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By Root 462 0

knowledgeable when he wants to listen to me. And one time, maybe I won’t be there one time for it to be known why I help the Indian people. It always used to be like this with my grandfather, how I wish to have him with me as I would think about everything he told me. Now that I’m smarter, that’s not so necessary. One time, I remember what he used to tell me sometimes when I was growing up. One time I was ten years old. Although I was twelve years old when that old man started talking to me, the elder men and the elder women. And those old ladies used to tell me things too. Those old men and old women were very knowledgeable about history and what was going to happen in the future. Those old men wanted to be spiritual people, although not all of them. Always, I will always remember them. I give my greatest thanks to those old men who told me about things. The reason I talk about this is because of what they told me. That’s why they did that so that I would talk about this myself as I would become represented on the Drum over there far away and in all things helping the [people] who are considered for it, helping my fellow Indian. That’s why I have been seated [on the Drum] here myself. I’ve thought enough about this for you too. This is why you have been seated [on the Drum] to help [the people] and to translate for those who are unable to speak the Ojibwe language.

The Power of Language

[44] They only speak English, and only some [speak Indian], but maybe sometime soon [it will be different]. A long time ago there wasn’t anyone here, nobody spoke English here. And when I was small too growing up myself, my parents and those old men talked to me in Indian. These old men never talked English. They didn’t know how to talk American [English].

[45] I’m going to tell you something about that. I was six years old here when I started going to school. And I didn’t know what the white people were telling me. I didn’t know anything. I would be unable to process whatever he was telling me, I thought. Then there was my cousin that I accompanied. He was the one who translated for me what the [whites] told me. He was called Jiigegaabaw. He talked to me and told me a word. Well that boy would trick me, just like my fellow elder [today]. He told me to tell that [word] to the teacher. I swore and that teacher made me stand in the [corner]. Then another one of my cousins came and told me, “Don’t listen to Jiigegaabaw. Just listen to me here.” He was nice. “I’m never going to listen to him again.” Quickly I learned about my swearing and everything I should say too. “You come with me,” he had told me, that was that Jiigegaabaw as he was called. “I’ll accompany you again,” he tells me. “Sure,” I tell him and all those young men. And no, well they didn’t want to know how to talk Indian. They didn’t know how. That’s what he told me. “You’re inadequate,” I was told. It was fall when I started going to school, but now, by the springtime, I already knew how to talk like an American. “Well who is going to forget,” I tell the boys. “I know two [languages]. I’m going to use them,” I told them too. They were quiet. I wasn’t getting laughed at any more. “I’m not getting wished for any more,” I told them, and I laughed at them in a good way, as I was able to properly converse with the white people.

[46] Never ever in all my going around for work in different places—and I worked all over, far away, working with the white people—never did I forget the Indian way of talking. I had worked over there in Minneapolis for a long time. Maybe thirty years I worked there. I lived with those white people, but I never forgot my religion. Sometimes children, these kids now, they don’t know the Indian religion. I know it. Even a lot of them, a lot of the elders don’t know about the Indian religion. And when I talk, I feel quite bad about how the Indian people are unable to manage speaking Indian over there, to speak wherever they’ve migrated. Often as I think about this I feel bad when I see my own children as they do not understand when I speak to them in vain.