they still live with the oppression from when their tribe was relocated here after the 1862 uprising. “Indian People suffer from unresolved historical grief,” said Rick Thomas, a former Santee tribal chairman, who facilitated the conference. Many of their elders suppressed their stories because they were too painful to remember, or because they were forced to assimilate into white society and made to forget their Native ways, Thomas said. This has caused generations of heartache, poverty, despair, alcoholism and drug abuse, but now tribal members are trying to put back the pieces, and reclaim their heritage and culture to make their people healthy and strong once more. “If we don’t know where we come from, we don’t know where we are going,” said Faith Bad Bear Bartlett, one of the event’s presenters. Bartlett works as an archivist at the Little Big Horn College, in Crow Agency, Mont. Preserving the Dakota language is a big part of saving the Dakota history. “You can’t see the world through the eyes of your people without your own language,” said Neil McKay, a Dakota language instructor at the University of Minnesota, who also presented at the conference. McKay only speaks Dakota at home to his two young sons. Glen Wasicuna says the Dakota language and history have to be taught hand-in-hand. “Our history is a strong component of our language, it’s tough to teach the language without teaching our history,” said Wasicuna, who is a Dakota language instructor for the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, in Minn. Mala says there is a lot of healing that must take place. Learning their true history can be a very somber experience, but strength and determination comes from knowing one’s own history, she said. Eric Sorensen, the Winona, Minn., city manager, says the Dakota aren’t the only people who will benefit from the Spirit Lake history reclamation. “This will give the people of our city a better understanding of the issues and how we can fit in with helping,” Sorensen said. “I’m here to listen and learn and offer any resources I can.” Winona city officials and its residents held reconciliation and healing gatherings the last two years in a row, and another Dakota Gathering and Reconciliation is planned for June 3 and 4, this year. Winona used to be a summer home to many Dakota people before 1862. Sorensen emphasized that the Dakota people need to decide how to best use his resources and he wants to avoid telling them what to do. With many of the tribe’s elders attending the conference, Mala started recording the history of her people by having the Diversity Foundation, of St. Cloud, Minn., record video interviews with elders. These recordings will be used to make interactive CD disks and DVD videos to help educate others and to preserve the tribe’s oral history. Diversity Foundation Director Lyle Rustad said the conference was very important and long over due. “We need to record their stories and histories before they are lost for ever,” said Rustad, whose Diversity Productions Company has been recording Dakota elders from various tribes for the past eight years. “Many of the elders are passing away and their stories die with them. We want to preserve them for native and non-native generations to come.” Rustad praised Cankdeska Cikana Community College for wanting to archive their history. We are optimistic the college will serve as a model for other reservations,” Rustad said. |
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