Closed Captions

A speaker discusses their nation's return to ancestral homelands after more than 200 years of removal, from northern territories through Saint Charles and Springfield to a vastly reduced reservation. He emphasizes ongoing struggles for resources like water while celebrating cultural survival and the importance of Native representation at the bicentennial commemoration. The program includes traditional songs and dancers honoring the community's resilience.

Transcript

0:05 Good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be here. We came back to our homelands after over 200 years, three years ago or longer, our typical people lived up north of here, which is Casas Kaskas. And then we were moved down to Saint Charles and from James, Saint Charles. We were moved to Springfield from Springfield. We were moved to uh for leg
0:30 work in that area. We had the biggest reservation then and now we've shrunk it down to a six by five square miles and, and we are here not to celebrate, but to tell our story about what happened with Lisbon Park. Lisbon Park made their way to the country, you know, by order of president. And it's a very ha
0:53 they found out that it's rich grounds for settlers moving. So we were moved further west and further back. And to this day, we are still really fighting hard for water, rice. We have to truck water seven days a week, 24 hours a day during the summer time here for private life. My name is Nas. It's a
1:18 name that means two rivers and we think that it may have come from the Saint Charles area from the tribe.
1:27 At this time, we're gonna have some songs by our singers. We have a little uh dancer here that somehow missed the show this morning. So he's gonna, we're gonna sing a song for him. He's gonna draft dance before we go up here.
6:16 Our singers are gonna sing one more song. I'd like to introduce our singers. We have here back,
6:30 great singers and walking
6:36 Matthew
6:41 the covers up.
7:03 Um
7:13 Good afternoon. I want to thank his grandson the second. Uh We're so all, all through our life. These staff were our, our own brothers now.
7:30 So his name is
7:34 that be his father, Seminole. His mother, Patrick is joining cos that just really eat him chicken plant. Uh We're very proud of him. He's, he's been performing now since he started walking and you guys are good. Really good. That, that sounded good. No rehearsal. You guys are great. My name is George Glen.
7:59 Uh I'm going to say just a little bit to bless these guys and honor in my language. No, like,
8:09 yeah,
8:21 like you see
8:27 Children
8:33 and then they are.
8:37 Thank you very much
11:49 out.
11:51 That includes our part of the program. Is there any questions that input would ask them to kick the move?
12:02 We would like to thank you folks for coming in and sharing your accounts with us. So we have a question, one question back from here at the moment. What was the original homeland range of the people in this area up in CASS County. It's about two days drive from here, but nowadays it's only one hour.
12:25 Good. Yeah. Thank you for your question. Let's give him another round of applause.
12:38 I have before I run six off. I have one more uh short presentation. I'd like to introduce Tom L. He is a part of the Illinois Moen Park Bicentennial Commission and he has a special presentation for Amy. Is Amy still here? Yes. OK. Thank you. All right,
13:00 am has been just a terrific help. Uh And we put together the signature event. Uh We, we really wanted to make a concerted effort to represent the Native American side of the story. And uh we couldn't have done that without any, any come up here.
13:21 I have to speak. I wanna make sure it was like, besides helping me helping me learn how to pronounce Chicago. Uh And I'd like to say on behalf of the Illinois Bicentennial commission, Doctor Dale Chad, who is the chairman of that commission. I'd like to present you with this blanket uh and honor to honor you and to express our appreciation for your outstanding help in presenting the Native American story during our signature bicentennial even.
14:01 And this is the best part. I understand I get the hug burger.
14:12 I'm really not going to take up a whole lot of your time, but I just want to say thank you to Tom. We the, um, and um to Dale Chapman and to George Gazing, you've been working with us so closely period of time and it takes a lot of work to bring tribes back to places like this for some tribes. It's just a real, it's a, it's a joy pool,
14:35 bitter, sweet homecoming for many tribes and it's not always easy. And, but we have, um, we have tribes coming back to places that they have been removed from hundreds of years ago. And we're celebrating our survival and we're surviving. We're celebrating the fact that our culture still exist and we have so much to share and our culture and our heritage is still intact. It's still rich
14:59 and we would be able to present any of our culture to any of the have people working like this in the National Park Service and providing this day. And people like George and Tom and Dale Chapman working with us and putting forth such a tremendous effort to bring all of the Native American people back into the schools bicentennial commemoration. Thank you so very much.
15:38 Thank you very much for the presentation. Our next program here in attend and many voices will start at three o'clock, come back as well as our other activities, the Native American Heritage Game next door, our exhibit tent, our other exhibits at the TP in the small P and the other events all around festival where

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Tribal Return and Cultural Survival at Lewis & Clark Bicentennial

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Tribal Return and Cultural Survival at Lewis & Clark Bicentennial

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