Living Our Language_ Ojibwe Tales & Oral Histories - Anton Treuer [34]
[9] I have been over here on the reservation all springtime, where I now live. So this is why I left here [long ago]. There are a lot of Indians [from] here in the Twin Cities. But unlike here, they are making a concerted effort. More of the [people from] here are making that endeavor [there] as they want to speak Ojibwe. In contrast, the people on the reservation don’t seem to be making much of an effort. They only speak English, whereas the ones over there are trying. Maybe they’re ashamed of being Indian. So that’s how the Indian is losing his language, by becoming ashamed of being Indian.
Visiting
[1] This is about what our ancestors used to do a long time ago when they visited one another and stayed at one another’s homes. Say someone wanted to leave. So he goes visiting somewhere and he brings a blanket along. Anyway he knows he’ll be offered a place to sleep somewhere. And so he thus brought that blanket to cover up with. It wasn’t necessary for those hosting him to furnish him with everything, as he would carry with him what he wanted to cover up with and use for a pillow, too. He was just shown where he would sleep and given something to lie down on. So they visited one another there. They talked about everything.
[2] When we visit one another today, it’s maybe one hour or two that we visit someone. That’s it. And maybe we don’t even talk to him. We just watch that television set. Long ago they used to talk to one another about everything that was going on. But today, however, we no longer do that. You see I’ve been staying over here all spring now, near where my brother-in-law is there. Then I’d go over there and get my relation [of sorts]. So my brother-in-law is there by himself next door. If I go to his house to visit him, we only watch that television set. So we don’t really talk to one another. And instead of coming over, if we want to talk to one another, we use that telephone. It was he who informed me of this, revealing how we converse on the telephone when we want to talk to each other about something. So that’s the only time we visit one another, when we use that telephone to discuss things. That’s how it is there. We laugh about it. We go outside a little more in the summer when he wants to talk to me, making conversation.
How Indian People Were Gifted
[1] When we were in the city here, when we were in Minneapolis, one time a certain man came to speak here. He must have been here in the Twin Cities a long time. So, in any event he had lost his religion. And he didn’t speak Ojibwe. He didn’t understand either. Then he had brought [Indian ways] into the white man’s church here [or] what he knew of it, as he thus came to know how the white man worshipped.
[2] And so in this way he always accompanied those [people]. And one of his parents was over here on the reservation yet. You see she still followed the Indian religion. And she had been initiated into the medicine dance. And they had been involved with these [ceremonial] Drums. That old lady must have been over there, that’s his mother. And that man came to talk to me there even though she also knew about the Indian religion.
[3] Then he asked me there, “Could we do it? Could you help us to use both religions to work them together—the Indian’s religion and the white man’s religion—church and medicine dance? Would we be able to blend them both together so that they could be used that way?” He beseeched me there to talk to him myself about what they might do to be able to weave together those religions—church and medicine dance. “Well,” they asked me.
[4] So I told them this. “Leave it alone,” I told them at that time. “You will not be able to do it.” In spite of that, “It’s almost the same thing how we know and talk to the spirit. There is only one [faith] here that we were offered,” that Indian guy said. The white man he spoke to somewhere said the