Preserving Traditions

Making a Difference: Native Veterans Continue to Serve Their Communities

KlingbielEL — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 21:16:24 +0000

Making a Difference: Native Veterans Continue to Serve Their Communities

From Issue: Fall 2021 / Vol. 22 No. 3

by Valerie Taliman

Who is a warrior? In Indian Country, the tradition goes far beyond one experienced in warfare. In the warrior tradition, making war is a last resort, not the first. Protecting women, children, communities, land, food and water come first so that future generations can survive.

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Navajo Nation Police Chief Phillip Francisco, an Army veteran and a second lieutenant in the National Guard, stood with his officers at a roadblock to prevent nonresidents from entering the Navajo Nation. Navajo Police were among the first to deal with COVID-19 hot spots that sickened and killed thousands on the Dinetah (Navajo land).

Courtesy of Navajo Nation Police

Tulalip Tribes Council Member and Vietnam War helicopter pilot Mel Sheldon remains close to his military brotherhood, attending ceremonies and memorials annually. Sheldon and fellow veterans visited the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington, D.C., in 2019 to honor those who paid the ultimate sacrifice.

Courtesy of Mel Sheldon

Minneapolis Police Officer Robb Thunder of the Red Lake Ojibwe Nation stands with Lisa Bellanger (Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe), executive director of the American Indian Movement.

Courtesy of Lisa Bellanger

During the violent protests following the May 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, flames spread to this building housing MIGIZI Communications, a nonprofit organization training Native youth. It has since relocated.

Courtesy of MIGIZI Communications

The Navajo-Hopi Honor Riders (NHHR) was formed in 2003 to honor Hopi Private Lori Piestewa, the first Native woman in U.S. military service known to have been killed in combat. At the home of her mother, Percy Piestewa, in Flagstaff, Arizona. NHHR President Bobby Martin and Navy MA1 Mike Camarillo Sr. read the names of warriors fallen since 2003.

Courtesy of Navajo-Hopi Honor Riders

The NNHR motorcade accompanies a veteran home through “The Cut,” a section of Hwy 89 carved into Echo Cliffs near Page, Arizona. With nearly 140 members, NHHR honors requests from families to escort veterans and law enforcement officers home for burial.

Courtesy of Navajo-Hopi Honor Riders

“Military service did not make us warriors. It was innately part of us—it’s in our DNA, our history defending our country, our songs, ceremonies and culture,” says Angie Barney-Nez, Army veteran, mother, respected educator and former Miss Navajo Nation. “Outsiders will never understand how Native people are rooted in this land. This is where we were created, where Creator put us, no other land. That’s why you see an overwhelming effort by Native Americans to defend our country.”

Military service changed the lives of more than 150,000 Native veterans living today who served in the armed forces since World War II. Some returned to their communities to take advantage of the GI Bill, attend college, start businesses and families. Others returned to limited opportunities or suffered disabilities. They were different people than when they left, with PTSD and other injuries left untreated. Veterans hospitals far from reservations make it difficult for Native veterans to get quality medical care for their injuries, even today.

Building Bridges

For Tulalip Tribes Council Member Mel Sheldon, the two years, two months and 11 days he spent in the military changed his life for the better. Sheldon served 22 years in leadership for the Tulalip Tribes of Washington, working in all executive positions including six years as chairman. Sheldon led the team that developed Tulalip’s profitable casino resort and Quil Ceda Village, the second federally chartered city in America. Quil Ceda is a model of the tribe’s self-governance and taxation power, including having police and fire protection, telecommunications and emergency medical and 911 services.

Sheldon enlisted in the U.S. Army at 18 in 1969, during the Vietnam War. He applied for Warrant Officer Flight School. Training was nine arduous months with a graduation rate of about 60 percent. He received 200 hours flight training in principal aircraft, Hughes 300 and the iconic Huey (Iroquois) helicopters. After graduating, he received orders to go to Vietnam and was assigned to Charlie Troop 1, 9th Squadron, 1st Cavalry. There, he volunteered to fly scout planes with Charlie Troop. Sheldon and crew flew many combat missions with a Cobra in Vietnam and Cambodian airspace.

In one mission over Cambodian territory, he and his crew encountered a large contingent of North Vietnamese and “the jungle lit up like a Fourth of July fireworks party.” During the battle Sheldon’s crew chief was hit in the back and Sheldon’s helmet took a round through the backside. His Loach (Cayuse helicopter) took numerous hits, but everyone survived.

“Anytime the infantry needed help, Cobra gunships armed with rockets and miniguns would roll in blazing and suppress enemy attacks. We did a good job clearing out the enemy to save our soldiers,” he recalls. “The constant danger, flying risky missions, putting it out there daily, and living on the edge changes how you look at things. It toughens you.”

Sheldon, a commercial fisherman for 25 years in Washington state and Bristol Bay, Alaska, said military service created lifelong brotherhoods and prepared him to lead people in battle, crisis and politics.

“I learned about different models of leadership, considering all points of view, and to make split-second hard decisions for the good of all. It’s not just leading but listening and learning to be part of a team. That’s how I learned to lead teams to get the mission done, and in battle, I never lost a man.”

He also built bridges across state, municipal and tribal communities to develop the tribe’s diverse business relationships and economic opportunities. “No one is going to move, so we strive for positive relationships with our neighbors to create jobs and foster economic development in the Pacific Northwest. The more we understand each other and find common ground, the easier it is to find solutions. Protecting tribal sovereignty and diversifying our economy to sustain the tribe’s citizens for the next 20 years is my priority.”

In September 2021, Sheldon traveled to Watertown, South Dakota, to attend the memorial of Warrant Officer Robert Fortin who was killed in action on September 13, 1971, while flying a mission near Tay Ninh, Vietnam. Fifty years after his death, his brother Roger Fortin asked fellow scout pilots to join his family to honor and share remembrances of “Bob.” They were there for him.

A Family Tradition

Indian veterans were in service in Minneapolis when violent protests were breaking out after George Floyd was killed by then police officer Derek Chauvin in May 2020. Patrols organized by the American Indian Movement and other local activists protected the Little Earth of United Tribes Native housing and office complex as calls to defund the police were rampant and fires set by protestors destroyed a block containing a Native youth activity office. But Native veterans were also serving with distinction in the beleaguered police department.

U.S. Marine and former Minneapolis police officer Bob Thunder, a citizen of Red Lake Ojibwe Nation, comes from a warrior tradition of protecting people, dating back to his Ojibwe grandfather who wore a badge in 1894. Thunder joined the marines in 1970 when he was 19 and appreciated the challenges, responsibilities and discipline that military training demanded.

“The training you get saves your life. It tests you and makes you into a stronger person,” he said. “I was lucky that I stayed stateside for four years specializing in flight line training. We worked with A6 Intruders and F4 Phantoms training marines in group support for aviation.”

As the war was ending in 1974, Bob was chosen for a transition project to civilian life and law enforcement appealed to him. It became a 37-year career that he loved.

“I attended the police academy and became a community service officer working directly with people before I was sworn in as a police officer. I worked within the Native community on Franklin Avenue for nine years and knew people by their first names. That’s when community-oriented policing was effective. We listened to people and treated them with respect, and we got it back in return.”

Thunder, who raised four daughters and four sons, worked the gang, narcotics and transit units as well as emergency response teams. He later focused on training tribes and communities in gang and drug prevention strategies before he retired in 2011 due to an injury.

Two years later, his son Robb became a police cadet and has been a Minneapolis Police officer for eight years now. When the George Floyd protests set fires in several neighborhoods, Robb Thunder was on the frontlines protecting the Native community as his family closely monitored the protests.

“What Chauvin did set back policing 40 years,” said Bob Thunder. “He ruined the image of good officers who serve our communities and pushed racism to the forefront after all our efforts to get people working together. It should never have been allowed to happen; other officers should have stepped in. Now we have people hating police and there’s been a huge drop in the number of Minneapolis officers. Not everybody can do that job and it just got tougher.” One night during the protests, random shots hit a sign above Robb’s head, and his father realized he could easily be killed by those he was trying to protect. “I asked him if he was sure he still wanted to be a cop. He said yes, he would continue serving the community in what I see as our warrior tradition,” says the elder officer Thunder. “I have great respect for him and all those who have done it.”

Fighting COVID-19

While protests to defund police swept the country, officers on the Navajo Nation were facing a deadly invisible enemy—COVID-19. A Navajo man returning from a basketball tournament in Tucson, Arizona, inadvertently brought the virus home and exposed dozens of relatives at a church service in Chilchinbeto, Arizona, a tiny community in the heart of the Navajo reservation. Contact tracers linked more than 30 cases to the event and Navajo Police quarantined the community, shutting down roads and restricting travel.

But COVID-19 spread rapidly, creating a hot spot that by September 2021 resulted in more than 33,774 cases and 1,440 deaths on the Navajo Nation.

Navajo Nation Chief of Police Phillip Francisco, an Army veteran who served from 1995 to 1999 in Korea, quickly realized he had a public health crisis on his hands. Francisco had also served in the National Guard and was commissioned as a second lieutenant with the Military Police Branch in 2016. The National Guard reached out during the pandemic offering to help with policing duties. However, Francisco declined the notion of outsiders policing Navajo people and instead asked the guard to assist with auxiliary duties such as building emergency medical units.

“Navajo Nation Police are serving and protecting our own people. Our officers are sons, brothers, fathers, daughters, sisters and clan relatives of Navajo families, so compassion and respect are commonplace in our training,” said Francisco. “This was an unprecedented situation for police worldwide, but our officers were among the first to deal with, be exposed to and die from COVID-19. We had to close police headquarters and 24 of our new cadets were exposed after attending the funeral of a fellow officer.”

As the deadly virus spread, Francisco and his top command—many of them veterans—had to create new protocols, safety measures, quarantines and lockdowns for communities. They acquired personal protective equipment, test kits, masks, gloves, disinfectants and protective coveralls used at checkpoints set up to prevent citizens and visitors from traveling. Millions in special funding had to be allocated to handle the pandemic, straining limited resources.

Francisco’s military and law enforcement service came from a desire to help people. After four years in the military, he attended the police academy in San Juan County and became an officer. He then joined the sheriff’s office, where he served for 14 years.

“I was part of the FBI task force at the time and there was a big problem with alcoholism, so we obtained funding to go after drunk driving,” he said. “That was my full-time job, and I saw some pretty horrific accidents. I was motivated because I wanted to protect people. We prosecuted drunk drivers, closed down some bars and after four years, I decided to focus on training more officers. By the time I left, I had 60 more officers in the field. Then I went back to college while working and earned a psychology degree, thinking I would start doing counseling for police and public safety. But Navajo [Nation] had an opening for police chief, and I stepped up.”

The coronavirus put dozens of officers in quarantine and sickened many. Most recovered, but Officer Michael Lee and criminal investigator Esther Charley later died in off-reservation hospitals. With only 206 police personnel to serve the 27,000-square-mile reservation in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado, staff shortages mean officers often must cover remote districts with no backup or cell service.

As the Navajo Nation mourned increasing losses, honor guard motorcycle escorts were organized by Navajo-Hopi Honor Riders (NHHR), a motorcycle club formed in 2003 to honor Hopi Private Lori Piestewa, the first Native woman in U.S. military service known to have been killed in combat. Hundreds of people lined Arizona, New Mexico and Navajo highways, waving flags and white handkerchiefs as police from multiple jurisdictions and motorcycle escorts brought the Navajo officers and veterans home.

Bobby Martin, Piestewa’s cousin and founder of NHHR said, “We honor and remember them and our Gold and Blue Star families whose loved ones gave their lives serving our country. We ride not only to honor our fallen warriors and those who continue to serve but [also] to promote healing for those who lost veterans. It’s our honor to serve our people that way.”

“Coming back as a veteran, I had extra credentials, training and confidence that I earned serving our country,” said Barney-Nez. “There are thousands of Native veterans who came home to make a difference. In our warrior tradition, you serve your people your whole life.”

Forty-one years after Private 1st Class Michael Bia was killed in Vietnam, his squadron leader, Terry Ash, and U.S. Army veteran Arthur Corley visited Bia’s wife, Lula, to share how he was lost in battle. Courtesy of Roselinda White.

They Also Serve

“The last time I saw him, he was getting on a Greyhound bus with his duffel bags,” said Lula Bia, whose husband, Michael, was killed in the Vietnam War. “I can still see him now. It was raining and we drove to Gallup with his parents to see him off. It was my 20th birthday, April 26, and he left for Albuquerque. He flew to Fort Lewis, Washington, and then Hawaii where he got his orders to Vietnam with the U.S. Army 101st Airborne Division. I never saw him again.”

They had been married only four months when two uniformed officers came to tell her Private 1st Class Michael Bia was missing in action. “They were at the door saying he had been missing in action for 10 days,” she said. “I was pregnant, and I just couldn’t comprehend it.”

Lula Bia is one of the hundreds of thousands of survivors of American soldiers fallen in war, parents, spouses and children. They are honored as Gold Star families, a formal designation by the U.S. military since before World War II, but they are often overlooked in the celebration of American veterans. Yet their sacrifice also will be remembered when the National Native American Veterans Memorial is dedicated on the NMAI grounds in November 2022. In the words of the English poet John Milton, “They also serve who only stand and wait.”

As for so many, Lula Bia’s story was one of waiting for information. “Ten days later, I got a telegram confirming he died of a gunshot wound on June 6, 1968, in an ambush in Saber, South Vietnam, Thừa Thiên Huế Province,” she said. “When his body came back, his remains were put in a plastic bag with his uniform over it. They recommended we keep the casket closed so none of us ever saw him. I was 20, and I had to focus on the well-being of my baby, so I followed our traditional Navajo beliefs not to view death while pregnant.”

Michael Bia Jr. was born three months later. “My son never knew his father,” she said. “He grew up with a loneliness in his heart to know who he was, what he was like, what his laughter sounded like. He always yearned to know his dad, and his loss affected us every single day.”

For years, Lula held out hope her husband may still be alive, that the military had made a mistake in identification. “At first it didn’t seem real. I couldn’t believe it was him,” she said. “Whenever POWs were being released, I would study the newspapers and watch TV hoping to see his face. I had such hope in my heart [that] maybe they made a mistake and he’s out there somewhere.”

Lula earned a degree in education, raised her son surrounded by loving family and taught elementary school for more than 40 years on the Navajo Nation. She never got closure for Michael’s death, nor did his family.

In 2008, his brother Gabriel posted a message on a Vietnam veteran’s website asking if anyone knew Michael. Three months later, he got a reply from Arthur Corley, a veteran from New Jersey who was there when Michael died. After email exchanges, Corley called Lula and wanted to meet her. “I have a story to share, but I want to do it in person,” Corley said. “Out of respect, I want to come to your home, and I’m bringing Terry Ash, Michael’s squadron leader.”

On November 11, 2009, Corley and Ash joined Lula’s family on the Navajo Nation for a Veterans Day memorial and prayer service held annually to honor all veterans. She recalled, “Terry told me what happened the night of the ambush when Michael and another young soldier, Samuel Boyd, were killed. They were guarding a naval supply area in the remote jungle where the Viet Cong were hiding. As they returned from reconnaissance that night, something didn’t feel right, and then gunfire burst out from everywhere. Michael and Samuel were in the first jeep that got hit. They said he didn’t suffer, that he died instantly.

“I knew then that it was him, that it was real. It finally brought closure and healing for me after all those years. I was so thankful they shared their story, grief and even the survivors’ guilt they felt. We all cried together and comforted each other, sharing our memories and love for Michael. The honor and respect they showed my family brought healing to us and to them.”

The morning after Veterans Day, as they prepared to depart, Corley and Ash raised Michael’s memorial flag on the flagpole in Lula’s front yard. The flag was proudly displayed in front of a warrior’s home partly paid for by Michael’s benefits. “I was so thankful for that honor,” she says. “After 52 years, he’s still the love of my life.”

Michael Howard Bia is buried at the Bia/Hicks Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Fort Defiance, Arizona—named in his honor.

Authors

Valerie Taliman

Valerie Taliman, a citizen of the Navajo Nation, is an award-winning writer/editor and communications strategist based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Taliman won the Richard LaCourse Award for Excellence in Investigative Reporting for her 2010 five-part series on murdered and missing First Nations women.

The World Eskimo-Indian Olympics: A Friendly Competition of Ear Pulls, Knuckle Hops and Toe Kicks

KlingbielEL — Tue, 29 Jun 2021 18:04:05 +0000

Preserving Traditions

The World Eskimo-Indian Olympics: A Friendly Competition of Ear Pulls, Knuckle Hops and Toe Kicks

From Issue: Summer 2021 / Vol. 22 No. 2

by Vincent Schilling

If you miss the Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan, sport enthusiasts will still have the opportunity to witness one of the most unique athletic events in the world this summer. Instead of typical Olympic sports such as gymnastics or the pole vault, you could be watching athletes perform such feats as hopping on their knuckles, carrying weights with their ears and kicking a ball that is dangling many feet in the air.

The knuckle hop, also known as the seal hop, requires athletes to hop on their knuckles and toes forward as far as possible before giving in to the pain.

World Eskimo-Indian Olympics/Michael Dinneen

In the blanket toss, dozens of people hold onto a walrus or bearded seal-skin blanket and toss a person up several feet in the air.

Sherman Hogue/Explore Fairbanks

Traditional music and dance such as that performed by these Wainwright Drummers and Dancers have been part of the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics since it began in 1961.

Archive Photos Courtesy of World Eskimo-Indian Olympics

Many generations of dancers perform traditional dance at WEIO.

Archive Photos Courtesy of World Eskimo-Indian Olympics

Miss World Eskimo-Indian Olympics of 2013 Rosemary Berg (Inupiaq) waves to the crowd at in the Alaska Carlson Center in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Sherman Hogue/Explore Fairbanks

In the ear pull, Linc Qimiq (Inupiaq) and Leroy Shangin (Unangan) engage in a tug-of-war using sinew looped around one of each other’s ears.

World Eskimo-Indian Olympics/Michael Dinneen

In the ear weight event, Auna Reed-Lewis (Yu’pik) carries lead weights dangling from a string that is wrapped around her ear.

World Eskimo-Indian Olympics/Michael Dinneen

In the Alaskan high kick, the athlete (here, James Wardlow) will sit on the floor with one hand holding the opposite foot. With the other hand and foot on the floor, he or she will swing up to kick a suspended ball, landing on the same foot used to kick the target.

Sherman Hogue/Explore Fairbanks

In the two-foot high kick, Amber Vaska (Yu’pik) leaps up with both feet simultaneously and kicks the ball before, while keeping her feet parallel, landing on both feet.

World Eskimo-Indian Olympics/Michael Dinneen

Sealskin balls, such as this one decorated with tufts of caribou hair, have long been made and used in Arctic games, including the high kick at WEIO. This Yuit ball from St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea was made to be used in a game during which women or girls kept the ball in the air using only their feet.

Circa 1975, seal hide, caribou hair, and sinew, 4.7” x 6.4”. 26/2558

Photo by NMAI Staff

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics (WEIO), to be held July 21 to 24 in Fairbanks, Alaska. With the exception of 2020, when the event was cancelled due to the COVID pandemic, WEIO has been held annually the third week of July since 1961. Traditionally, such games were intended to strengthen and preserve the survival skills of Alaska Native people. Today, this congenial, four-day competition celebrates the perseverance and collaborative spirit of Indigenous inhabitants of the world’s circumpolar regions.

“We liken it to a big homecoming or big family reunion,” says WEIO President Gina Kalloch. The games are open to anyone who wishes to attend, and Indigenous peoples throughout the Americas and far North participate, including Russia, Norway and Greenland.

Games of Polar Prowess

For centuries, Alaska villages have hosted competitions for young men to prove their strength, agility and pain tolerance—skills needed to hunt and survive in harsh polar environments. These games would be part of friendly gatherings full of dance, music and food.

As more non-Native people came to Alaska, however, some of its original inhabitants worried traditional games might be forgotten. The late A. E. “Bud” Hagberg and Frank Whaley, Wien Airways employees, organized the first World Eskimo Olympics and continued to co-chair it for a few years. That first year, four Eskimo and two Indian dance groups participated along with competitors in the high kick, blanket toss and seal-skinning competitions. It also included a Miss Eskimo Olympics Queen contest.

From 1961 to 1969, the City of Fairbanks, through the Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce, sponsored the World Eskimo Olympics as part of its Golden Days Celebration. In 1970, the Tundra Times, Alaska’s Native newspaper at that time, took over sponsorship and in 1973 changed the name of the event to the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics to more accurately reflect that Indigenous people from across the circumpolar region participated. During this time, the event began to include athletic competitions for women. In 1976, WEIO formed an independent nonprofit corporation that still runs the annual event.

Kalloch, who has been involved with the games since the 1980s, says that some people have questioned the event’s name still including the term “Eskimo,” which was used to describe Inuit and Yup’ik people. Some linguists have said that “Eskimo” is derived from a Montagnais (Innu) word “ayas˘kimew” meaning “netter of snowshoes.” However, since colonists imposed the name on the Alaska Native people, many consider the term derogatory. Kalloch says although many elders still self-identify as Eskimo, younger Alaska Natives are preferring to return to using the names from their Native languages.

Regardless of this debate, Kalloch says the event is about collaboration among Native people, especially in Alaska. “It is such a harsh environment, and a hard place to survive back in the day. Community and cooperation is very, very important,” she says, even among the athletes. “That is the way these games are played.”

In addition to games, multigenerational dance and song performances are still held and a Miss WEIO is chosen as the best representative of her community. Faith Peters (Athabascan) is one of the organizers of the Tanana Dancers, a traditional group of more than a hundred dancers. She says for them, the event is all about honoring not only WEIO’s “queen” but the elders and other family members in attendance as well as preserving Alaska Native heritage. “We have 32 Koyukon Athabascan written songs,” says Peters.” We teach that if you have and know this many songs, your culture will never die.”

Remarkable Feats

Just as in the other World Olympics, in WEIO’s more than 20 strenuous events, men still compete against men and women against women for gold, silver and bronze medals. Each event still has ties to the traditional skills from which it originated.

Chris Anderson (Inupiaq), who has attended WEIO since the 1960s and who now serves as its emcee, says he enjoys the blanket toss event, known as “Nalukataq.” This is a celebratory activity, during which individuals standing on a large walrus or bearded seal-skin blanket held by dozens of people are thrown into the air. Anderson lightheartedly speculated that perhaps Alaska Natives used the event to look for whales.

All that energy from dozens of people can produce impressive results. “You have to let the blanket do all the work. You have to land and hit the rhythm. If you get a good balanced blanket, you go straight up,” he says. “There have been times where people have had to duck or put their elbow up to shield their face from hanging lights on the ceiling!”

Another notable event is the knuckle hop, also known as the seal hop, during which the athlete hops only on his or her knuckles and toes as if a hunter was emulating the movements of a seal. The distance is then measured and recorded.

According to WEIO, the ear weight event, during which a person carries weights tied to a string over one’s ear, and the ear pull event, during which two people place a string on their ears and pull with all of their force to see who can take the most discomfort, arise from how much pain a person could tolerate in relation to the sting of frostbite. Originally, a single piece of sinew, which could have a sharp edge, was used, but later this became braided.

Austin Sumdum (Tlingit) says he travels from his home in Juneau to participate in several WEIO events because he enjoys the challenge. But the events are not without risk of injury. One ear pull event caused him to need medical attention. “It was beginning to slide off, and the inner dark guy inside me was like, ‘no, keep going.’ As it was getting ready to come off, it just latched onto a part of my ear,” he says. “I just went with the momentum.” Sumdum received seven stitches to close a serious cut to the inside of his ear.

Of the many different events in which Sumdum has participated, he says he truly enjoys the kneel jump, during which an athlete sits in a kneeling position, feet facing up toward the ceiling, and thrusts into a standing position. The distance the athlete jumps from the ground is then measured. Sumdum says this event originates from the need to move quickly if a person was ever kneeling on frozen ice that began to break. “People up north in Alaska, like in Barrow or in that region, they’d have to think super quickly when it came to the ice,” he says. “It just happens really fast. I’ve never experienced it myself, but that’s what I’ve always been told.”

The Indian stick pull and the Eskimo stick pull are two similar events during which two people sit facing each other and pull either a greased stick (the Indian stick pull) or a larger stick that is not greased (the Eskimo stick pull). The Indian stick pull is supposed to simulate pulling a slippery fish out of the water and the Eskimo stick pull is a simulation of pulling a seal through the ice.

Several events involve an athlete trying to touch a ball hanging from a stand several feet from the floor either by jumping up to kick it with one foot or two or with one hand. Bernard Clark (Athabascan) is a prominent force, specializing in the one-hand reach. During this event, an athlete must touch the ball with one hand—but not while standing. “So you’re sitting on the floor and you have both your hands on the floor. From there, you hoist your body off the ground on just your hands. With one hand you balance on one hand and your dominant hand goes up and touches the ball.”

Clark is the world record holder in the event. From a single hand stand, he has touched a ball 5 feet 10 inches from the ground, just 4 inches shorter than Clark himself.

Other events include: the four-man carry, during which one person carries four individuals draped over the athlete’s body to test tolerance for carrying heavy loads; drop the bomb, during which a person stretches out like an airplane and held by volunteers, holds the form as long as he or she can; and the toe kick, during which the athlete stands with his or her toes at a starting line and jumps forward to kick a stick backward, with feet parallel, to try to land the furthest distance from the sticks’ starting mark.

True Sportsmanship

Kalloch says although the games are competitive, WEIO has a great spirit of community and camaraderie. During competition, opponents often offer tips to each other in the midst of the events.

“When we say competition here, it means a very different thing than what it does in other communities,” says Kalloch. “These guys and these ladies, they’re competing mostly with themselves. So when you’re there and you’re watching the game, people are always like, ‘What the heck?’ Because the people who are competing against each other are actually coaching each other and helping each other, and giving each other advice throughout the competition.”

WEIO presents four special recognition awards every year. While the Howard Rock Memorial Outstanding Athlete Award is given to the best all-around athlete based on highest number of points, the others go to those on personal merit. They include the A. E. “Bud” Hagberg Memorial Sportsmanship Athletic Award, the recipient of which is chosen by his or her fellow athletes; the Frank Whaley Award for Outstanding Contributions given to an individual or company that has given considerable time, money and effort toward the events; and the Olive Anderson Volunteer Award.

Bernard Clark says that as an Athabascan man, seeing the athletes support each other is inspiring: “When you try to fuel on your other competitors, you feel enlightenment. There are so many feelings to it. That enlightenment is just the beginning. There’s a lot of happiness in doing things right for the games. That just really warms your heart. I’ve got to say, there’s nothing like it.”

Watch WEIO events live at facebook.com/weioak and facebook.com/explorefairbanks.

Authors

Vincent Schilling

Vincent Schilling is an Akwesasne Mohawk journalist, public speaker and author.

The Creator's Game: Native People Created Lacrosse Yet Now Strive to Play the Sport in International Arenas

KlingbielEL — Thu, 15 Apr 2021 19:14:50 +0000

Preserving Traditions

The Creator's Game: Native People Created Lacrosse Yet Now Strive to Play the Sport in International Arenas

From Issue: Spring 2021 / Vol. 22 No. 1

by Vincent Schilling

Every spring, youth in more than 40 countries are donning helmets and pads while gripping sticks with nets, poised to toss a small rubber ball into a goal. As of 2021, this game—lacrosse—continues to gain traction at an international level. Yet few may realize this team sport is one of the oldest in North America and has deep roots in Native culture. And even though the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (Iroquois) introduced lacrosse to the world and even participated as one of three teams at the 1904 Olympics, more than a century later, the founding culture of this sport is still striving to play it in arenas around the world.

The Iroquois Nationals played against Team Canada Lacrosse at the 2015 World Indoor Lacrosse Championship at Syracuse University. Canada won the gold medal, and the Nationals won the silver.

Photo by Vincent Schilling

Encouraged by his wife, Akwesasne Mohawk Jack Johnson learned traditional lacrosse stick making from master stick maker Alf Jacques. Here Johnson is carving a stick from hickory wood and will later string it with cow hide gut wall. Each can take up to 10 months to make.

Photo by Casey Vock

Akwesasne Mohawk Jack Johnson created the bottom two lacrosse sticks in 2019 for the NMAI “Native New York” exhibition. The smallest is a cradle stick, which is traditionally given to Haudenosaunee boys upon birth, and made of wood, leather, rawhide and imitation sinew, 23.9” x 3” x 1.5”, EP1302. The middle lacrosse stick is made from wood, leather, rawhide and cord, 42” x 6.5” x 2.6”, EP1301. The top lacrosse stick was created by a St. Regis Mohawk tribal member in 1895 of wood and rawhide and is about 55” x 8.5” x 2.25”. 13/2978

Photo by NMAI Staff

Iroquois Nationals co-founder Oren Lyons (Onondaga, far right) walks with his team in Whittier Narrows Recreation Area in Los Angeles, California, in 1984, the team’s first year of world competition. Lee Lyons (Seneca, center) carries a traditional men’s feathered headpiece called a “gustoweh,” and Sid Hill (far left, now Tadadaho, leader of the Haudenosaunee and Onondaga chief), holds an eagle staff.

Photo by Mike Greenlar

This helmet was worn by Lyle Thompson (Onondaga) during the 2018 World Lacrosse Championship in Netanya, Israel.

Photo by NMAI Staff

Jerome “Haina” Thompson’s (Onondaga) Iroquois Nationals jersey, 2018. Lacrosse stick maker Jack Johnson lent both objects to NMAI’s “Native New York” exhibition.

Photo by NMAI Staff

This passport is a symbol of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s sovereignty. The Onondaga Nation donated it to NMAI’s “Native New York” exhibition.

Photo by NMAI Staff

The four Thompson brothers (Onondaga)—Miles, Lyle, Jeremy and Haina—proudly wear their silver medals their team won at the 2015 World indoor Lacrosse Championships. At center is their spiritual advisor, Tracy Shenandoah (Onondaga), who helps guide them not only as players but as representatives of their culture and traditions.

Photo by Vincent Schilling

A Healing Gift

The Haudenosaunee believe lacrosse was a gift from the Creator. Some tell the story of Sky Woman, who fell to Earth and landed on the back of a great turtle. Sky Woman rubbed the back of the turtle with soil, which became the Earth or as it known in many Native cultures, Turtle Island.

Sky Woman later had a daughter, Tekawerahkwa or Breath of the Wind, who gave birth to twins. One, Sapling, was good, and the other, Flint, was bad. They always fought, even in the womb. While Sapling’s birth was normal, Flint erupted out of his mother’s armpit, killing her. As the twin’s grandmother, Sky Woman, raised the boys, she decided they should play lacrosse to peacefully resolve their disputes.

Rick Hill (Tuscarora), co-founder of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s lacrosse team, the Iroquois Nationals, relayed another story about the sport’s origins: “Some warriors went to the Sky World, the spiritual realm beyond the clouds, and found that a lacrosse game was going on, much to the delight of the spirits on that other side. Because the game was a way for the men to work out their aggression without violence, it became the Creator’s favorite game. When those warriors returned from the Sky World and had learned to give up killing, they introduced the game of lacrosse and we have been playing it ever since.”

Lacrosse continues to be an essential part of Haudenosaunee identity and culture, and Hill says that the game still has the ability to heal. “It is recreation, social, spiritual and metaphysical in that it represents a form of medicine power,” he says. “The power of the stick, the movement of the ball and player conduct contributed to its ability to entertain or to cure.”

Hill says traditionally, “Each family and clan had lacrosse players. They were admired for the natural abilities, fleetness of foot, agility to move past defenders, and the accuracy of their passing and scoring. In the old days, a single pole would serve as the goal and the players had to hit it with a leather or wooden ball. Later, two fork poles were placed in the ground and another pole was placed crosswise for the goal. Old games were played until one team scored three goals.” Today the games are played based on four 12-minute quarters.

Jack Johnson (Akwesasne Mohawk) is a lacrosse stick maker who uses traditional materials such as hickory wood that are harvested locally for the sticks and rawhide gut wall to weave the nets. “Making lacrosse sticks is kind of my medicine,” he says. “It just keeps me happy. I think in creating something, where you harvest and cut the trees, as long as you are in a good mind and you do it the original way, that’s what it is all about.”

Today, traditional sticks are still given to young children, even while they are still in the crib. Youth begin to play the game starting at age seven in pee wee leagues. Some players still use traditional sticks to practice at home. To the Iroquois, an important aspect of the game is remembering the traditional origins of the sport.

Going International

Though Native players brought the sport of lacrosse to the world, they have often been banned from playing it. Beginning in the 1630s, when Jesuits first saw lacrosse being played, they condemned it, saying it was violent and that bets were placed on the sport. In 1740 French colonists began to play but were no match for the Haudenosaunee players.

In the 1840s, non-Native players began to take up the sport. In 1856, William George Beers founded the Montreal Lacrosse Club and created new rules to shorten the game. In the 1860s the sport became Canada’s national game. Then in 1867, the National Lacrosse Association (NLA) of Canada prohibited Indigenous players from joining. In 1880, they were banned from playing in championship games.

Though history has largely omitted their involvement, Iroquois lacrosse players competed at the 1904 Olympic games as did the Winnipeg Shamrocks. The last year the sport was recognized at the Olympics was 1908, when only two teams played, one from Canada and the other from Great Britain. The Iroquois did not play.

However, not until the Iroquois Nationals was formed in 1983 was the team considered a true contender. The Nationals is the only all-Native lacrosse team. Oren Lyons (Onondaga) and Hill co-founded the team to assert Native representation in the sport and Haudenosaunee sovereignty while showing the world that a Native team was deserving of international recognition.

The first years the team played it was defeated by collegiate teams. In 1984, the Iroquois Nationals defeated England at a special tribute game prior to the Los Angeles Olympic games. The following year team members used their Iroquois passports to play in England.

Though the team played at a high level, its climb to participate at the championship levels was at first stifled by the official international governing body of the sport, the Indoor Lacrosse Federation (ILF). In 1986, the Iroquois Nationals’ petition to take part in 1986 World Indoor Lacrosse Championships was denied by the ILF. The reasons for denial are unclear, but many cite the Nationals’ unique position as a team from a sovereign Native nation as a possible reason. However, the following year, the ILF accepted the Nationals as the fifth team from a nation, along with those from Australia, Canada, England and the United States.

As the only Native team in the ILF, they competed in their first international event at the 1990 World Indoor Lacrosse Championships, finishing fifth out of five teams. They would win their first world championship series match in 1994 against Japan with a score of 16–2. The Nationals have since won two bronze medals in 2014 and 2018 at the World Lacrosse Championships. Additionally, the team hosted the 2015 World Indoor Lacrosse Championships at the Onondaga Nation, winning a silver medal.

Though lacrosse was traditionally seen solely as a men’s sport, the formation of the Iroquois Nationals inspired Haudenosaunee women to create the Haudenosaunee Women’s Lacrosse team. The team was officially recognized by the Federation of International Lacrosse (FIL) in 2008. Today, the lacrosse leagues in North America are three men’s leagues—the National Lacrosse League, Major League Lacrosse and Premier Lacrosse League—and two women’s, the Women’s Professional Lacrosse League and United Women’s Lacrosse League.

A Stamp of Sovereignty

In order to participate in the international competitions such as the Olympics, teams must come from nations recognized by the International Olympic Committee. Otherwise, they may never make it into the country where they are supposed to be competing.

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy has issued passports since 1927. These were widely accepted at borders until the terrorist attacks targeting New York and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001, increased security measures and restricted border crossings. Some foreign nations have refused to recognize the confederacy as a sovereign entity independent of the United States or Canada, on which six Native nations that belong to the confederacy—the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora—reside.

Since then, the Iroquois Nationals has been at the center of controversy for its members having passports that foreign nations have not recognized. They have had to wait at airports for officials to decide whether they will accept their passports or cause them to forfeit games. When playing Canada in the Onondaga World Indoor Lacrosse Championships in 2015, some non-Native Canadian players refused to have their passports stamped in the Onondaga Nation tribal offices.

In 2010, the Nationals was planning on playing in the World Lacrosse Championships in Manchester, England. To ensure their passports would be accepted upon their return to the United States, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton granted a one-time waiver of passport requirements. However, Great Britain refused to recognize the passports of Iroquois Nationals players, effectively disallowing them to participate.

The Nationals’ attempts to play in the World Lacrosse Championship in Israel in 2018 looked precarious as well. But at the last moment, the passport restrictions between Canada and Israel were resolved and the team was able to play.

The women’s team has also faced passport issues, and in 2015, withdrew its U19 (players under 19 years old) team from the World Championships in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 2017, the players celebrated a victory of recognition and traveled to Guilford, England, using their passports to compete in the FIL Women’s World Cup.

As Tadadaho Sid Hill, the traditional leader of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and Onondaga Nation, wrote in an October 2015 editorial for The Guardian: “We travel the world on our own passports, embracing the full rights extended by the rules of international law and diplomacy. Too often, our passports are denied by the very countries that took our land. They call them ‘fantasy documents,’ but they are not.”

A World-Class Gesture

The Nationals hasn’t always received a cold reception, however. Thirty-five countries have officially recognized its members’ passports, and one team even stepped aside so that the Nationals could play.

After the 2018 Men’s World Championships, the eight top teams were selected to represent their nations at the next World Games. The Nationals had placed third at the 2018 World Championships, while Ireland’s team Ireland Lacrosse placed 12th. Yet because the sovereignty of the team’s nationality status was still being questioned and it lacked an official Olympic committee, the Nationals was not among the eight teams invited to participate in the 2022 Men’s Lacrosse U21 World Championship games in Limerick, Ireland.

Ireland Lacrosse did receive an invitation. But its team members thought about the nine massive stainless-steel eagle feathers that reach to the sky in Midleton, Ireland—a memorial to the Choctaw Nation’s generous gift of $170 to Ireland in 1847, during the country’s famine. The gift has never been forgotten. Ireland Lacrosse pulled out of the event and gave its spot to the Nationals. The gesture was accepted by the International World Games Association and The World Games 2022 Organizing Committee of Birmingham.

“I was very thankful for the call that notified me that we were in the World Games,” says Leo Nolan (Akwesasne Mohawk), the executive director of the Iroquois Nationals Lacrosse Program. “But my other reaction was empathy for the Irish team. Our connectedness to the folks in Ireland became even closer.”

In a show of solidarity, the Irish and Iroquois Nationals created T-shirts sporting both teams’ colors and the Iroquois Nationals’ logos. On them is the statement in Gaelic “I dteannta a chéile,” or “Together as one.”

Moving Forward

The number of lacrosse players in North America is significant. According to a 2017 U.S. Lacrosse survey, about 830,000 Americans participate in lacrosse. The Canadian Lacrosse Association has 100,000 registered players. World Lacrosse recognizes all five lacrosse leagues and 68 national teams.

The Haudenosaunee women’s lacrosse team is aiming to play in the 2022 Women’s World Championship in Towson, Maryland. The Iroquois Nationals is vying for a shot to compete once again in the Olympics, this time in Los Angeles in 2028. But first the International Olympic Committee must acknowledge the team’s Olympic Committee.

Whether or not the Nationals team plays in the Olympics will not impact the inherent importance of lacrosse in Haudenosaunee culture and as an indicator of the confederacy’s sovereignty. Former Executive Director of the Iroquois Nationals Ansley Jemison (Seneca) says the members of the Iroquois Nationals are not just athletes but also representatives of the confederacy. “These are really outstanding young men, leaders, and outstanding people in the communities,” he says. “It can be challenging because you’ve got a lot of very highly talented players and some of the things that we’re going to ask them to do, go to an international border and carry a passport and stand up for the fact that we don’t want to travel with the U.S. or Canadian passport. We are representing who we are, the original people of Turtle Island.”

Iroquois Nationals player Randy Staats (Mohawk) says it’s all about representing his community. “Growing up on the reserve and knowing what it means to myself, my family, our community and our Haudenosaunee people who invented the sport . . . is awesome. That’s why I feel more connected to the game, because when I’m playing, I’m not just representing my family, I’m representing more than that.”

For more than a decade, the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., has hosted the presentation ceremony of the Tewaaraton Award. This award is given annually to the most outstanding U.S. college lacrosse men and women players. (“Tewaaraton” is the Mohawk word for lacrosse). Because the museum has not yet reopened due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Tewaaraton Foundation will be hosting this year’s awards.

In 2013, Lyle Thompson became the first American Indian to be named a player in the top five men’s finalists. Brothers Lyle Thompson and Miles Thompson (Onondaga) were given the top Tewaaraton award in 2014, and Lyle Thompson won it again in 2015. They and their other two brothers have become the poster children of lacrosse.

In spite of being seen as a lacrosse superstar, Lyle says he still has his people in mind when he plays. “Every game I play, I am thinking about traditions, the Creator and why I am playing this game,” he says. “I am just thankful to be playing the Creator’s game.”

Authors

Vincent Schilling

Vincent Schilling is an Akwesasne Mohawk journalist, public speaker and author.

Winter Bounty: Indigenous Chefs Sustain Communities Amid a Pandemic

KlingbielEL — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 20:24:38 +0000

Preserving Traditions

Winter Bounty: Indigenous Chefs Sustain Communities Amid a Pandemic

From Issue: Winter 2020 / Vol. 21 No. 4

by Aaron Levin

For chefs Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino, late autumn is the time for “yuu,” or acorns, a traditional staple for the Ohlone people of California’s northern coast. “Big, fat acorns begin to drop in fall, and that begins the start of a long process of gathering, storing, drying, shelling, peeling, winnowing, grinding and leaching until the acorn is ready to be served as a creamy, sweet soup or crusty, gelatinous ball of acorn bread,” they recalled last year in a post on their Cafe Ohlone website.

Cafe Ohlone was not just a business when Medina (Chochenyo Ohlone) and Trevino (Rumsen Ohlone) opened it in Berkeley, California, in September 2018. It was part of a larger revival of Ohlone culture and language, shaped by the traditional foods that their elders remembered. Then in March 2020, Cafe Ohlone closed, another victim of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since COVID-19 restrictions have prevented groups of people from gathering, restaurants across the world have closed or temporarily shuttered, including National Museum of the American Indian’s Mitsitam and Mili Kàpi Cafes. Native-owned restaurants or those serving Native cuisine have been hit hard.

In Indigenous communities, this loss comes with additional price. Some of these restaurants have been reviving their ancestors’ food traditions and have become a critical source of food for elders and others. “The COVID pandemic had devastating effects in Indian Country,” says Loretta Oden (Citizen Potawatomi Nation of Oklahoma), former owner of the Corn Dance Cafe in Santa Fe, New Mexico. “Access to healthy food is on a day-to-day basis, and there have been terrible problems among the Navajo and in Montana and the Dakotas.”

Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino at their Cafe Ohlone in Berkeley, California, are now among the many Native chefs who are now feeding their communities with take-out cuisine rather than sit-down dinners because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo courtesy of Cafe Ohlone

Sean Sherman, The Sioux Chef, forages for wild foods throughout the year for his Native recipes. Here is searching for ramps (wild onions) in Osceola, Wisconsin. Photo by Dana Thompson

Chef Loretta Oden, preparing a Three Sisters Salad with a light coriander vinaigrette, says,“What goes into the food is not just the ingredients. It’s your love and your spirit.” Photo Courtesy of Loretta Oden

Chef and caterer Tawnya Brant, here holding a red Boletus mushroom, says about 70 percent of the food she serves is harvested locally. Photo by Lisa Macintosh Photography

Served with Spirit

Yet the pandemic has also revealed deep layers of resilience. As the virus spread, many chefs continued to care for their customers and others in their communities. For chefs, preparing food is more than a job, says Oden, who now works as a consultant to other chefs. “What goes into the food is not just the ingredients,” she says. “It’s your love and your spirit and your heart that goes into the food that makes it taste good.”

While waiting to bring Cafe Ohlone fully back to life, for instance, Trevino and Medina are filling wood boxes with ingredients that once comprised their special Saturday night dinners. These include acorn soup; locally gathered herbs and teas; watercress, blackberries and gooseberries for salad topped with a blackberry, bay laurel and smoked-walnut dressing; chia-seed porridge and acorn-flour brownies with sea salt. The boxes are completed with a beeswax candle and a way to access a Vimeo recording about the Ohlone peoples.

Across the country in Holyoke, Massachusetts, Chef Neftali Duran (Ñuu Savi, Mixtec) has been spearheading the Holyoke Food and Equity Collective, a new organization built on an old principle. “A lot of chefs are doing mutual aid work now,” says Duran, who until 2015 owned El Jardin, a wood-fired bakery in South Deerfield, Massachusetts. He now works on the Share Our Strength campaign, which helps feed children. Such assistance in and among Native people is nothing new. Duran points to a long tradition of communities helping each other, whether to survive the winter or just get to the end of the month.

After the pandemic hit, Duran organized volunteers from the collective to pick crops at local farms. “There are a lot of farmers in western Massachusetts,” says Duran. “They grow food for people to eat, not to spoil in the field.”

The gleaners from the collective pick crops the farmers can’t harvest themselves. People invest their time and labor, which builds trust between the farmers and the volunteers; no money changes hands. The crops—50,000 pounds of food in the organization’s first year—go to community centers or food banks.

“We can pick and transport crops quickly, so people who must get their food at those places can get market-quality food the same day it’s picked, not poor quality, leftover food,” says Duran. “That maintains people’s dignity.”

In Minnesota, Diné Chef Brian Yazzie of the Gatherings Cafe at the Minneapolis American Indian Center works with volunteers to develop #FeedingOurElders, a nonprofit organization that provides healthy lunches using Native foods five days a week for Indigenous elders. Last spring, this organization and others became even more needed as Minneapolis took a double hit.

“The pandemic ripped off the social safety net and laid bare the disproportionate vulnerabilities of Native peoples,” says Dana Thompson (Wahpeton-Sisseton/Mdewakanton Dakota,), co-founder and executive director of the North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NATIFS). Then, during the protests following the death of George Floyd during his arrest on May 25, 2020, in Minneapolis, many grocery stores and pharmacies in the city were destroyed. Thompson says, “We jumped into action to fill the void.”

Thompson and her colleague Sean Sherman (Oglala Lakota), founder of the restaurant Owamni by The Sioux Chef and co-founder of NATIFS, have been working to turn out 7,000 meals a day for distribution to elders and others in need in six tribal communities. Using local producers as much as possible, Sherman created and tested recipes. His team then developed packaging that would withstand freezing, thawing and transportation. When the food was delivered, they made sure that recipients had a two-week supply on hand should they test positive for COVID-19 and have to shelter in place.

“During the current pandemic situation, we’ve witnessed first-hand how unstable our industrial food system is and how quickly those systems broke down. Access to nutritional foods is critical, especially during a crisis. But we’ve seen access to food itself become limited—making our efforts to produce and distribute nutritional meals all the more important to our tribal communities,” says Sherman.

“Our mission is to decolonize the food system,” he says. “This means giving as many people as possible access to Indigenous foods and the knowledge needed to operate Indigenous food-focused enterprises. It also means a need for more traditional growers, foragers and other culture bearers as demand increases.”

With every meal provided, Sherman and Thompson are also helping sustain Native knowledge by incorporating foods that each tribe traditionally used. They use only Native ingredients bought, as much as possible, from Indigenous vendors. That means eliminating foods derived from Europe and Asia—no wheat, dairy, beef, pork, chicken or refined sugar. Instead, they serve meats such as bison, rabbit, duck and turkey and plants like squash, beans, corn, wild rice, sweet potatoes and cranberries. They are also launching an Indigenous food lab and developing a curriculum to spread their knowledge of food and its preparation so that tribal members can make their own culturally appropriate foods.

Those foods offer more than just a connection with the precontact past, says Thompson. “They have lots of anti-inflammatory flavonoids and low-glycemic content, which can help reduce diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity.”

Nourishing Traditions

The varied responses of all of these Native chefs fit with tradition while making sense as business survival strategies, says Courtney Lewis (Cherokee), an associate professor of anthropology at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. “Any chef who works with hyper-localized ingredients has to be adaptive and creative,” says Lewis, who has studied Native small businesses and food heritage.

Historically, winter’s food supply varied with geography, says Lewis. American Indians could gather food throughout the winter in the south, but farmers, hunters and foragers in all regions could dry or preserve food harvested from other seasons. Fish could be salted or smoked, meat dehydrated and corn, beans or squash dried.

Even though potatoes were domesticated in the Andes 4,500 years ago, they didn’t reach North America until the Spanish reintroduced them in 1531. Other tubers were available, however. Fernando and Marlene Divina (Chippewa/Cree and Assiniboine descent) co-authored NMAI’s book “Foods of the Americas: Native Recipes and Traditions.” Fernando recalls gathering wapatos in Oregon wetlands. With arrow-shaped leaves, these tuber-producing plants are found from southern Canada to Ecuador.

“In fact, Native Americans had a pretty delicious diet until March, when people got tired of root vegetables,” says Lewis. “That’s what makes early spring greens like ramps and sochan so desirable. By then, people need them both nutritionally and for their mental well-being.”

Wheat only arrived with Europeans. Thus while some may view fry bread as a “typical” American Indian food today, it holds an ambiguous place in culinary history. On one hand, wheat is the embodiment of colonizing cuisine, one of the bulk foodstuffs forced onto Natives as part of the reservation process. Some Native chefs won’t serve fry bread because of that association, but Canadian chef Tawnya Brant (Haudenosaunee) takes no sides in that argument. She says, “Our grandmothers fed us with what they had, and I won’t talk down the things that sustained us.”

Brant has been a chef for 27 years. She is now catering, and in November 2020, she finally had a chance to open her own restaurant, “Yawekon.” For now, her restaurant is a takeout-only lunchtime eatery on the Six Nations Reserve near Hamilton, Ontario. Slow-cooked favorites include corn soup, rabbit stew with root vegetables, and a braised bison and wild rice bowl with maple glazed squash, cilantro, lime, onions, beans and corn.

“At least 70 percent of our food is harvested locally, but I’m open to any Indigenous cuisine,” says Brant. “All our edibles cycle through our calendar year, and I’d like to expose our people to that.” She looks to the future, when she may be able to serve more customers again.

Other Native chefs are dealing with the present but also have their eyes on the horizon. Sherman and Thompson will eventually open Owamni by The Sioux Chef, their dream restaurant on Native lands by the banks of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. Back in California’s East Bay, Medina and Trevino are slowly pulling the pieces together for a revived, post-COVID Cafe Ohlone on their ancestral homelands. They want to buy a building to house not only a full-scale restaurant but also a cultural center for the Ohlone people, one that will foster both the culture and the language of their ancestors. In time, they will join other Native chefs across North America in again bringing the immense variety of Indigenous foods to customers more than ready for a post-pandemic dinner out.

Native Recipes

Here are some favorite recipes from Indigenous chefs and the National Museum of the American Indian. Try them individually or all together to make a meal that shows a glimpse into the rich bounty of foods from across Native America.

Corn Dumplings

Cherokee and Sauk, Oklahoma and Great Lakes
By Fernando Divina
divinAmerica.com

Serves 6

2 cups fresh corn kernels, cut from the cob
1 cup unbleached flour
3 tablespoons cornmeal
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons soft butter
1 to 2 tablespoons milk or water

Place corn in a bowl and mash the kernels with a fork. Alternatively, place the kernels in a food processor and pulse the corn until it is coarse and unevenly textured. Blend the flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Add the corn mixture and fold the ingredients together. Cut in the butter. Add enough milk to form a stiff batter.

Drop shaped spoonfuls of the dumpling mixture into a simmering broth. Cover tightly and place in a very hot oven for 10 to 12 minutes or until a knife tip or wooden pick, when inserted, comes away clean.

Corn and Black Bean Bison Meatballs with Wild Green Salad

Lakota/Dakota, Plains
By The Sioux Chef
sioux-chef.com

Serves 6

1 pound ground bison
1 ear fresh corn, kernels
1 small white onion, diced
5 small cloves of garlic, minced
1 can black beans, drained
Oregano, chopped
Chives, chopped
Sage, chopped
Sunflower oil
Kosher salt
Blue corn tortillas
Wild dandelion leaves, plantain leaves, creeping charlie leaves or wild greens
Rhubarb, sliced thin
Yellow tomatoes, thinly sliced in quarters
Blackberries

Bison Meatballs

Place ground bison in a large bowl. Add garlic, onions, corn, black beans, salt. oregano, chives and sage. Mix all ingredients by hand.

Using a scoop, make tightly packed meatballs. Set aside on platter.

Preheat a cast-iron pan on a grill and add a little sunflower oil. Gently add meatballs and let sear. Sprinkle with salt. Do not move around to allow each to caramelize. Carefully turn meatball to sear on all sides.

Move meatballs to the side and grill the tortillas in a little oil.

Wild Greens Salad

Build the salad in a bowl with rhubarb and wild greens, such as dandelion, plantain and creeping charlie or other greens of your choice.

Blackberry Dressing

Crush blackberries using a fork.

Add a little sunflower oil. Place meatballs in a tortilla. Drizzle on some blackberry dressing and chives. Add fresh greens and yellow tomatoes.

Blueberry Sweetgrass Vinaigrette

Haudenosaunee, Northeast Region
By Tawnya Brant
cheftawnyabrant.com

2 cups blueberries (fresh or frozen)
½ cup pure maple syrup
2 teaspoons sweetgrass
½ cup apple cider vinegar
½ cup sunflower oil

Note: If you have maple vinegar, you can replace the apple cider vinegar and use only half the amount of maple syrup (¼ cup maple syrup).

Place blueberries and sweetgrass in a pan and bring to a boil. Let simmer on low for 5 minutes. Turn off and set aside to come to room temperature.

Berries can be strained or the sweetgrass pulled out and the whole berries can be used in the dressing.

Put blueberries in blender and blend for 10 seconds. Place the rest of the ingredients into a blender for 30 seconds. Refrigerate any unused dressing.

This dressing can be used up to one week.

Crispy Potatoes

Ohlone, Northern California
By Cafe Ohlone
makamham.com/cafeohlone

Serves 6 to 8

2 pounds fingerling or other small waxy potatoes, scrubbed
4 fresh bay leaves
Kosher salt
3 tablespoons duck fat, room temperature
6 scallions, sliced on a diagonal into ½-inch pieces

Preheat oven to 425° F. Combine potatoes, bay leaves and a few handfuls of salt in a large pot. Pour in cold water to cover potatoes by 2 inches. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until potatoes are fork-tender, 25 to 35 minutes.

Drain and transfer potatoes and bay leaves to a large rimmed baking sheet. Coat evenly with duck fat; season with salt. Roast, shaking baking sheet once or twice, until golden and beginning to crisp, 25 to 30 minutes.

Remove from oven and mix in scallions. Return to oven and roast until scallions are softened and browned at the edges and potatoes are golden brown and crisp, 10 to 15 minutes. Transfer to a serving dish.

Chestnut Pudding

Appalachia and Northeast Regions
By Richard Hetzler, “The Mitsitam Cafe Cookbook”

Serves 4 to 6

½ cup unsweetened chestnut puree
¾ cup brown sugar
3 eggs
2 cups heavy cream
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ cup dried cherries

Preheat oven to 350° F. Butter an 8-inch square baking dish.

In a medium bowl, combine all ingredients and stir to mix well.

Pour into prepared dish. Place the dish in a roasting pan and add hot water to pan to come up halfway up the sides of the dish. Bake 45 to 50 minutes or until firm to the touch. Serve warm.

You can enjoy all the recipes in “The Mitsitam Café Cookbook” by ordering it online: americanindian.si.edu/store. Order by January 31, 2021, and get a 30 percent discount. Published by the National Museum of the American Indian in association with Fulcrum Publishing. © 2010 Smithsonian Institution.

Authors

Aaron Levin

Aaron Levin is a freelance journalist based in Baltimore, Maryland.

The Heart of the Hopi

sysadmin — Mon, 12 Aug 2019 14:22:24 +0000

Preserving Traditions

The Heart of the Hopi

From Issue: Fall 2019 / Vol. 20 No. 3

by Aaron Levin

As a boy, Stewart B. Koyiyumptewa awoke early on spring days to plant corn, following his grandfather out to Dinnebito Wash, the dry riverbed below their village on the Hopi Reservation in northeast Arizona. Like their ancestors, they tramped up the wash, stopping every few paces to clear off a patch of sandy topsoil with a hoe. Koyiyumptewa walked behind, digging into the moist earth below with a greasewood stick flattened at one end. He dropped a few kernels into each hole and covered them over with earth and sand.

A variety of un-husked corn. Photo courtesy of Michael Kotutwa Johnson

Many Hopi families teach their children how to raise corn by hand. Photo by Maria Elena Peterson, Courtesy of Michael Kotutwa Johnson

Whether using hoes to smooth soil more than a century ago (above, circa 1900) or digging sticks to plant seeds today (next), traditional Hopi farmers’ techniques have remained much the same. NMAI 04/501

Whether using hoes to smooth soil more than a century ago (prior, circa 1900) or digging sticks to plant seeds today (above), traditional Hopi farmers’ techniques have remained much the same. Photo courtesy of Michael Kotutwa Johnson

Families (such as the Quavehema family, circa 1980) will gather to pick the corn and then place it into a very deep fire pit, where the ears will smoke and steam overnight. The men will then remove the corn from the pit before the women take over and hang it to dry. Photo by Susanne Page

Rather than using pesticides, farmers pick beetles and other insects off the corn by hand. Photo by Maria Elena Peterson

Once dried, shucking the corn, a job that was done primarily by women (here Helen Sekaquaptewa, circa 1980), is now very much a community affair. Photo by Susanne Page

Once dried, shucking the corn, a job that was done primarily by women (previous Helen Sekaquaptewa, circa 1980), is now very much a community affair. Photo courtesy of Michael Kotutwa Johnson

A fungus found on the interior of corn leaves is often playfully smeared on children’s faces (such as Phyllis Coochyamptewa, circa 1980), another tradition that binds the corn to the past and future of Hopi farming. Photo by Susanne Page

At noon, they paused for a lunch of sandwiches, watermelon and paper-thin “piiki” bread made from blue Hopi corn. Then they returned to the slow, repetitive work of planting and cultivating corn in the dry land. Today, the same scene is repeated each year, for many Hopi families still plant crops the same way their ancestors did 2,000 years ago.

The Center of Hopi Life

Producing an ample corn crop is critical for the Hopi, for the plant provides far more than mere subsistence. All of Hopi life revolves around the corn planted each spring.

The Hopi people’s origin stories say that long ago, the Guardian Spirit, Màasaw, offered the clans several gifts: wood that would become the Hopi planting stick, a bag of corn kernels, a gourd of water and a small ear of blue corn. At Màasaw’s direction, the clans began an extended migration. They learned on the way to cultivate corn and a better life, one that embraced unity, selflessness, cooperation, harmony with nature and stewardship of the land.

Perhaps reflecting those early wanderings, the many colors bred into Hopi corn are still associated with directions across the landscape; yellow suggests northward; white, eastward; red, southward; and blue, westward; whereas purple signifies above and sweet corn, below.

Corn is present at every stage of life, every ceremony, every key moment in the cycle of the seasons, says Koyiyumptewa, now the program manager at the Hopi Culture Preservation Office in Kykotsmovi Village, Arizona. “Corn is the first thing they feed you when you’re born, and cornmeal sends you off to the spiritual world when you pass on.”

Hopi women have the authority to make many of the decisions about their community’s agriculture because Hopi clans are matrilineal. Husbands and unmarried sons grow corn for the clan of their wives and mothers. When a man marries, he moves to live with his wife’s clan and grows corn for its members.

In late winter, Hopi women look over their stocks of corn and consider what colors and quantities must be planted for the coming year. How much is needed for food? How much for festivities, ceremonies and prayers? Through their calculations, they direct the men what to plant. Before planting, the women prepare and bless the seeds to encourage a good harvest.

Armed with the women’s knowledge and the seeds to plant that year, the men venture into the fields. Depending on their assessment of soil moisture and the chances of frost, planting may start as early as April, but most corn goes into the ground in late May and early June. Yet uncertainty remains: A late spring frost can kill a whole crop, and an early fall frost reduces yield.

Farming with Dry Land

Corn was first domesticated about 9,000 years ago in the lowland tropics of Mexico. It was introduced to the region that is now the southwestern United States about 4,000 years ago, but it took another 2,000 years of close observation and careful selection by farmers for the corn to adapt to the area’s higher, drier elevations and shorter growing season. In the process, the Hopi people became masters of dry-land farming.

Hopi villages are located at the southwest ends of three highlands—called the First, Second and Third Mesas—that run down from the Colorado Plateau in northeastern Arizona. The mesas are separated by seasonal riverbeds called washes. The favored planting location is an “ak-chin” field, an area on the alluvial fan where the water spreads out at the mouth of the wash. Hopi can identify the soil’s capacity for moisture below by the kind and quantity of natural vegetation growing on the surface.

“The weeds will tell,” says Michael Kotutwa Johnson (Hopi). For instance, land adjacent to fields dominated by rabbitbrush indicates abundant soil moisture. Johnson and University of Arizona educator Lisa Falk co-curated an exhibition about “The Resiliency of Hopi Agriculture” that is on display at the Arizona State Museum—a Smithsonian Affiliate— through January 2020.

The Hopi farmers also grow beans, squash, melons and some fruit trees. Some of those fields may be irrigated, but the Hopi never irrigate their corn. That crop depends solely on two sources of water: winter snowfall and summer rain. Only the moisture stored in the soil is available from planting time until midsummer, when rains usually fall. The Hopi hedge their bets by planting corn in multiple fields in dissimilar locations up and down the wash or in side canyons. Planting at separate sites increases the chances that at least one will produce a good crop.

Once they decide where to plant, the Hopi men clear off any weeds and scrape away a small patch of the sandy surface layer of the soil. The sand serves as kind of mulch, preventing moisture in the loam below from evaporating too rapidly. The planters plunge the flat-tipped digging stick into the ground, creating a hole a foot deep, then plant eight to 12 kernels in each hole so the corn grows in clumps. Each clump is five to seven paces away from its neighbor to ensure that enough water is available for optimum growth. Depth and spacing can depend on soil moisture at planting time, the field’s location relative to rainwater runoff and whether it is composed of clay or loam, among other factors.

“Enormous amounts of traditional ecological knowledge are associated with dry farming,” says Susan Sekaquaptewa, a Hopi tribal member who works for the University of Arizona’s Cooperative Extension Program. “The environment dictates the technique, and you only learn that from experience.”

Conventional corn is planted only 2 inches deep and 6 to 8 inches apart. The Hopi plant their corn deeper to catch the moisture from the winter’s melted snow, which lies farther below the surface. That required careful selection of plants, preserving changes that became encoded in their genes. When Hopi corn germinates, the seed sends out a single strong root downward, searching for the water that lies even deeper in the ground. It also sends a shoot upward to the surface. These adaptations, which are lacking in conventional varieties, helped Hopi corn thrive in a hot, dry environment for 2,000 years.

“Hopi agriculture is the end result of a complicated process of culture, biology and environment,” says Kelly Swarts, a geneticist and archaeologist at the Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology at the University of Vienna. “The corn used by the Hopi today was mostly developed by the Hopi on the Hopi mesa in response to novel genetic variations. People took advantage of this variation in ways that made sense to them culturally and which were better adapted to the landscape they lived on.”

Once the new corn pokes up above the surface of the ground, Hopi farmers thin the stalks out, leaving only the tallest five to eight plants in each clump. That favors the genes that get plants established and growing quickly. The extra stalks are placed around the remaining plants to shield them from the wind and preserve soil moisture. The farmers do not use fertilizer or insecticides but rather patrol the fields during the summer to pick off cutworms that can damage the plants.

“Hopi is the only place I know where corn is planted to fit the environment,” says Johnson. “The environment is not manipulated to fit the corn.”

Most corn is ready at the young, milky stage by September, says Sekaquaptewa. Some is harvested then and eaten fresh, but it is only available for several weeks. Sweet corn gets special treatment, however. The Hopi men harvest most of it then and take it to a stonelined, bell-shaped pit where a fire has burned all day. They place the corn, still in the husk, in the pit, which cooks it, steaming overnight. The next morning before sunrise, the men remove the corn from the pit. The Hopi women then step in and prepare it for drying. They first clean off the husks and string the ears through the stem and hang them up to dry. When the ears are dry, the women can use this preserved corn in many ways. They can cut off the kernels and grind them into a corn meal of surprising sweetness. Alternatively, kernels can be shelled and added to stews. Boiling the whole dried ears later brings back their freshness so they can be eaten like newly harvested sweet corn. Some of the rest of the corn is left to mature and added to the seed stock for future years.

Later in the autumn, the Hopi men harvest the rest of the corn. They bring it home to their wives or mothers, who will once again carefully dry and store them. A select, few perfect ears are saved for ceremonial use. As the corn is picked, the farmers press the empty stalks into the ground to “put them to sleep,” says Sekaquaptewa. The roots stay in the ground to loosen and replenish the soil. The next year, clumps will be planted a few steps away so as not to exhaust the soil.

This planting cycle continues every year, as it has for a hundred generations. “Dry land farming is not about growing food; it is a religious practice,” says Sekaquaptewa. “It teaches us modesty and humility, to live in harmony with and respect the land and all that it gives to us. Farming is an inspiration for song. Life in the fields is poetry.”

Bending Not to Break

The annual rhythm of the corn has lasted two millennia. The Hopi have always adapted to change, but they live in a new era, one that brings new challenges to their way of life.

“As more people get involved in the modern working system and a cash economy, there is often not enough time to attend to farming,” says Sekaquaptewa. “It’s hard to combine the old and new ways at the same time, and it’s affecting how the culture gets transmitted.”

Many Hopi work hard to carry on the traditional planting, though. Michael Kotutwa Johnson is among those who take Hopi children out to the fields and talk to them about seeds and water and sun and their people’s deep-rooted tradition of farming corn. “Growing corn is how we learn about patience, responsibility, working together and the spiritual aspects of our ceremonies,” he says.

Stewart Koyiyumptewa also still plants part of his field by hand just so his 17-year-old son will understand his people’s traditional techniques and pass them on. Koyiyumptewa clears the rest of his land with a tractor equipped with a mechanical device that drops the kernels into the ground.

Meanwhile, a changing climate has made the Hopi lands hotter and drier, with less snowfall, later spring snows that can kill early plantings, and earlier autumn frosts that shorten the growing season. “Less snowfall means less soil moisture, and so the time from May to June before rain falls becomes more critical,” says Koyiyumptewa. “The rain comes late and often too little of it. The corn is stunted and the yield lower. With less rainfall, plowing causes the dry top layer of soil to blow away.”

The changing climate brings another concern. Over centuries, Hopi people have grown corn varieties that thrive better in their hot, dry environment. Today, corn breeders are interested in those qualities.

Many Hopi are concerned about the future of their beloved crop. They don’t want to see its genetic heritage disrupted, deliberately or accidentally, by crossbreeding with modern varieties. “Our corn has been adapted to this area for a long time and we need help to protect our seeds,” says Koyiyumptewa.

He also worries that large agribusiness conglomerates will exploit the genes in Hopi corn and patent the results, earning profits that would not be shared with the tribe. Thus far, that has not happened, and it is not easy to breed specific traits into commercial varieties. The U.S. Department of Agriculture corn gene bank in Ames, Iowa, has 59 samples of Hopi corn contributed from the 1950s through the 1970s, but it is unknown whether anyone has accessed them.

Leigh Kuwanwisiwma, former head of the Hopi Culture Preservation Office, would like to see the Hopi establish a seed bank on the reservation to safeguard their heritage. The seeds would be grown out every few years, but in traditional ways so the corn doesn’t lose the extraordinary genetic traits accumulated over more than 2,000 years. Such a plan would preserve not just the corn but also the Indigenous knowledge that surrounds it.

“We see corn as the gift of the spirit being that rules this world as the caretaker of corn,” says Kuwanwisiwma. “He gave us corn to be our soul. Hopi corn survives because our religion is still strong and our values are important to us.”

Authors

Aaron Levin

Aaron Levin is a freelance journalist based in Baltimore, Maryland.

Where Wašiw is Spoken: The Washoe Tribe is Passing Its Unique Language On and Up

sysadmin — Fri, 24 May 2019 13:40:00 +0000

Preserving Traditions

Where Wašiw is Spoken: The Washoe Tribe is Passing Its Unique Language On and Up

From Issue: Summer 2019 / Vol. 20 No. 2

by Christine Gordon & Sam Gordon

It is 3:30 p.m. in Wašiw country, and language class is in session. Two young girls sit side by side at a small table in a tribal community recreation center in Carson City, Nevada. They take turns responding as their teacher, Mischelle Dressler, holds up flash cards displaying words in the Wašiw language. When a phrase pops up that one can’t decipher, the other whispers the answer in her ear. “We call that being a ‘language angel,’” Dressler explains. “It’s a way of supporting each other and creating safe spaces to learn.”

A language unique to the some 1,500-member Washoe Tribe, Wašiw is now spoken fluently by fewer than 20 people. The tribe’s focus on language is not new; Dressler is part of a team of teachers who are striving to carry on a legacy of preservation and respect for all aspects of their culture, including Wašiw. (“Wašiw” is the spelling often preferred by Native speakers; the tribe used “Washoe” officially for the name of the tribe when incorporating in 1934.)

Lake Tahoe is the center of the Wašiw world. For generations, it has provided not only fish and other foods, but also a place to gather for ceremonies. iStock.com / mickie1

Mischelle Dressler is striving to preserve the Wašiw language by teaching it to children of the Washoe Tribe. Photo by Sam Gordon

Steven James would tell stories in the Wašiw language to students while another teacher would translate them into English. Photo by Herman Filmore

Wašiw fishermen such as Marty Meeden are reintroducing traditional practices, including teaching youth to make traps, nets and spears—“Ɂitlalit,” “digeš” and “Ɂitbayati”—out of willows. Photo courtesy of Isaac Chellman

Traditional activities, such as the women’s game “sigayuk,” (similar to field hockey) being played at the Washeshu ‘Itdeh festival in Valhalla at south Lake Tahoe, help perpetuate the Wašiw culture and language. Photo by Herman Filmore

The People of "DaɁaw"

Members of the Washoe Tribe live in four federally recognized communities: Carson, Dresslerville and Stewart in Nevada, and Woodfords in California. They occupy a landscape that changes abruptly from high desert to woodlands, and just over the massive Sierra Nevada mountain range to the northwest lies Lake Tahoe. This lake, which the Wašiw people refer to as “DaɁaw” (the lake) or “DaɁaw Ɂaga” (the edge of the lake), is the center of the Wašiw world; Wašiw creation stories say they have always lived there. Stories handed down from one generation to the next describe the lake’s many sacred sites and how the waters “breathed life” into the land, plants, fish, birds, animals and people around it.

Only in recent years, however, has the tribe regained access to portions of its original homelands around the lake; more than a century of mining, logging and real estate development had driven the tribe away. A massive influx of settlers in the mid-19th century transformed the landscape, encroaching on Wašiw homelands and disrupting every major ecosystem the tribe had so carefully tended. The arrival of newcomers led not only to the alteration of Wašiw lands but also to the destruction of their language and culture.

In the winter of 1890, federal officials began rounding up Wašiw children and hauling them to the newly opened Carson Indian School (later called the Stewart Indian School) south of Carson City. Their hair was shorn, their traditional clothing burned and they were forbidden from speaking their Native language. Stories of children being separated from their families are seared into the collective tribal memory. Wašiw elder and teacher Melba Rakow recalls an aunt telling stories of standing up to school authorities. “She would gather girls together for games on the playground and speak in Wašiw; she didn’t care about the punishment that would follow.” The generation of children who were taken away in the early to mid-1900s is often called the “stolen generation,” and many of the survivors still refuse to speak their mother tongue.

Saving a Unique Language

For decades, linguists grouped the Wašiw language into a larger language family known as the Hokan. Others have considered it a distinct branch of this family, but the Wašiw people have maintained that their language is a language isolate, unrelated to any of the surrounding tribes nor others who make up the Hokan language family.

Until the 1950s, Wašiw was solely a spoken language. Then Roma James, secretary-treasurer of the first Washoe Tribal Council, who was working with other speakers, many of whom were elders, began to transcribe tribal stories and create a Wašiw orthography. Soon after, Marvin Dressler, a Wašiw tribal member who later became one of the tribe’s first language teachers, began translating Wašiw words into phonetic English and recording them in detailed journals. As part of his doctoral research, William Jacobsen (who later became a University of Nevada, Reno [UNR] linguistic professor) recorded oral histories and songs, devised writing systems and created language teaching materials for the tribe. In 1964, Jacobsen completed his dissertation, “Washo Grammar,” and in 1979 he was hired to teach language classes two nights a week near Dresslerville. In the early 1980s, a group of language activists continued the tribe’s efforts through language circles that brought together elders to share stories in Wašiw with younger tribal members, often over a potluck dinner.

Language revitalization efforts took on a new life in the early 1990s. Laura Fillmore, a non-Native woman who at that time was living on the reservation with her future husband, Benny Fillmore, was studying Indigenous language immersion and language renewal at UNR. Along with elders, other tribal members and language advocates, Fillmore spearheaded efforts to launch one of the first immersion language schools in the United States. In September 1997 Wašiw Wagayay Maŋal (the house where Wašiw is spoken) opened its doors. This school, which was modeled after a successful Maori language immersion program in New Zealand, taught preschoolers through eighth-graders all subjects except math in Wašiw (no known vocabulary for mathematics exists in this language). Wašiw cultural values also were fundamental to the curriculum. Although competing demands for tribal resources forced the immersion school to close its doors in 2003, numerous dedicated community members, teachers and tribal leaders continued to work independently to keep the language alive.

Passing Language On and Up

Laura Fillmore’s son, Herman, is a graduate of the immersion school. He earned a bachelor's degree in Native American Studies from the University of New Mexico in 2012 and returned home, determined to help his tribe preserve their Native language. Now as part of a language team that works out of the tribe’s headquarters in Gardnerville, Nevada, Herman works alongside teachers Rakow, Dressler and Lisa Enos. They teach the language to adults and youth in classes held Mondays through Thursdays in one of the tribe’s four communities. As the program’s Culture/Language Resources Director, Herman says, “Our elders tell us that the language, culture and the people cannot be separated. As we teach language, we are systematically reintegrating our values into the tribe and allowing those to lead the conversations.”

Students are learning to use their Native language through classes and activities. Dressler and Enos, sisters who were raised in the Carson Valley, like to teach everything from songs to knock-knock jokes in Wašiw to make the language a constant presence in children’s lives. Enos developed the Eagle’s Nest immersion classes for 3- to 5-year-olds in the tribe’s Head Start program and now runs after-school programs to provide language maintenance for the children who have graduated from the Eagle's Nest. She has also authored a series of illustrated children’s books that draw on the tribe’s legends and are written in both Wašiw and English. Although geared toward children, the storybooks have reawakened within the community an appreciation for important lessons shared for centuries from one generation to the next. Dressler teaches elementary school classes in Carson and Stewart. While the students do have some pencil-and-paper work, she enlivens their lessons by reading them traditional stories and helping the youngsters put on Wašiw plays, complete with costumes and props. The children’s success has inspired parents and other family members to become more involved in language learning. Lisa says, “These students have become teachers in training and are passing the language up.”

As a fluent Wašiw speaker and tribal historian, Rakow has been an enduring presence in the Wašiw language renaissance, serving as a mentor to both students and other instructors. “I work mostly with the ‘oldies,’” she says with a smile. While most of her students are Wašiw, her classes also attract non-Native speakers. She once taught a man from Hungary who she says was “actually pretty good.” Non-Native teachers who work with preschoolers in the Head Start program also frequently attend Rakow’s classes to learn how to inspire language learning in the tribe’s youngest speakers. In the past, tribal elder Steven James would tell stories to Rakow’s classes in Wašiw while she would translate. As James has gotten older, he has not been able to participate as much. Melba says, “Steven is one of the few remaining Wašiw speakers, and both students and teachers miss his wisdom and his stories.”

Beyond the Classroom

The Washoe Tribe has been reintroducing ceremonies, rituals and other cultural activities in order to pass on traditional knowledge as well as language to a new generation. Because tourism and development during the last century have disastrously impacted Wašiw ancestral lands, the tribe is also working with state and federal entities to blend a Wašiw perspective with best scientific practices to restore the region’s ecosystems and reconnect youth to the environment. Fillmore says, “There is a lot of energy among our young people to go out on the land and work with their hands to do something productive to create change.” Such experiences often offer opportunities to teach Wašiw youth their Native language.

For the past two years, the tribe’s Cultural Resources Department has led teams of Wašiw youth and other youth from Hawaii and California in clearing invasive plants and brush from Meeks Meadow on the west shore of Lake Tahoe. Adjoining Meeks Bay, a lakefront resort property that the tribe manages, the area was historically important to the tribe as medicinal and edible plants could be found in abundance, and trout and whitefish were plentiful. Herman shares Wašiw vocabulary with the volunteers and introduces them to a well-known rule that young hunters and fishermen were traditionally taught: “Take one, leave two” to leave “seed” for next year.

This past October, the tribe celebrated the eighth annual excursion to Taylor Creek, traditional fishing grounds for tribal members on Lake Tahoe’s south shore. Parents and grandparents joined with younger generations to capture kokanee salmon during the annual spawning runs. The kokanee is an introduced species and is outcompeting the native Lahontan cutthroat trout, which was once a staple of the Wašiw diet and an integral part of the mountain lake’s rich fishery. By reintroducing sustainable fishing practices such as avoiding overharvesting, the tribe hopes to restore the lake’s healthy trout population. Prior to the trip, experienced fishermen at the Dresslerville community center taught the youth how to make traditional traps, nets and spears—“Ɂitlalit,” “digeš” and “Ɂitbayati”— out of willow branches.

Another important event that has been revived in earnest is the “ťagɨm Gumsabayʔ,” or pine nut ceremony. The pine nut groves cover an arc of territory on the eastern edge of Wašiw homelands. The relationship between the people and the trees is so close that the Wašiw phrase for “my pine nut lands”—“dikMaʔaš” —is extremely similar to the phrase for my face, “dimaš.” For the fourth year, under the watchful eyes of elders from the Woodfords community, youth congregated this past August in the pine nut groves and used “bi·heɁ” (long poles) to knock down the trees’ cones. They gathered dead sagebrush to burn in pits so they could cook the cones underground and later shelled the pine nuts and pounded them into flour for soup. The group sang traditional Wašiw songs and danced through the night. One Wašiw mother observed that her youngest son has not known a year of life without the ťagɨm Gumsabayʔ.

Another widely attended cultural event for the tribe today is its Washeshu ‘Itdeh Arts Festival. With the support of many tribal members, Wašiw basket weavers Teresa Smokey Jackson and Joanne Smokey Martinez founded the festival in 1990 to showcase the tribe’s exceptional basketmaking skill. Originally, participants would bring in old family baskets along with new weavings to display. Eventually a committee was established to judge the baskets, and this became a popular annual competition. Weavers would work through the year to design a basket that they hoped would earn them the grand prize. The festival was also an opportunity to bring state politicians and dignitaries together with tribal leaders to help strengthen political ties between sovereign nations. Over time, the festival has grown to include other traditional activities, such as dancing, singing, games, sports and a display of the myriad Native crafts that celebrate the community’s unique history and culture at the lake. It is also a way of sharing the teachings of the tribe with the non-Native public. Now part of the Valhalla Art, Music and Theatre celebration, the festival is held during the last weekend in July on Lake Tahoe’s southwest shore.

A Difficult Course

Preserving the elders’ knowledge for the next generation is what will keep the Wašiw language and culture alive. With so few fluent speakers, infusing this knowledge into the lives of youth without an immersion school is difficult, and when the elders are gone, so is the wisdom they carry. The language team is now studying a successful Mohawk language program and other language initiatives in the United States and abroad as possible models for reviving the language immersion school.

The teachers also face the challenge of teaching an ancient language in a modern world. When teachers come across gaps in vocabulary or grammatical rules, they have to be particularly creative and resourceful. For instance, Herman Fillmore explains, because no word in Wašiw exists for say the number “9,” people will use the phrase “8+1” or “5+4” instead. These linguistic puzzles are challenging, and tribal members have an ongoing debate about how much they should adapt their unique worldview to fit the paradigms of the Western world.

Yet the Washoe Tribe is resolute, anchored in the belief that reclaiming its language and revitalizing its cultural heritage can empower its people, rekindle connections with a rich past and form crucial bonds between old and young. Herman says each iteration of the language program has been a building block for the next generation. “We have a great vision and hope for our communities,” he says. “While we may not be where we want to be yet . . . every day we work with our kids brings us closer to the reality that we want . . . for our homeland and all those within our homeland.”

Authors

Christine Gordon

Christine Gordon is a freelance writer and editor based in Washington, D.C., and has worked with NMAI since the Museum opened. She grew up in Northern California and returns as often as possible to the High Sierra.

Sam Gordon

Sam Gordon is a photographer in New York City.