Stateline Master Document

BOOTH

LONG BEFORE WHITE EUROPEANS CAME TO OKLAHOMA, BEFORE THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE, BEFORE CORONADO, BEFORE COLUMBUS THERE WERE THE PEOPLE.

THEY DID NOT THINK OF THEMSELVES AS THE ABORIGINAL PEOPLE, OR THE NATIVE PEOPLE, OR EVEN THE RED PEOPLE.  THEY WERE THE ONLY PEOPLE.

SOME OF THEM BUILT A PRECOLUMBIAN TRADING CENTER TO RIVAL THE AZTEC AND INCA CIVILIZATIONS OF CENTRAL AMERICA.

OTHERS WERE NOMADIC, HUNTING BUFFALO AND MOVING ON.

THE 17TH CENTURY BROUGHT HORSES TO THE NORTH AMERICAN CONTINENT, AND THEY BROUGHT OTHER NOMADIC PEOPLE FROM FARTHER AWAY.

THE 18TH CENTURY BROUGHT EXPLORERS AND TRADERS WHO DIDN'T LOOK MUCH LIKE PEOPLE.  THEIR SKIN AND HAIR WERE LIGHTER AND THEY WERE DRESSED STRANGELY.

AND THEN IN THE 1830S LIFE CHANGED RADICALLY.  BOUNDARY LINES WERE DRAWN IN "INDIAN TERRITORY."  HUGE GROUPS OF OTHER PEOPLE BEGAN ARRIVING FROM THE EAST, SOME WITH  BLACK SLAVES.  OTHER PEOPLE CAME FROM THE NORTH.  AND WHITE SOLDIERS CAME TO KEEP THE PEACE.  THE PEOPLE'S WAY OF LIFE BEGAN TO DIE.

THE 20TH CENTURY BROUGHT STATEHOOD,  AND DECADES OF EFFORT TO  ASSIMILATE OR ELIMINATE THE PEOPLE FOR WHICH THE STATE WAS NAMED.

ONLY IN THE LAST FEW YEARS HAVE EFFORTS BEGUN TO RESCUE LANGUAGES AND TRADITIONS WHICH HAVE ALMOST ENTIRELY DISAPPEARED.

ON THIS EDITION OF STATELINE, THE STRUGGLE TO PRESERVE THE IDENTITY OF THE PEOPLE.

TRT

Cade Morgan

22:35.08     S-101

I don't go around school wearing a lot of Kiowa clothes. I may wear a t-shirt that says Kiowa or as a picture of a Kiowa on it...but mostly what I express sometimes.

Cade Morgan

22:36.08     S-101

It is the same life as you do. You are not just like....If you put on different clothes you are not somebody different.

Like most 10 year old Cade Morgan spends his day in class and with friends. But for Cade another world exists tucked away inside a Grandmother's house. It's a world that has almost disappeared over the last 200 years.

Cade is his family's hope for the future...a boy caught between two cultures.

Cade Morgan

22:35.51     S-101

I don't really know how to say it but I do live in both worlds.

Every day Cades Grandmother picks him up at the bus stop...the short trip from the gate to the house is a journey from the white world to a home where Indian traditions remain a way of life.

Cade is the great grandson of famed Kiowa Five artist Stephen Mopope. At home he is surrounded by the art and artifacts of his ancestors, including the beadwork of his grandmother...Vanessa Morgan.

Vanessa

Jennings

13:43:53    S-208

I don't think of myself as an artist...I don't, I think of myself as a traditional Kiowa woman. But in America it seems like everybody has to have a title, something to describe where they fit in American society.

Vanessa Jennings

13:54:27     S-208

You wake up every morning and you don't say "Well, I'm going to be Kiowa today." You're just Kiowa everyday. The bead work, it's such a part of our life.

Vanessa

14:12:16      S-208

I started beading when I was a little girl. I think um, probably about ten.

As a young girl Vanessa sorted beads the size of pinheads for her grandmother, who slid them onto a needle and down a length of thread a few at a time, sewing hundreds of thousands into ornate cradles.

Vanessa Jennings

13:59:12    S-208

Each of these pieces, I want them to be as special as my grandmothers bead work. Every time she finished something it was like WOW! Oh my goodness, you know it was just a miracle.

Vanessa Jennings

13:54:48    S-208

It's as if my grandmother is there, and I can hear her say "Is that your best? Is that the best you can do?"

Within three generations traditional beadwork has almost disappeared.

Vanessa Jennings

13:45:36    S-208

Beadwork...at one time it was something that all women, they could do everything. They could make saddles; they could make men's moccasins, women's moccasins.

Vanessa Jennings

14:00:18    S-208

I want you to remember that with each piece there's an important part of our culture, there's an important part of history that goes into each of these pieces. And I don't care how hard you try, there's going to be bits of my flesh and bits of my blood on the inside of each of the moccasins and each of the leggings and buck skin dresses, cradleboards that I finish for you. It truly is...there is a part of me that goes with each of these pieces.

Vanessa Jennings

14:00:55    S-208

Everyone has to make a decision on how they want to live their life. I choose to live a life, just a plain simple life.

The family is preparing Cade by immersing him in the songs, the stories, language and crafts of the Kiowa people.

Vanessa Jennings

15:14:33     S-208

This wall, because my grandmother died when I was 17 I felt it was important to have an image to identify with the stories and the songs, so that the children would know who I am talking about. It gives the person a face, it makes them real. That's important because these stories come from living, breathing human beings.

Vanessa Jennings

15:31:58     S-208

These three photographs, the top photograph is my grandmother Jeanette Berry. She was the wife of Steven Mopope and I'm on her back. / And I remember that old lady saying...Here, you're going to walk a long ways in this life let me carry you a while.

Vanessa takes every opportunity to teach the Kiowa traditions.

(Nats from Earth Lodge with the girls)

Vanessa Jennings

14:57:23     S-208

Don't throw away the language. It's important that not just my child but my grandchild speak Kiowa, know Kiowa, to dress Kiowa to participate in Kiowa things.

Vanessa Jennings

14:48:37     S-208

Why should we forget our Kiowa language? Why should we throw away everything?

Native Culture has been under assault for over 100 years.  The threat came in many forms: smallpox, missionaries, barbed wire and locomotives. And in the end, it came in the form of schools.

After the Indians were forcefully removed east of the Mississippi, President Ulysses S. Grant and others decided that to peacefully settle the tribes on reservations they would need to be civilized.  Warriors were taught to use a plow, and children were sent away to boarding schools. Upon Arrival, Indian boys and girls had their hair cut short, they were scrubbed and fit into neat little uniforms. They were taught to speak only English, to embrace the ideal of private property, and they were converted into Christianity.

Joyce Childers-Bear

15:17.24       S-106

We had tribal schools that were boarding schools when the Muskogee/Creek people came into Indian Territory. One of our first schools was the Coweta. It was called Coweta mission and it began in 1843. So then children were then educated in the later Asbury mission was moved from Alabama and it started down near north fork which is where we would know as Eufaula Oklahoma now. It started in 1849 then in 1855 the Tallahassee mission was begun.

Joyce Childers-Bear

15:18.03      S-106

We had other schools like we had other schools like Wealoka which was over near Leonard Oklahoma. There was also Neeyagah which was just west of Okmulgee.

Mogri Lookout

19:29.42     S-401

You know a lot of our people were sent to Carlyle. Then they even help build the schools like Shiloko. They help build Bacon. They helped build Haskill. They knew education was where it's at. Our people are pretty far advanced on what was going to have to take place. They taught them. They wanted them to go to boarding school. They wanted them to learn these ways, because that's how they were going to exist in this world. They knew that. In doing that they had to sacrifice some of their ways.

Vanessa Jennings

15:04:50        S-208

They were wanting everyone to become mainstream American citizens. And that was the beginning of shame, that was the beginning of teaching Indian was being dirty...Indian was no good.

Joyce Childers-Bear

15:22.45        S-106

My mother in particular when she went to school in Eufaula. She started in the second grade. I asked her what she had done in the first grade and said, she had went to school at Bixby. And I asked, then why did you go onto the boarding school the next year?  "Because I cried all that first year and didn't learn anything because I couldn't speak English...so I went to the boarding school and there I learned English." She said "We had to learn, we were punished if we spoke our language." She remembered having to hold her hands out and being spanked with a big wooden ruler on her hands for speaking the language. Or sometimes she got her mouth washed out with soap for speaking the language.

Joyce Childers-Bear

15:40.44    S-106

I had a friend, he didn't speak English when he was first sent off to boarding school and this teacher said, "What is your name?" And he just kind of looked at her. She kept saying what is your name? And he couldn't understand her, but he said she kept getting louder and louder and he couldn't understand why she was hollering at him. It really frightened him because he was just a little bitty guy.

Joyce Childers-Bear

15:24.53          S-106

By using the bible as the main text for our reading and learning the English language that did take us a lot away from our own traditional religion.

Joyce Childers-Bear

15:38.44         S-106

From the girls having real long hair. I have a good friend right now she is a professor at Rose State over in Midwest City. She said that when she first arrived at the boarding school she said immediately they cut her hair and took her clothes off of her and through her in a shower. She couldn't understand why she was being punished because they cut her hair and she really felt bad.

When Joyce arrived at Haskell in the 1960's boarding school was a changed place.

Joyce Childers-Bear

15:28.45        S-106

Of course I got home sick for the first two weeks. Then I started checking out the young men and I decided it was a good place, and I said I think I will stay. It was a lot different when I attended there then when my mother attended there. Mother had attended there in 1929.

Joyce Childers-Bear

15:42.20        S-106

One of my roommates was Seminole and the other roommate she was Grovan and she was from Montana. Next door there were several girls from Alaska.  Some of them were Eskimo and some of them were Hida.

Boarding schools gave students a good education, taught them a trade...but when they graduated they did not send them home.

Joyce Childers-Bear

15:34.04        S-106

This is what the Bureau of Indian Affairs referred to as the relocation program. At Haskell they would educate us then they would send to these all points where we would work. / It was a way to get jobs for a lot of our people. This is what started what we refer to now as that Urban Indian. A person came off of the reservation or the Indian community in Oklahoma, and sent to all parts of the United States to work.

Joyce Childers-Bear

15:34.00        S-106

Some went to Dallas some went to Washington D.C.; some of them went to work in some of the federal offices. There were some students who went to San Diego. Etc. Just all points of the United States we were sent to. But it was a way of annihilation of our tribe. It was a way to get us to assimilate into the dominate society.

At her job with the Muskogee-Creek tribe, Joyce witnesses the legacy that remains of assimilation.

Joyce Childers-Bear

15:34.13        S-106

We have now people calling from California and they want to find Grandmother on the roll so they can enroll in the tribe. Well they don't know anything, absolutely nothing about the tradition of the culture. They are always asking us for information. "Tell me about the culture you know tell me about the traditions. Tell me and send me some literature, what can I read on? Well you can read on things that is written, but it's not as the experience would be actually living in it.

Joyce Childers-Bear

15:35.00         S-106

They are in search of an identity. Because yeah, they are a member of the Muskogee Creek nation but they really don't know who they are. They don't know anything about the tribe, but they are members, but they have never experienced any part of our culture and the traditions of our people.

Harry Red

18:01.07

( Nat Sound of Osage Language )

Joyce Bear

15:23.40         S-106

The language is very definitely tied to our culture and to our traditions. Like our ceremonial, they are all done in our language.

Dr. Steven Pratt

11:47.38    S-201

Once a culture loses its language that culture ceases to exist.

Dr. Steven Pratt

11:45:56    S-201

You got to remember this too...it was unfashionable to speak it. If you spoke your language you were looked down upon here in Oklahoma. Many did not want to be caught doing that. So many of them that could speak didn't. At home it was a safe environment.

Parents didn't speak their native tongue in public, and they didn't teach it to their children. Rather than watch an important part of their culture go extinct, Dr. Steven Pratt and Mogri Lookout decided to rescue the Osage language.

Mogri Lookout

19:20.30     S-401

I think it is a pretty language. It is real pretty. It is real slow, and direct. You can say one thing and mean a lot.

Mogri Lookout

18:46:44     S-401

I started trying to learn the language in around 1971...72. I can't remember. My mother and father were living...and I never...never ever...had the inclination to learn it. But right about that time I was around thirty...thirty one thirty two...Didn't know anything about Osage but they spoke it. But I never wanted to learn it...and just all of a sudden I...I said I wanted to learn it.

John Maker

19:46.28     S-404

I did hear my Grandparents speak our language fluently. It seemed like they were in a completely different world almost...In their way of thinking. The old ones always said, "I wish you could hear that the way I hear it. The language.

Mogri Lookout

19:19.55     S-401

I remember what it was like. I would go to a function and they would all be sitting around here waiting for it to start, and they would all be talking to their selves in Osage, and I would hear them talking. It seems so familiar, so long, long, far away. It seemed like a dream. But it is all gone now.

Many tribes have established language programs in a desperate attempt to save their spoken heritage.

Dr. Steven Pratt

11:47:024    S-201

Many of them have gone from extinct. There are many trial languages that are extinct today. They go all the way from extinct to flourishing.

Mogri Lookout

19:02:32    S-401

I sent some of our people to Hawaii because I think they lost their language. Our people told them what we are doing here and they said "That's about the right path." And they told them it took about 20 years to get their language back. And it's going to take something like that to get this Osage back.

John Maker

19:48.00     S-404

There is no similarities at all between English or any of the other languages of Europe and Osage language. It is just a completely different world.

Dr. Steven Pratt

11:39.25    S-201

All Indian languages are oral languages. There was not an Orthography. That was a difficult part and I know it is like that with most tribes, but we are still struggling with that too. What you see a lot is Syllabary. That's where they have certain symbols to represent certain sounds.

Through research and invention Mogri Lookout developed a Syllabary that is a better fit for the complex sounds of spoken Osage.

Mogri Lookout

18:51:56     S-401

I was asking this linguist cause she was working on this language and / I said how long would it take to learn Spanish? And she said oh gosh.../ a long time. She said eight months.

Mogri Lookout

18:50:54     S-401

You can go to...you can take Spanish...and take a couple of classes in Spanish and then you can go to Spain, Mexico and learn it.

Mogri Lookout

18:52:56     S-401

You know, gosh if Osage was like that it would be great but see it's not spoken out there. So we have to do something that's never ever been done before and that's learn Osage in the class room. So we have to come up with some kind of curriculum that will....that will enhance learning, someway.

Mogri Lookout

18:52:29     S-401

So we're in kind of a research mode, trying to figure out how to do this.

Dr. Steven Pratt

11:41.25     S-201

Now what I prefer to do is to learn the language first and then you can learn the writing system.  Because you got to speak it before you can write it. That is basic in any language acquisition.

Dr. Steven Pratt

11:37.28     S-201

At first people would say, "How do you conjugate?" Well you don't conjugate.

Mogri Lookout

18:57:00     S-401

Well how would you say...I want...you want a horse? You would say (Kioween Wo Shosta). Well how would you say He wants a horse? (Ioween Keen A Kowa) and he said OK.

Mogri Lookout

18:57:16     S-401

I want is Kombra, you want is koshta, and he wants is Kola. No, can't do that...cause if you do that you ruin it. You can't pull that out of there they'd say. Well he couldn't understand, he'd say Yah, I did I just done it. I'm listing to them you know and...I can understand what she's saying and I can understand what the linguists was saying. Because in English you can pull it out. But in Osage you can't do that...because it ruins the thought.

Mogri Lookout

19:13:08     S-401

It's kind of pitiful because, I said "When we get to a point where we feel like we're fluent, when we get ready to go and talk to these...to go and talk we don't have anybody to take it to but ourselves. We can't go say "Hey Mom how does this sound, or hey Dad, Grandpa or Grandma"...they're gone. It's us; we're going to be the ones that's going to be the judge on how we speak.

Mary Bighorse and her family learn the language in class and then take it home.

Mary Bighorse

18:20.30     S-401

We emerge in our house and we talk to each other, and our children they talk also, and our grand kids. I have got about eight grand children in the program right now. Three children.

Dana Daylight

18:42.08     S-401

We try to encourage it more and more in our daily lives. Like open the door shut the door. Like if some one is knocking at the door then we try to use those words. You say "Pedhay."

Dana Daylight

18:22:38     S-401

On the weekends is when we try to use it a little more like when we go to ball games or whatever, to the mall, grocery shopping. On of the things with my kids that I thought was kind of cute.

Dana Daylight

18:23:02     S-401

You know how kids always argue riding in the car and you just hear all that constant arguing. Well you don't want them to argue. So I said alright that's it new rule. You can only argue if you argue in Osage. Well it stopped for a little while until they were going to class and they were asking Mogri different names to call each other. He didn't know what they were doing. He was just like, well why you want to know that.  Well just want to know and ask him different things. Like how do you say "Big Ears" or "Big Nose" or what ever.

Dana Daylight

18:24:03     S-401

As long as they're speaking I guess.

Dava Daylight

18:32.30     S-401

I hope that it is still alive and everything.  I know I am going to keep it alive with my children and hopefully they pass it on to theirs.

Mogri Lookout

18:50:38     S-401

So were trying...were trying to revive it and I just need the commitment from people...and it's a commitment and its also a sacrifice because it aint going to be learned overnight it aint going to be learned in one year, two years, three years.

Mogri Lookout

18:52:58     S-401

The language that we have now it having to adapt to modern times.

Mogri Lookout

19:00:06     S-401

So we've got supermarkets, jet planes....and...calculators, computers, like that....and we have to compete in a world.

Mogri Lookout

19:14:49     S-401

The comfort zone in our classes is in English and it's...that's just the way it is. Because when I say "We're going to do nothing but Osage," well they're just uncomfortable until they can get back to English.

Jon Maker

19:49.20     S-404

When you come in that door you got to think Osage, if you want to learn this language you got to leave that English outside, totally.

Mogri Lookout

19:13:51     S-401

English is such a powerful, powerful language. I always say its big medicine. And it just takes over everything.

Mogri Lookout

19:00:28     S-401

And that's why this man said that it's just too hard for a...them to learn it....they've lived as a white man so long.....and I always say that I'm full blood Osage. I tell my class, but I say I'm a white man more than I'm an Indian because about 90% of my life has been living as a white man. And just a little bit of me tries to stay in touch with our ways. Through the Eloush EahKoe Kiwah or Jgonje eywakulah and Shockawakoula, all them things that we do as Osages...what makes us Osage is our traditional values.

Dr. Steven Pratt

11:44:45    S-201

The language programs now are because of gaming. Gaming has contributed a lot to our tribe, and so we do see we have a lot more put into it. So in the seventies we began with nothing now you see it has grown and has turned into a million dollar program.

Each year the Sam Noble Museum holds a Native American Youth Language Fair. The goal is to share, celebrate and encourage others to learn their native tongue.

Jon Maker

19:44.38   S-404

I think a lot of them don't really understand how close we are to completely losing our language. I don't think they realize it. They think well they are having classes and the language is being saved, because I thought the same thing when I was young.

Dana Daylight

18:29.34   S-401

Your Language defines who you are. You know somebody is a Spanish or Mexican, by the way that they speak. You know that somebody is German by the way that they speak, you that they are Italian if they are speaking Italian. Why shouldn't we want to know our language? Why shouldn't we want to speak it?

Mogri Lookout

19:15:07    S-401

I'll tell you what we did have though; we had some little "Head Start" children that was learning Osage words from the get-go. And they had a hard time getting them to learn "One, two, three, four, five," because they wanted to say "Winksay, dopey, topa, labre,' toxa, shopay." You know they wanted to talk in Osage. Their comfort zone was Osage, so it can work.

In 1967, an article about the Santa Fe Institute of American Indian Arts changed Richard Ray Whitman's life.

Richard Ray Whitman

11:43:18     S-206

That cover of that magazine caught my eye and then a couple of teachers helped me follow through and apply. Then I began to realize the possibilities of being an artist, once I arrived in Santa Fe, at the school. Because I met like...students of other tribes, other nations, rural, urban, reservation...a range of people who were interested in being an artist.

On the way to New Mexico Whitman's bus stopped in Oklahoma City.

Richard Ray Whitman

16:52:47     S-403

I rode a Greyhound bus and had a layover on my way to Santa Fe in 68'- 67' it was my first really to see a high concentration of skid row if you will, visible numbers of American Indians.

Richard Ray Whitman

16:53:33     S-403

I had a two hour lay over so I just kind of walked around here and looked, really looked. And I came from a small rural community so it was kind of stunning to me. And there were all these little store fronts.

Richard Ray Whitman

16:55:08     S-403

I remember a voice called to me from a little store front doorway, / And this voice in my language...the Yuchi language I recognized it as being one of my relatives from my little community. Periodically he would disappear great lengths of time and return and disappear again...and this is where he came. Anonymous, anonymous Indians...anonymous buffalo.

He didn't know it at the time, but he was about to begin a photographic series that would come to be know as the "Street Chiefs." It's a stark exploration of Native homelessness in their home lands.

Richard Ray

16:12:43     S-403

This is a body of work for the last 30 years...black and white essentially.

Richard Ray Whitman

16:15:00     S-403

I think it was a physiological state, an emotional state that I seen or my perception, or the way they look back at me. / That's what I can say I related to, not them as mere subject matter but as my own Uncles or relatives.

Richard Ray

13:25:18     S-206

I just began to take photos, black and white.

Richard Ray Whitman

13:26:18     S-206

I remember this man here...Arapaho. And the title of this series sort of evolves with him, I remember him being from a line of traditional chiefs.

Richard Ray Whitman

13:27:23     S-206

So I was thinking of this mans qualities, even though he was on the street he for me sort of exemplified those qualities.

Richard Ray Whitman

13:28:43     S-206

Several men from the series would be from nearby neighboring tribes and many of them spoke their language still, their first language.

Richard Ray Whitman

16:17:18     S-403

When they brought commodities, the butter, surplus butter, cheese, surplus cheese to urban settings, the Native American center was one of those sites. It was the tail end of the Ronald Reagan administration I think. We call this "The Great Ronald Reagan Cheese Give Away" you know, I titled this piece.

Richard Ray Whitman

13:29:01     S-206

They understood the code to survive on the street...street language, but they also spoke their first language.

Richard Ray Whitman

13:30:53     S-403

They had their own strengths, their own histories...golden glove boxers, decorated veterans of numerous wars.

Richard Ray Whitman

16:22:01     S-403

So this old man, he frequented the alley behind the Native American center south side of Oklahoma City. Later I met his grandson who's seen this photo, said "that's my grandpa" you know. Of course he probably never seen his grandfather as a homeless man or a...you know.

Richard Ray Whitman

16:23:00     S-403

They were gleaning, walking alleys, recycling, selling...well, living minimally. / But there's a spirit about him I think, it really what spoke to me...and really kind of an undefeated spirit in a way.

Richard Ray Whitman

12:04:07     S-206

I began not to see these people as subject matter, I knew some of them.

Richard Ray Whitman

12:04:22     S-206

I said what is that? What happens to a people that they arrive here like this? So the context is always important.

"Street Chiefs" has been criticized by Indians who feel the series advances a negative view of Native Americans.

Richard Ray Whitman

15:37:50     S-403

Part of my intent was my work to explore, investigate some of the negative...if you will social-cultural realities in Indian communities...urban Indian communities. But I also believe that my work is also addressed the positive aspects of vibrant Native communities as well. For me I think it's the balance of those, that one doesn't exist without the other.

Richard Ray Whitman

12:06:11     S-206

From the vantage point of your car, you're driving through skid row, you want to quickly go thought it, but ah...here are these host people if you will...of this state, the indigenous people. / You want to look ahead, don't look...you want to see the dancing Indian, or that other "constructed" image of Indian culture that's not questioning, not threatening.

Richard Ray Whitman

11:53:26     S-206

Over 50% of Indian populations today are living in some kind of urban setting away from the rural or reservation. / And for me the challenge was to see how I stayed connected, and how I relate back to where I'm from...where the dances, the language is spoken more, the ceremonies, the relatives.

Richard Ray Whitman

15:59:44     S-403

These works have returned from touring, exhibiting...titled "Mixed medicine." / I have a fascination or interest in the skull, the buffalo skull.

Today Richard is a successful artist and actor who has appeared in over a dozen independent films.

Richard Ray Whitman

13:40:17     S-206

The media and Hollywood has long told our story for us. So now I'm realizing that through independent film we are seeing some breakthroughs, some departures from that.

Richard Ray Whitman

13:42:03    S-206

Indians love films too, Indians love stories...Indians are great story tellers. And we have our stories, our narratives.

Richard Ray Whitman

13:44:19    S-206

I think the Indian people are hungry for visually, film, movies, entertainment equally as well. And they should be able to have something offered to them that they can relate to as part of their greater experience.

Back home at Red Stone, Cade's mother carefully prepares him for a ceremony of the Black Legs society.

Cade Morgan

22:39.36     S-101

It makes me feel good when she puts on my clothes, because I feel like...like I am getting the special...I am getting the gift all over again, like to be the Au-day Ta-lee.

Everything must be just right to satisfy his grandmother's eye for detail.

Vanessa Jennings

15:35:13     S-208

In Black Legs they have a position for two boys and two girls. They call them UadDeTalles. / It was the beginning of their training to become a warrior.

Cade Morgan

22:38.19     S-101

It's an honor to do that. My parents know why they selected me but I don't really know. My mom told me a few days after they put me into Au-day Talee. That means a special boy in black legs...a special boy in Black Legs. That means a special boy in Kiowa.

Vanessa Jennings

15:42:42     S-208

My oldest son Gabriel and our middle son Seth they had that same position.

Cade Morgan

22:47.42     S-101

Well I thought that it would be hard to do this but it is pretty easy, but it is a big responsibility.

Vanessa Jennings

14:44:01     S-208

The old Kiowas they have so much respect for themselves, they had so much dignity, they had so much honor that even when it came time to dress they were never in a hurry. When everything is right, when everything is ready then we'll begin.

During the ceremony all eyes will turn to the youngest member of the group.

Cade Morgan

22:40.12    S-101

Sometimes I will be the water boy. Sometimes I will put coal on the...so we can cedar off in there. We have to get ahead of the line when we have to dance. We have to be up there with the Au-day Mon-tone.

Vanessa Jennings

15:43:04       S-208

When Kade came up to the camp he had his hair long and loose, he had his red cape on, he had his shield on his arm, he had a bouquet slung on his shoulder. He looked like one of the men that stepped out of this ledger drawings, and he came right up to the camp and he addressed his mother and I very formally "Excuse me, the men in the teepee would like for you to come in now."

Cade Morgan

22:48.05    S-101

I felt like I was one of them. Like I forgot that I was a kid. Or as they say, I am a child.

Cade Morgan

22:45.11    S-101

All I know the bigger the crowd the happier I get and the happier my family gets. Because they are hardly surrounded by crowds, because we live here and we hardly have people, this is a big land. If it was a lot smaller then we would have a lot of people. But we are happy for people to come. We would like for people to come over to visit us.

Vanessa Jennings

14:46:35     S-208

I've told my children "You have to come home, I don't care where you are I don't care what you do, you make time to come to Ohomal Lodge and you make time to come home to Black Legs. Because you have an obligation...those old people they went to prison, they were prisoners of war....

Vanessa Jennings

14:48:08     S-208

They stood up against arrows, they stood up against bullets, they stood up against cannons during the Indian wars they were willing to die to protect our language...the Kiowa language. They were there to protect the right to wear this Kiowa way of dressing for a woman, for a man. We owe it to them.

Vanessa Jennings

15:44:59     S-208

I feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Teaching about my Kiowa traditions, teaching about the bead work and how it fits into the culture of the Kiowas, how the stories fit together, how the language fits together, how the songs fit together.

Vanessa Jennings

13:45:36     S-208

Now we've become so modern very few women know how to cut up a chicken, much less how do you cut up a buffalo...how do you kill a buffalo?

Few Native Americans have even seen a buffalo up close.

Once there were Buffalo as far as the eye could see. Their ranges stretched from Canada to Mexico, from the Ohio River to the Pacific Ocean.

From 1820 to 1889, 30-million buffalo were recklessly killed for their hides and tongues. Railroad interests, farmers and ranchers paid professional hunters to decimate entire herds.

When protection of the buffalo was under consideration by the Texas Legislature, General Phil Sheridan opposed it, pointing out that the sooner the buffalo was eliminated the sooner the Indian would be starved into submission. Within 100 years of the Lewis and Clark expedition, the buffalo had been reduced to just a few hundred animals.

Today the Cheyenne-Arapaho are two of the 57 tribes that are bringing the bison back.

Rupert Nowlin

12:18:21     S-405

The buffalo have always been here, I mean we've had buffalo here...the tribes have had buffalo for a long, long time.

Gordon Yellowman

23:39.08     S-304

I have been working with these buffalo for the past twenty-five years. I can remember when the first twenty head came to our people. We were quite excited and very proud that this animal was coming back to us.

Gordon Yellowman

23:40.37     S-304

The bison is so important to our culture because not only is he a apart of our origin stories and our oral stories, but he was very important to us because he provided every thing for us on a daily basis.  His hides gave us clothing, moccasins; His hides gave us a teepee, a house to dwell in.  The meat provided the daily nourishment that we needed.

Rupert Nowlin

12:19:40     S-405

About three years ago, three to four years ago was when they were finally allowed to start taking over, having more pasture land and start expanding. And then last year there were some animals brought in from South Dakota from Wind River National Park.

Gordon Yellowman

23:40.08     S-304

And we believe and we know that this animal came back to us through prayer. Through our traditions. We certainly appreciate the creator for giving us that full circle. In regards to bringing this animal back to us.

Rupert Nowlin

12:24:09     S-405

Right now we have approximately 280; we're in the process of doing an inventory.

Rupert Nowlin

12:24:48     S-405

We'd like to get them up to at least 500, is what I think we should...we have, that we could get up to in a short period of time. And still we're talking two or three years, and have enough land to sustain them.

Rupert Nowlin

12:21:31    S-405

Normally you can get away with one bull for about 50 cows, / with bison you have to drop it down to make sure that the females get covered while they're in season, you have to drop it down to like 20 or 30 cows per bull.

Rupert Nowlin

12:25:18     S-405

They are grass fed animals; I mean that's what they are adapted to is grass. They don't need a whole lot of high protein feed or anything like that like some of the exotic cattle do.

Gordon Yellowman

23:42.32     S-304

Through our traditions of eating this buffalo we lived healthy lifestyles. We had no disease we had no illnesses and that is what we want to bring back. Bring back the traditional benefit part of healthy life style.

Rupert Nowlin

12:16:13     S-405

The Indian population has a high incidence of diabetes. And I think a lot of that is a reflection of the change in the diet from the lean meats that they used to get off of the buffalo for a lot of higher starchy and refined sugar diets.

Gordon Yellowman

23:42.50     S-304

We had a profit by the name of Sweet Medicine, and in his prophecy he told us that you are going to come close to losing the buffalo. It is almost going to become extinct. There is an animal that is going to be forth coming. He is going to be spotted and he is going to have a long shaggy tail. And he is going to have a split hoof and this animal is going to bring to the people disease and illness. He said be careful when you eat this animal.  Because it is going to harm our people. Well his prediction came true. That was the cow that came.

Dakota Robinson

11:02.54     S-408

They quit doing things they used to do back in olden days where they used to go out and hunt and gather their food. Nowadays people don't. They drive through that fast food restaurant and order that Big Mac.

In 2007 the Cheyenne and Arapaho started a program to put buffalo back into the diet of the tribe.

Dakota Robinson

11:02.54     S-408

The Buffalo meat is a lot leaner and healthier for the individual. So in turn it is helping their cholesterol levels to prevent heart disease.

Danelle Johnson

11:14.58     S-408

It just started out as a one time initiation to introduce to healthier meat to our diabetics and our elders at that time. So it started as a supplementation program. After that it became such a request that they started to request it more and we kind of worked out a schedule with our farm and ranch program.

Deborah Ellis

10:57.56     S-408

The participants receive a bag once a month when they come in and do their assessment. And that is usually once a week that they get that.

Deborah Ellis

10:54.48     S-408

In each bag we usually give them one ground beef, one stew, and one type of rump roast. But we have several different types of roasts we have round rump roast.

Deborah Ellis

10:56.09     S-408

The beef stew meat is the most popular cut that everyone usually requests.

Danelle Johnson

11:20.50     S-408

Actually a lot of the elders say that they prefer the buffalo to regular meat and they can taste a difference after awhile.

Danelle Johnson

11:27.39     S-408

It is just amazing that you go back to your roots. / If we want to be healthy if we want our kids to be healthy, if we want our elders to continue to be healthy and be around for us. We have to go back to those.

Today the buffalo is one part of an overall health program.

Dakota Robinson

11:06.36     S-408

Troy came in...Volunteered for our buffalo pilot project. / He volunteered to come and let us do the testing and receives monthly supplement disbursements of buffalo meat.

Troy Littleraven

10:32.02     S-408

Yeah, they checked our weight our height our blood sugar, and our blood pressure. And I found out I was Diabetic through this program. Which if I would not have come here, I wouldn't have found out. The buffalo was an incentive. I have tried buffalo before and I liked it.

Danelle Johnson

11:28.22        S-408

We are just blessed at this point because we have the buffalo to get that back into their diets.

Troy Littleraven

10:33.02     S-408

Usually a couple pounds of ground buffalo and a roast and the ribs or a steak. I divide it up at home so I can have it throughout the month.

Dakota Robinson

11:07.40     S-408

He comes out every month and we do an A1C every three months and cholesterol screenings every month, and we check the blood pressure. We obtain his body measurements just to see how his blood pressure is doing and if it is helping him.

Troy Littleraven

10:30.42     S-408

I do feel better. I am more conscious of what I eat now. Then what I did before. I am more healthy.

Danelle Johnson

11:15.37     S-408

We are starting to show a little more of a maintaining in our glucose levels with our clients that we have seen, and have been able to document. As far as over all benefits the cholesterol numbers that we are looking at are staying with the normal rates. We are not seeing any significant spikes.

The Cheyenne and Arapaho are offering the opportunity for exercise as well.

Troy Littleraven

10:35.11     S-408

Well they have 2 facilities one in Concho and one in Watonga, and they have a whole assortment of different equipment: free weights elliptical, Tread mills that I usually workout on for about 30 minutes before I even start weight training. I usually workout for about an hour after work.

Dakota Robinson

11:08.00     S-408

It takes everything it is a whole life style change, and he has been the one that has done it. He doesn't want to be sitting three days a week on dialysis. He wants to take care of his self. So he comes and he exercises or he will be out walking.

Danelle Johnson

11:20.12     S-408

We have seen this program just grow tremendously. Everybody looks forward to it. It has become one of the strongest programs we have here at the diabetes wellness program. Not only just for the diet and the benefits that we are seeing. For our diabetic clients that are utilizing it more consistently they prefer it. They are getting to where it is more of an every day staple.

Dakota Robinson

11:11.20     S-408

We have had other tribes call and say, "Well how are you guys doing this?" It seems to be working just like the buffalo project. Their people...they have a bunch of buffalo meat and their people don't want it. We have to turn people away up until our next disbursement.

Rupert Nowlin

12:26:32     S-405

These were dry pastured all winter; I mean they didn't get hardly any supplemental feeding at all, just enough to kind of keep them as tame as they are.

Rupert Nowlin

12:27:09     S-405

What we aim to do is do it in the more natural sense; we hope not to use any herbicides or pesticides. We'll go back to the burning process that was here long before anything became commercial in this area.

(Control Burn Nat SD)

Rupert Nowlin

12:27:32     S-405

The tribes had maintained the prairies by intentionally setting fire to them. What it does is prevent the encroachment of brush and trees, helps eliminates the weed problems. And it returns a lot of nutrients into the soil...and the buffalo like it.

Rupert Nowlin

12:27:57     S-405

On the tall grass prairie up at the Osage they say that whenever they do a prescribed burn on their 30-thousand acres up there, and the buffalo free range there...you'll see the buffalo. They won't go running to the burned area, but they'll just slowly start migrating there because they know that in a few days what they'll get is that fresh, lush growth of grass that is really tender.

Rupert Nowlin

12:28:25     S-405

And that's one of the reasons the tribes set the fires on the prairies originally / and they knew that sooner or later the bison would migrate there and there'd be easier hunting.

The herd is growing, and the tribe is moving the buffalo to bigger range lands.

Rupert Nowlin

12:58:08     S-405

They'll get out and they'll walk this entire pasture now, they just go exploring to see what alls here.

Rupert Nowlin

12:33:22     S-405

The fact that we're expanding the size of our herd shows a re-strengthening of the tribe. That we're actually moving forward with certain things. So there's a lot of symbolism that goes along with it too.

Gordon Yellowman

23:41.37    S-304

It is such a sacred and powerful animal physically and spiritually. That he means everything to us. Without him there is no way that we would have survived as a great nation, as a great people.

Danelle Johnson

11:19.29     S-408

It is an incredible feeling to drive by in the morning. / And in the mornings whenever I am coming in and looking over and seeing a herd. It is an incredible sight to see. It is very thrilling. / Because it is part of my history.

Gordon Yellowman

23:45.35    S-304

I think the hope for future generations is to insure the survival of the buffalo but to insure the survival of our children. / These animals have life, and that life is what we are preserving. They are a living breathing animal, and we are a living breathing nation.

Vanessa Jennings

15:24:20     S-208

Truly the most intense love that I've felt, the profound love is the love that I feel for Cade. Of my grandchildren, when I die this is the child that will cry for me...because he knows me.

And when she is gone she will have passed on a pride...a passion for the traditions and away of life that is in danger of disappearing.

Vanessa Jennings

14:03:36     S-208

Who gets cheated? It isn't me; it's my grandson and those little unborn Kiowa children. You know, they're the ones...they need the Kiowa culture, its important for them. Its human nature, "Where did I come from? Who am I? What is my purpose?" It's human nature to want to belong.

Vanessa Jennings

14:01:17     S-208

By doing this kind of work I hope that I'm giving life to he Kiowa culture, let it live...for two more generations, three more generations.

Cade knows its his responsibility to keep the culture intact so that one day he can hand it off to his children.

Cade Jennings

22:48.28     S-101

I would like to raise them how I am right now. I would like to have them in two worlds. Like If they want then they can be fully Kiowa and just dress like that, and they can dress like me.

Vanessa Jennings

15:00:00     S-208

Culture is a living, breathing entity and it can live or it can die. It's like a plant, if you don't water the plant, the plant is going to shrivel up and die. But if you pay attention to it, you cultivate it and water it, you fertilize it then this plant is going to blossom.

TRT