Living Our Language_ Ojibwe Tales & Oral Histories - Anton Treuer [55]
[15] I was spoken to by those elders in a good way. I’ll never forget how those old men were. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, then already I remember certain things that they told me. But I can’t always remember those same things. And it’s the same thing again with that Drum I watch over and sleep with there in my room. And sometimes when I wake up in the morning, or maybe if I get up at night, then I remember those songs I came to hear. And maybe I help him there when I am thought of to do so as I remember a lot of those songs. I do know a lot of those songs. But I am unable to start off all of those songs, all those position songs, when I am thought of to do so. But I know them all. I just can’t remember them all the time. Sometimes I’m unable to lead them out, I don’t know maybe if I might make an offering, I don’t know.
[16] That’s it, that’s what that old man told me, “Later on you’ll be able to do that.” That elder man was a Drum Keeper there, Waabishki-bines, and he would carry those Drums. They were called Negwanebii. Negwanebii, he was owner of that one before Waabishki-bines became the caretaker. That’s what that old man from over there at Round Lake told me. We went. When he first carried that Drum I went around with them over there. I wasn’t known then nearly as much as Medwe-ganoonind, that woman, and that one called Negwanebii, and also that Wewanabi. There were four of those Drum Keepers that went over there. And as those four were called, they got up for those Drums, over there where they went. And there was one old man named Bezhigoogaabaw. Over there he was called Moose, but his name was Bezhigoogaabaw. Niibaa-giizhig, he’s the one who told me about this. Someone told that old man. Perhaps one of the other Drum Keepers talked to him and told him that I was being neglected there. That old man got up. “Come here. I made a mistake here,” he says. “Come fetch that one Drum Keeper there who carries [that Drum] that’s been left by himself,” the old man said. So they all left here, and they all came in, however many Indians there were, and all of them putting blankets there as they arrived, it was getting huge as they prepared that bundle just for me, as he stood there. He stood for a certain amount of time, then all four Drum chiefs themselves. And he talked to me where it was resting there about how I was forgotten there. They spoke. “I don’t go over there. I don’t know those Drum Keepers over there,” that old man said.
[17] Then that Negwanebii, I sat with him there, I picked up those tobaccos and told him, “Hey, speak for me.” Golly, that old man really looked at me. “Tayaa! But you do that speaking,” he tells me. “Give a speech about what you want to express thanks for.” So they all stood up when I started to speak. I never talked to those other ones on account of what the old man did to me. “And put down whatever you’ve got to give your speech,” he tells me. I almost did all kinds of things to that old man, really, truly. “You talk to him when we start.” I was the only one left. “It’s necessary for you to do this in a good way over there to express thanks to your fellow Indian. Don’t just converse with him,” he says. “That’s how they will come to you, as he’ll ask you to translate for him. I want to give him tobacco, but don’t tell him. You’ll stand up right away to talk for him. That’s how the understanding will come when you speak,” that old man said to me.
[18] And that’s what he went around telling me. That’s how I became able to give speeches just like you. When I spoke there, “You don’t have to be spoken for,” he tells me. He wasn’t there at times when