Closed Captions Audio Described

Clint Brown, an enrolled Gros Ventre member from Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana, explains the history, clothing, and customs of the Gros Ventre (A'aninin, or White Clay) people of the northern plains. He discusses the origin of the tribal name, the significance of regalia including roaches, eagle feathers, and bustles, hair traditions, clan systems, and beadwork. Brown shares stories of smallpox devastation and explains how traditional dress conveyed tribal identity, social status, and personal history.

Transcript

0:02 Good afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Tent of Many Voices and the Corps of Discovery II. Just to tell you a little about us, we are a traveling exhibit. We've been traveling since January of 2003. We started off at Monticello at Thomas Jefferson's house and we're going on to the ocean and back just like Lewis and Clark did 200 years ago. We'll finish up in October of 2006 in Saint Louis. And, uh, but that's what we've been doing for the past 2.5 years and
0:27 the next person coming up, he's probably been with us since the very beginning. Um His name is Clint Brown. He is Gros Ventre and he does live on the Gros Ventre on reservation here in Montana and he's gonna be talking about their history and culture along with his wife Wanda. And they also have with him today, their three year old son, Clint Junior. So I'm gonna hand this over to Clint.
0:49 [speaks Algonquian]
0:59 Anybody understand that? That'd be cool if you did. I introduced myself in my, my first language. My Gros Ventre language, my ceremonial name is [speaks Algonquian], which means Bear Robe in, in my Gros Ventre language. Uh I'm an enrolled member of the Gros Ventre tribe out of Fort Belknap Indian reservation here in the state of Montana. Up on the high line highway two,
1:22 Gros Ventre is a French word for big belly. Kind of fits me, some of my partners but not all of us have big bellies. The way we got that name is uh when our people met uh uh a French trapper up in the Saskatchewan area, they were uh trapping along the, the South Saskatchewan river. The, the these French fur trappers were and they ran into our people.
1:46 We call ourselves uh the A'aninin, which means the white clay. That's what we call ourselves when we, when we address each other. But we met this trapper a long time ago. [speaks Algonquian]
2:02 He had no idea what I was saying and I could not understand him. So the only way we could communicate at that time was through sign language. And where we stayed at that time on the South Saskatchewan rivers was by the waterfalls, the falls. There's a huge uh set of falls on the South Saskatchewan River and our sign language at that time for falls,
2:26 which meant waterfalls to us in sign language. This French fur trapper with a pen or some ink in a paper he wrote down, hey, we met some big bellied Indians today. We'll call them the Gros Ventre. And that's how we got our name. That's, that is our government name, so to speak, is, is Gros Ventre. And we call ourselves the White Clay. Uh I'm here today to explain to you folks a little bit about
2:50 the north central plains, Native American way of life. The Indian people, when Lewis and Clark came through the Missouri River and, and they, uh they kinda came through our hometown, our home ground. I'm gonna explain to you folks a little bit about the way our people lived a little bit about some of the things that I'm wearing. I've chosen to wear my dance regalia. Everything that I have on is something that my ancestors would have wore at one time,
3:16 probably during the Lewis and Clark area before and, and after, I'm sure
3:22 it's a great way to explain each and every part it goes into a little bit of history and a little bit of, of our, our legends and our, our beliefs. I also am very fortunate today. I have my wife to come here with me. Usually I have my daughter come and she dances with me. My daughter is now starting high school. So that kind of got put on the back burner.
3:45 Yeah, but I brought my wife today and she does all of the bead work. I thought it would be excellent to bring her along and kind of explain to you the different stitches. I guess there's different ways of putting them beads upon the fabric. And uh we're gonna have her explain that a little bit later on and uh and show maybe show you how to do some of that.
4:06 First of all, what I'm wearing on the top of my hat is what we call uh a roach. This right here is a roach and it's made out of porcupine hair. Um In the winter time, the porcupines have really long guard hair. And this is what we, we make a roach out of our ancestors would have used this for a type of camouflage back long ago when the grass was tall where we came from along with all of the fringes that you see,
4:30 it would help us kind of blend into our surroundings. They would use turkey beards, horse hair and of course, porcupine hair and this is a, it's called a roach. The men would wear it inside that roach. I have two eagle feathers. These two eagle feathers represent my grandmother's one on my mother's side and one on my father's side. I believe that every time I put these two feathers on
4:54 that, I too would carry that same wisdom that the [speaks Algonquian] carry or the old ladies. We all know how grandma knows when we're doing wrong and we're doing right and grandma pretty much knows everything. But I believe that when I put these two feathers on, I carry that same wisdom that them two ladies carry
5:11 my father, my father's side and my mother's side
5:15 the way I hold my roach on
5:18 as I have a braid coming straight out of the top, straight out of the top of my head. And there's a hole in the bottom of this roach. I run that uh braid up through there and then I poke t he stick through that braid
5:31 and I call it a scalp lock. That's how I hold my, hold my hat on, so to speak. I don't know if you've ever been on the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains, but we get some pretty good wind over there and I've never lost my hat yet. So, but that's, that's the headgear. Here's another headgear that our men would wear, wear. This right here is a war bonnet. It's made out of eagle feather.
5:54 This was something that our leaders, our uh spiritual leaders, our, our probably some of our most, we would say our most respected people would wear their bonnets this way or wear their feathers this way. I wear the two feathers on top of my head that represent my grandmother's, the men that would wear their feathers this way were probably the most respected people in those caps.
6:20 Those were the men that uh had all of the knowledge and the wisdom that we would look up to or that we would yearn to uh to learn
6:29 eagle feathers. Native Americans are the only one who can legally possess eagle feathers. We're the only ones in the whole United States who can legally possess these eagle feathers,
6:41 even as Native Americans, as Indians, I have to earn the right to carry these eagle feathers. I have to prove to my grandparents, my uncles, my grandfathers, my father, I have to prove to them that I will take care of them in a manner that is, is, is, uh, that they, that they, I guess they wish me to. We treat these like one of our brothers, each one of these eagle feathers.
7:06 We also have to do a good deed to earn them just because I'm a Native American, doesn't mean that I could have an eagle feather for each feather that I have. I have to earn the earn it. These four feathers were given to me
7:23 for going to college and can, uh getting my bachelor's degree. My family believed that I had done good things for my family, my people by going away to school. So the four years that I was gone, they gave me an eagle feather for each year. Now as a, I guess it would be a warrior or uh uh just an everyday common man.
7:45 This is where I would carry my eagle feathers, all of the good deeds that I had done. I would carry them on a staff or a stick, something similar to this,
7:56 the men who are leaders, this is where they would carry their eagle feathers, they would put theirs on their head and wear them around the camp. So if you walked into camp and you've seen a gentleman carrying a stick, a staff and it had no eagle feathers on it. And you've seen a gentleman standing next to him with about 8, 10, 12 eagle feathers on it, that gentleman with eagle feathers on it would be the person that you would want to talk to
8:21 because that would be the person who has probably a little higher ranking in the social status. And then if this person with eagle feathers on his staff was standing next to one of these gentlemen with a war bonnet on, that would be the person you would want to speak to.
8:38 We have to earn these feathers. We treat him like a family member.
8:44 They're very respected to us. Uh We take really good care of them people always, uh you might see at a powwow if their feathers is ever dropped on the ground, we have a ceremony to pick that up. It's, it's, it's a retreat ceremony. It would be like during the battle, we would go and get our wounded and bring it back. That is the way we would treat a fallen eagle feather.
9:10 Now below my, my hat and my I roach I guess so to speak. It was one of the most important things to our, our Indian people and that's our hair. We believe our hair is our hair is a direct link to mother earth. We believe that is what we are made of that sand and that, that dirt is the same thing that our hair is made of.
9:33 That kind of goes goes along with the fact that uh when the men would go and scalp,
9:41 if you took that man's hair, you took his soul.
9:45 This braid right here was one of the most important braids probably for the enemies of the, the northern plains Indians. This braid right here is what the young a braid that the young men would wear when they were going to battle. And this right here was the only way you could tell if them young men were going to battle
10:04 this braid right here. I would put in my hair before I left my camp for my enemy. If I believed that my enemy was so good that he could overtake me in battle, I would fix my hair for him, meaning I would hang a braid in my face and he could grab that braid with one hand, make one slice and take that hair, my soul then or my my spirit then belonged to that man
10:28 at the same time, [speaks Algonquian] I was challenging that man to come and get my hair.
10:36 When we brush our hair, we never take it and we never throw it away. We never cut our hair on a full moon.
10:44 Once we've been married, we never let another woman touch our hair, meaning I've never been to a A beauty salon and had that somebody else wash your hair and make you fall asleep. You know,
10:58 once I, once I became married that never happened, nobody, no other female will ever touch my hair.
11:07 I guess one of the things that,
11:11 you know, when you, when you brush your hair and you get a little bit of hair in your brush, my grandmother gave me a little bag. I take that hair and I put it in a little bag. And when I'm someplace where I feel really good, someplace where I feel comfortable someplace where I feel at home and it doesn't necessarily have to be on the reservation. It's someplace where I feel good. Maybe I'm fishing or I'm hunting, I'll take that hair out of that little bag and I'll put it back in Mother Earth because that's where I come from.
11:36 And I believe that hair belongs to Mother Earth and nobody else. It is my sole belonging. My sole wish to never let anybody else take my hair or touch it. That's why Indians are really, they're really, um, superstitious about our hair, even our racehorses or our rope horses. I grew up on a ranch. I grew up team roping and roping calves,
12:00 bulldoging, and I've done all of that. I've tagged calves. My dad had some, uh, horses that he used to race now and then at the Crow Fair. Some of them other Indians, they'd go over and try to pull hair out of them horses tails, you know, try to use medicine on each other. We believe that we believe that if, if, uh, my wife always teases me, I don't know if this is true or not. She never told me.
12:23 She said I have a piece of your hair. You'll never leave me. I thought. Whoa.
12:29 But we believe that way. that that's one of our beliefs, our, our, our, one of our things that we base our, our life around.
12:37 So the hair is very important. You could tell if a person was married, by the way, they wore their hair. If it was braided or braided, you could tell if a person was unmarried, you could tell if a person was looking for a mate. You could tell if a person was mourning, they had lost a loved one.
12:56 If you could tell if a person was just coming out of a ceremony, meaning, uh maybe the young ladies, the young uh females, they're unable to touch the eagle feathers until they've had their first moon or their first menstrual cycle. And there's a ceremony for that.
13:11 They cut their hair a certain way.
13:18 Now, besides the, the, I guess, um, what a person would wear for headgear and the type of hair we have colors that belong to certain tribes. Long ago. It's not so much today, but long ago where I my people lived, the Gros Ventre people, the, the White Clay people where we lived, we could go outside of our lodges and make the colors red and black real easy.
13:41 By the, by the plants that grew there
13:45 farther east from us, the Assiniboine people, the Nakota, Lakota and Dakota people, they could go outside their lodges and they make the color yellow and blue
13:55 real easy. So it was kind of a geographical thing. The colors that you would see on a, on a, a regalia or a person's moccasins or in their shirts or, or their, their bead work or their quill work without ever talking to them. You would know which basically where they came from simply by the color that they would use in their dye and the color that they would might use in their bead work or, or
14:19 that type of thing. The Assiniboine's would use a blue and yellow Gros Ventre would use the uh black and the red, the Crow people. They live south of the Musselshell on the Yellowstone River. There's a uh a moss that grows only in that Yellowstone River that makes a pink, a mauve and a yellow. And those are the colors that the [speaks Algonquian] the crow people would put on their, their regalia.
14:43 So we could tell each other apart simply by our colors. It'd be like if this side of the room was all wearing green and this side of the room was all wearing black. I might think these were uh Green Bay Packer fans and these might be Raiders fans.
14:59 So without ever opening our mouth and talking and of course, our languages are different, we would know who that person was, what his rank was, what his social standing was, what tribe he belonged to what was going on in his life, meaning by which way he wore his hair without ever opening your mouth or talking to that person. All of that could be relayed by what you'd wear, what you would have on the way you wore your hair.
15:24 Now, within the colors, we would have certain designs that would belong to certain families. We would call them clan systems. Some of you might have heard that the term clan, clan is a family system. It's a group of people that did their ceremonies together, they named their children together, they raised each other's children.
15:44 If we had a camp of 1000 lodges inside them lodges, there may be six or seven, maybe up to 10 people would live in one lodge long ago. So of course, if we want to move and we had 1000 lodges and may say 10 people in there, that'd be 10,000 people. Of course, the natural resources couldn't sustain a movement of a group that large.
16:06 So we break down into smaller groups, clans, family systems. We might move in a group of 10 or 20 lodges.
16:14 It would make it much easier for us to find berries, to find firewood, to travel in smaller groups than it was to travel in the larger groups. That's what we call a clan system or a family system. Each clan system or family system would have a certain design. This design right here belonged to my clan, the Bear Lodge Clan.
16:38 And so, um once again, without ever opening our, our mouths, there was a lot to be told by what we were wearing and, and, uh, the colors and the way we wear our hair. This right here is a breastplate. The men would wear it for a type of, of, uh, armor. Before the guns came, we fought with sticks and stones and this was kind of a way to help protect our chest.
17:03 The men would wear chokers, they would trade hides, they would trade horses, they would trade weapons or one little shell. The shell is something that they would put on their neck and it was there to help protect their neck during battle. All of this was something that they would wear probably they would have worn before the, the firearms made it to our people. Ah,
17:27 on my back, I have what I call a bustle. A bustle is an arrangement of eagle feathers. Once again, there was different tribes would arrange their eagle feathers different ways. A good example is the Battle of the Little Bighorn. There was approximately six or seven different tribes there, some were friendly, some were not
17:48 in the, the late light of the uh of the end of the day or the early morning and the smoke and the fog. If you could look in front of you and see these people moving, you might not be able to distinguish the colors or the design, but you could see that outline of that bustle, that arrangement of feathers would let you know, hey, this man belonged to this certain tribe,
18:11 the style that I have on belonged to the Sioux tribe or, or the Assiniboine or the Sioux people. And it's a large, we call it a men's northern traditional today. And it's the round bustle design
18:23 on that bustle. We have, you'll see some of them feathers have these white dots. We call them a hailstone right here. Those dots that you see on that bustle, they represent that my family had sponsored a ceremony for a whole year or for the whole ceremony. For instance,
18:44 for instance, my family had sponsored a uh Sundance and that's a four year commitment. Those little white dots on them eagle feathers represent that they represent that my family fed, they helped uh shelter all of the people that came to the Sundance for four years in a row.
19:05 We provided them with food, shelter, water, a lot of times gas money to help get, get there and back. That's what that little white dot represents that little white dot That you see on that inside row of feathers I wear very proudly because it says that my family had sponsored that ceremony for them four years. Now on the end of the feathers, we have horse hair
19:31 just like the end of these feathers. We have horse hair hanging out at the end,
19:35 horse air to us. Uh Once the horses came to our people, it represented longevity before that our people simply carried everything on our backs or we carried them on dogs. By the way, our people didn't eat dogs. Because if we ate dogs, then I carried everything that don't make much sense to me.
19:55 Once the horses came, we could put our lodges and all of our furnishings and belongings on that horse and it would travel on and on forever and ever.
20:02 It represented longevity. So for each good deed that was done to earn this eagle feather for each good thing that I had done I had done for my family, for my people. I put horse hair on the end of it. I believe that that good deed that I had done will go on for ever and ever with that horse hair hanging out at the end. It represents longevity that way.
20:27 And we believe that,
20:32 ok? I am going to, I, I like to dance. So I'm gonna dance one for you guys. I'm gonna dance one song and then I'm gonna have my wife stand up and explain a little bit about the bead work. Uh, some of the different stitches. This song that I'm gonna dance to is what we call a stooping song. And it's a duck and dive song. And this song, um,
20:56 it's something that came from the Nez Perce people. This is a stooping song and this story you could. That's good. I'll stay right here. This song came from a, a gentleman. I'm not sure what the gentleman's name was, but it was told to our people uh before the, the treaty of 1855 that a stooping song
21:18 represented the calvary that came above a large surrounding or a large gathering of Nez Perce people. And this calvary pulled up on this ridge up above this camp and they fired their cannons off. And you will hear during this song as this song is going along all of a sudden, it's got a boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
21:42 There's two to each little interval. We call it a duck and a dive or a stooping when the men are dancing and you hear that downbeat.
21:52 It's like we're ducking that cannon fire and there's two to each one and we always tease each other about getting shot because if you're dancing along and you don't duck and we say you got shot. But as I'm dancing to the song, each time that stick hits the drum as a dancer, my feet have to hit the ground. That's why I got these loud bells on before it was. You see this guy right here, this Park Ranger,
22:18 he made me wear them before because I kept sneaking up on him and stealing his lunch.
22:24 Can't sneak up on him no more. But it's the men would put these bells on their ankles to challenge that drum. When that stick hits that drum, my feet have to hit the ground when that drum stops. I too have to stop. And the style of dance that I'm dancing. The men's Northern traditional. I also tell a story while I'm keeping in time with that drum during this stooping song.
22:47 I'm telling a story of how I've gone and picked up my fallen brother and I had carried him home. I had gone and picked up my fallen neighbor and carried him home. There's four push ups to this song. So I'll pick up four people. I will think of four for people that I have in my family that have been in the service.
23:09 I have a couple of uncles that I lost in Vietnam. I have a uh uh my, one of my dad's real close friends that we lost in Korea. Those are the type of people that I think of when I do these, these, uh this is a military style song. It's a song that only the men would dance to and it's called a uh stooping or a duck and dive.
23:38 Here. We are ready to go Midnight Express. The contest is on.
23:45 [music plays]
23:48 [singing and rythmic drumming]
25:55 [music stops] [clapping]
26:03 All right. I'm getting too old for this.
26:09 I'd like to have my wife introduce herself.
26:14 Hi. My name is Wanda Brown and I'm enrolled at the Fort Belknap reservation. I'm an enrolled Assiniboine. My husband is an enrolled Gros Ventre on and our children are enrolled Assiniboines Uh, I'm here to talk a little bit about the bead work and, uh, the different styles. I think the first thing people need to realize is bead work is actually an uh art form that you just don't jump into bead work and start beading. Um
26:39 I learned this from my mother and she learned this from her mother. Uh There are many different styles of bead work. There's a flat uh flat. We also have a peyote stitch which is a round stitch.
26:54 Uh like Clinton has the geometric designs. It's more Gros Ventre and these are also his colors. This uh flat is also, this is my daughter's and it's more of the Assiniboines colors.
27:11 We also have called a lazy stitch on the outside of these is a lazy stitch. And I'll explain all of these to you.
27:21 Uh First of all, when, when you're beading and I brought some examples to show you. I started this, this um work for my husband when I got hurt last fall. So this is a long process. You don't go inch by inch, you go millimeter by millimeter when you're working on this. So when, if you, if you get a chance to come up and look,
27:45 this is unfinished work and you can look at the back of it to see how each stitch is going.
27:53 We lay beads out in a straight line and every 2 to 3 beads we come back through the fabric and,
28:01 and uh tack it down.
28:09 OK. And another form of bead work is the brits. Um, you're also welcome to come up here and look at them. This also has our seal on it as does Clint's vest has a seal on it.
28:23 No. Uh do we also have earrings that will match it. Uh This actually, this bead work was done by Clint himself. He made this for our son. You come up and look at that. It's got a form of a flat stitch and lazy stitch on it. Uh What I didn't mention was the lazy stitch um on the outside
28:47 instead of going flat in one line like these, we go over, we go five beads through the fabric back up, five more beads down through the fabric, back up
29:01 on a peyote stitch, which is these, you go round in a circle, you start in one circle and you continually move up making a design.
29:17 These are interchangeable.
29:25 You could take the uh different handles on these fans and you could match them up and interchange them. They're actually what they are is uh this piece is a 3.5 inch choke out of a 12 gauge shotgun. Yeah, for certain. They are
29:45 this little piece right here, bolts out of the top of that shotgun choke and the bottom piece you can get them in different lengths. And what my wife does is she'll cover it in leather. I guess our fabric and then she'll peyote the stitch around it
30:01 and then I do the feather work on these fans. My wife has done all of the bead work
30:08 this vest that I'm wearing. Tell him about this vest. How long it took.
30:14 Uh, Clint's vest took approximately two years. A vest of this size would run
30:23 a vest of this. The rest of this size would run approximately 2, 3 $4000 easy. Um, Clinton's whole bead work set if we were to, if I were to sell the set that I'm starting on now, we could easily run into $10,000 to purchase a set like this.
30:48 What we're gonna do is something a little different than what we usually do. We usually, you might see people talking about this bead work. We've got it set out here. We didn't bring anything that we wouldn't want you to touch other than our eagle feathers. We would ask that you might be real gentle with those and respect those for what they are. But what we wanted to do was open it up. We've got plenty of time left.
31:11 We'd like to ask you guys if you're interested to come forward, handle this, take a look at some of her bead, work her stitches, her knots. If that's something that you are interested in, we could tell you about it till we're blue in the face. But if you come up and have a look at it while it's in progress, it might make a little bit more sense to you. Uh So if any right now, if anybody's got any questions, we have a, a mic.
31:36 Uh, if you folks would like, maybe we'll just open it up for you folks to come on up. Have a look for those of you that want to. If any of you have any questions, raise your hand. We do have a mic. I can bring it around. So Clint and everyone else can hear you.
31:54 Hi. I want to ask where, where, first of all the Gros Ventre uh are located? Where is your traditional territory? And where is your reservation? Our reservation right now is in North central Montana, which is where, uh, up by Havre. Uh We're, I think I'm about 431 miles from home from where I live right now.
32:16 Uh We're about 50 miles, about 47 miles south of the Canadian border and about two miles north of the Missouri River. Our reservation runs between the Milk and the Missouri River, right in North Central Montana, right on highway two. And our our traditional home ground long ago was farther east and up in the, uh, Saskatchewan area.
32:39 So we're, we're actually pushed farther south.
32:45 [inaudible] I, I come and do talks with them. I come and do lectures with them as often as I can. Uh, like I said, um, my dad owns cattle. He's getting about 70 some years old. And so that's, he's kind of slowing down and I'm, I'm getting kind of bumped into that a little more than I really wanted to. But you know how that goes? We just finished haying by the way.
33:09 [offscreen] Hey, the headdress, you know, we're so used to seeing that in movies and whatever is it, what tribe or is that typical or where does that come from? It's typical of the northern plains people, you know, uh, there's one thing I didn't explain and it's a war paint, huh? Anybody hear the term war paint? There's no such thing as war paint. There never was the paint that the men would be wearing is something
33:33 that they would earn for completing all of our ceremonies. For instance, uh, just like our teachers today, they have to go to school. They got to learn certain ways to pass information on to our children and us, same thing long ago, we would have to learn our ceremonies the best places to find these certain items as each, as we completed each ceremony.
33:58 And once we finished all of our ceremonies, as an adult male, we then were called a teacher or a painter. We were then given paint. And what that paint would represent is if there was a young man or young male that had no male figures, a young boy had no male figures in his life. He could go to any one of them people with paint on and that man would show him how to fish, how to take care of his horse, how to hunt.
34:24 Paint was something that you were given. Once you've completed all your ceremonies, granted, some of the men did put it on their face when they go into battle. But that wasn't the idea. There's no such thing as war paint that paint that them men would wear would be, they would be proud to wear it because they have completed all our ceremonies. They were a bigger and a stronger man because of it.
34:48 And so [offscreen] We have one more [inaudible] The, the headdress is, is very similar to that as well. It, it was only the, the leaders, like I said before, you know, like in the movies you see, um, all these men with paint on, they're all wearing warbonnet. First of all, we got too many chiefs, you know, all of these people and they were all yipping, you know, making this, this noise,
35:14 that noise, uh you know, like (woowoowoo) like that, that was something only the females did. So unless they were one of them funny ones, you know, I, I don't know but that there, there's a lot of things that Hollywood and, and even I, as a little boy used to run around and do that and my grandmother, please don't do that. Only the females would do it and they would do it when they were calling their relatives.
35:37 Good question. Very good question. [offscreen] We have one question back here, Clinton. [offscreen] Uh, the voices that accompany the drum beat. Uh, do they have, does that have significance? Good question. Some of the, uh, some of the songs like that one, we just heard it had, it had words in it. Those words were sung by a Cree a Cree drum from Canada. Uh
35:59 I'm not exactly sure what they say but when that's, that same song is sung in, in the, the Assiniboine people, those words and they say grandpa, I've come for you in the first push up, uncle, I have come for you, dad. I have come for you and brother. I have come for you. And what that, that's a retreat song. And those words will, they, they say it's, our songs are one little bitty song sang over four times
36:25 and each one has a different saying in that one. Some of them are kind of like chance, you know. Um, we have, uh, a, a song that my little boy, this little three year old, he sings in the morning and it's our coming day song in the morning. Him and I sing this when we wake up.
36:43 [singing] And to our people, that's a coming day song. We thank the creator for a chance to use something else that nobody, nobody in this. I get something every morning that nobody in this room gets
37:06 nobody. The Pope, the president. At the same time, you folks all get that exact same thing. We get a chance to use a day that nobody else has ever been in. We get a chance to use a day that nobody else has ever [speaks Algonquian] or made better. What we do to that with that day is up to each and every one of us. Thank you. Good.
37:31 [inaudible] Our enrollment at this time is approximately 6000 enrolled members. We live on a reservation with two tribes Assiniboines and the Gros Ventre on there's approximately 10,000 enrolled members on the reservation total about 6000 are Assiniboine boy, I mean are Gros Ventre and about 4000 or Assiniboine
37:56 of which approximately about 3500 live on the reservation. So roughly half of our enrolled members do live on the reservation. A few years back. Our Gros Ventre language was falling to the wayside. We now have a community college on our reservation. We've got some great uh
38:19 I guess some, some longevity programs that have been put in place. This gentleman right here, Mr Darryl Martin, not too long ago was our president of our community council at home at Fort Belknap. He's from the same reservation I'm from. And as gentlemen like this who had put things in place uh to help preserve our culture and our language.
38:43 We now as a speaker, I go into the elementary school and teach our language to the 2nd, 3rd and 4th graders, hour and a half each morning and each afternoon we teach that in our two year community college. So we, our language is coming back long ago, the very first born was given to the grandparents and you then learn your language, your culture and your way.
39:06 I'm the the oldest in our family. I lived with my grandmother as a little boy, I learned a lot about our culture and our ways. I learned how to speak Gros Ventre. But guess what? I learned the female dialect. Huh? I grew up talking like a woman
39:22 and now my uncles and everybody, they would, you know, they would have to straighten me out. But still I learned a lot of our ceremonies and our songs. It, it, I may have learned it in the female dialect, but it wasn't hard to transfer it over to the male dialect. So I, I, I'm very fortunate that way that I, I did learn some of that. You know, a lot of our, our young kids go through their whole lives and don't even know that they're uh White Clay people.
39:47 They go through their whole life thinking they're Gros Ventre you know what I mean? That's a government name that was given to us. [inaudible] No. Um, he asked a good question about, uh, problem between the different tribes and marriages long ago. Um,
40:11 we used to always tease each other as Indians. They always tease us as Gros Ventres of being big bellies. I said there's a reason for that in the winter months when all of you Indians are sitting along the river, you could see all your ribs us Gros Ventres are just full. We're good hunters. That's why I tell them long ago, we used to, uh, the Crow people would come up to our country and they would steal women
40:36 and take women home so that they wouldn't interbreed. They wouldn't intermarry
40:43 once that Crow woman or once that Gros Ventre woman left the Gros Ventre people and became she then on any role, no matter what she was full blood Crow, she then belonged to the Crow people. Our people used to, uh, take Cree women. There, there was a lot of, I guess stealing of, of females long ago. And it's kind of funny, you know, because, uh, the females used to do everything.
41:08 They would put up the lodges, they take them down, they tan hides, they would teach the children they'd make our clothing, they did a lot of work. I used to ask my grandmother, why was it? Why did the females do everything? And she'd say grandson we wanted it done right the first time.
41:26 Yeah,
41:30 I wanna tell you a little quick story about our people. There's a gentleman named [speaks Algonquian] His name was Red Whip. [speaks Algonquian] He was a leader of one of our clans, one of our family system in the early 1800s. Before um before the reservations were formed, our reservation was formed in the late 1800s, probably the mid 1800s, early 1800s, the government used to come and they would bring
41:55 wagon loads of things to our people.
41:58 And it was a way to get our people to concentrate in one area. They would get um four or five clans together. They four or five family groups together and they would trade with them maybe once a month. Once every two months, these wagons would come through and all of these clans, these Indians they would meet there. And that was kind of the way they formed our reservations too. That's how they'd say. Well, this group was from right here. This is where they would meet the wagon. So that would be their homeland.
42:24 [speaks Algonquian] He would trade with these, these certain group once a month, maybe once every two months, he would take his people there. He showed up there one time and there was no, no wagons to trade with nobody there. He found a little uh a square kind of a suitcase or a leather, leather box or leather suitcase. Metal frame and had leather in it.
42:49 He camped there that where that suitcase was, is that same place where he would meet the, the government. Each and every time a certain time of the moon he would meet them there, there was no government. There, there was no wagons, no trade. They would trade for glass, metal, uh, clothing, sometimes, firearms, whiskey.
43:08 They got there and there was nothing. So they camped, there was just that little box. They camped two nights, nothing. Third night, third day, he w he woke, [speaks Algonquian] He, he called [speaks Algonquian] He called all of the people to come up. He opened that box and had hundreds and hundreds of little square pieces of wool.
43:32 He took them pieces and he handed them out to the elderly ladies first, then to the mothers with children then to the old men and to the fathers, each one of those little pieces were infected with smallpox. Our people at one time stories say they were up to 10,000 plus or more.
43:55 They dwindled down to less than 2 or 3000 in about 700 days.
44:03 So when I leave home and I have uncles and I have my clan uncles and I have my ceremonial uncles who say, why are you going to a Lewis and Clark thing and talking about our people? Don't you know what happened to our people? That was the beginning of the end to our people. This may be true,
44:26 but there's nobody in this tent myself included who could change anything about that.
44:33 There's nothing I can do to change that. The reason why I'm going is so that I could tell people just like you folks about my way of life about some of the things that we believe in the way that we dress in our beliefs, that I could come and tell you firsthand. I personally and truly believe that what the Park Service is doing for us. Indian people is a great thing.
44:58 It's a chance for us to come and tell you guys about our way of life firsthand. As opposed to that little piece that you might read in the history book or you might see in the paper or, or something on the internet.
45:11 I, I have people at home who say you should not be doing that. But I look at it from an educational point of view and every chance I get, I lecture all over, I was actually, I'm a licensed, uh, drug and alcohol counselor at home. That's, that was my life before I started doing lectures. I work in a school. I teach our language.
45:31 I look at it from a purely an educational point of view. It's a chance for us to come and tell you guys about us. I know we only get a short amount of time, but I'm gonna pretty much guarantee you that most of you folks will leave here knowing something a little bit more about the people in this area. These areas that you didn't know when you came here.
45:52 I wanna thank each and every one of you for coming. [speaks Algonquian]
46:05 Thank you Clint and Wanda for coming Folks our next program, it will be the last round of the day. It will be at six o'clock and it's called Lewis and Clark

Tent of Many Voices

Clint Brown on Gros Ventre Culture and History

Clint Brown

Gros Ventre

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Clint Brown on Gros Ventre Culture and History

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