Closed Captions

Videl and Ruby Stump, along with Henry Anderson and Ken Bruno, present traditional Native American games and their cultural significance. The speakers explain the spiritual preparation involved in crafting game pieces, demonstrate games of chance and dexterity used for survival training, and emphasize how these practices teach discipline, accuracy, and physical fitness to younger generations across Montana reservations.

Transcript

0:02 Yes, you're in the tent of many voices have been to our programs before. Oh, good. So you're very familiar with the tent of many voices. Um Maybe you aren't so familiar knowing that we are traveling along Lewis and Clark trail. We stop every couple or so cities and we stopped for about a week or two and we invite people from the community and all over the country to do presentations
0:24 related to Lewis and Clark or the people they would have run into along the way. Um And some of the effects of Lewis and Clark with us today is a group. They're going to be showing you some traditional games. I have many people here to do this presentation for you. So let me try this introduction. We've got Henry Anderson here. Um Ken Bruno behind me to my right,
0:50 both videl and Ruby stump. We've, we've got the brother four horns. Dale and David four horns. Can you stand?
1:00 Excellent. And Ronnie skunk up. So he's here as well. So all five here just for you. And they're gonna show you some traditional games. I'm gonna hand this mic to Mr Miss Mrs Stump. Ruby first.
1:17 Good afternoon.
1:20 It's such a pleasure to be under the can't have many voices. It feels really good to be sharing what we know what we have. And uh I'm glad to be here again and um, we really uh respect our traditional ways. We really, we, we carry on our traditional ways.
1:44 We still have very much our traditional ways among our uh Indian country. And I want to thank you ladies for taking the time, you know, to be here to be here with us. And uh I want to uh say to these boys, you know that I'm really glad that they can be a part of
2:08 what's being taught to them and what they're going to carry on. And also Mr Bruno and Henry and my husband and myself, you know, uh we really, we really stress everything that we know to our Children and uh
2:29 they um they will know what they have,
2:33 you know, they also play basketball, baseball, we have some real good athletes on our reservation
2:41 on our reservations, you know, the seven reservations, they're really athletic people like these boys here. And with that, I don't want to take too much of every, everybody's time here. But I want to
2:59 say that my husband will sing a welcome song for every one of you in the tent of many voices.
3:18 Yeah.
3:49 And just to relay the message, the message in the song, he's saying, let's thank the creator for our everyday lives. And when he welcomes you with this uh very special song to every one of you and to everybody involved in the tent of many voices and, and uh also the people that are very much involved, you know,
4:12 they're gonna be coming to my reservation here, our reservation here next week. And we are very anxious to have this 10th of many voices on our reservation. I am sure they're gonna be hosted. Well, and there were hospitalities great among us Indian people with that. I want to turn this over to my husband and, and I wanna thank you.
4:36 Well, hey, good afternoon. My name is White Stump. I'm a full blooded cree Indian Creek tribe. And, uh, there's a little chip on me also and, uh, my Indian name is uh Bela and uh my descendancy, direct descendant from uh Canada Chief Big Bear. It was a tree of all trees one time.
5:02 And now that's where my descendants see comes from. And now what you see here, it's, uh, they're, they're just not uh, games. You know, there's, there's, there's something special to these items you see over here. Most of the items you see up here are made out of wood. Would, you know, they are, there's a special reason for that, you know, the, uh, the Indian people,
5:24 the wood itself, it's a spirit, spirit to the Indian people. So before they make these, you know, fourth graders, fourth grader or not, they make these uh game items here, there's a ceremony to it before they go out and get the sticks. And now they all mostly use the, uh, willow like these here,
5:49 they say that uh it's a kind of spirit in, uh, in wood, concerning wood. So this sometimes they make these, you know, that, uh even three year olds make these all the way up to adults. So, uh, thank you.
6:12 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, my name is uh Henry Henderson. I'm the culture director of the Lucille Chippewa tribe of the state of Montana. I'm also Korean. There's a little Cinna boy in me too. I don't know where that coming at, but we're there. But in all these games here and that are people like Vell said, we go out to have a little ceremony to be able to pick these up and we just don't go right out there and go pick them up without
6:38 the creator showing us how to get these, all these games. You see here is where the uh no Indians has been used more than they call them a different game. They, they, they got a different name to them and like all of more or less like these, these rocks is more like a memory game. And these are, this is where the s me that look like a
7:00 golf ball. I mean, uh hockey, that's where hockey coming from on that. And you got all these other, these games here. And we have, uh, also before I forget, I'm also the president of the international traditional games. So, come on down over in Great Falls the 29th to the third. We'll all, we'll have, we're gonna have just about everybody there from every reservation in the state of Montana. And there should be some people coming in from
7:25 down south too. Let's not disappoint those people up there. We got some good people that is helping us with Vell and Ruby and Ken over here, he's done a lot of research on this thing. Each one of these, each one of these games has got something, everyone has been blessed, everything has been blessed and you can't buy none of these at Walmart Kmart or anywhere.
7:48 There's a lot of work putting these things together just trying to get them where we can and when we can, we get them at the spring of the, on the, during the spring of the year. Vell and myself and Ruby and a couple other people, we go out and get these, you know, we, we go far away, long ways away. They went all over the country and I went to them, some of these places trying to get these people to come on up
8:13 cause this is one time only for us and I'm sure it's gonna be one time for you guys to, to see these Indian game, traditional games. You can go out and see basketball, baseball anytime, but this year you're gonna see the real thing. So I'm gonna turn it over now to Ken Bruno, he's the, he's one of the best that done a lot of research on, on some of these. He'll explain what these are, what these games are for. Thank you.
8:40 Thanks, Mr President. Um I like to thank you all for coming today um to our traditional games, uh traditional Games Society was established in 1997 by tribal presidents and people to uh to take this lost culture and bring it back. Um
9:02 And we believe it's, most of the games weren't merely played, but they had um implements behind each of them. A lot of them were spiritual and uh a lot of them uh were games of chance, games of dexterity and they were to help us um physically get ready for um our older lives
9:25 um in July, July 21st of 2003, we native people of the Great Falls community accepted our traditional game blanket. Um This is passed from tribe to tribe and with, with each tribe, they leave a game piece within a blanket. So we're allowed to go ahead and teach and play that particular game.
9:48 And this came through four tribes now and we're going to pass this on
9:54 July 3rd to the next tribe. So if you're in Great Falls, you actually get to see that presentation.
10:02 Um We've been working with a lot of other um departments and stuff. Um We worked up the culture camp at Standing Rock at Flathead Lake with the sailors Kootenai tribe and we performed and played our games up there. And we also got together with Wings of America last year in August. And uh we learned their games and they learned ours
10:25 myself and six students from uh great balls went and attended the opening ceremony of the Lewis and Clark um in Illinois. So it was a great experience for them. And me and a
10:39 uh in uh Great Falls, we have schools that have Native American clubs and we come together once a week and we play our games, we learn to build them and we keep the native in our schools within our native community. Um My research of our traditional games um I fo followed a Dr Dorsey in uh 18 nineties, 1905.
11:02 He did research on the agencies, he went to reservation to reservation and took accounts of the different games and uh his documentation and stuff. I dove into that. I took what I could get out of his uh documentation and I went home and sat down and I built the piece and I played with it and played with it. Some of them take me six months to learn how
11:27 cause there's nobody that's 200 years old to teach me. So it's really hard. I go around and talking to our elder people from different agencies and they remember things of old games. So I sit down with them and we kind of hammer it out and kind of get a picture of what the game was and I write down in detail all that and uh
11:49 just keep research and I dig into books, um, mainly learn from our elders and stuff. And right now I'm currently working with a guy that's out of Arizona, the Navajo. And he just taught me this new dice game that involves a rock and five flat sticks, one side painted. They used to take,
12:10 take the stones and place the stone down and then they'd make their wagers, you know, they bet maybe a buffalo robe or a couple of horses or something and they take the sticks and they toss them against the stone and if they all come, come up with the colored side up or all noncolored, they'd win. And I played it with some friends of mine and boy, the pot really grows. It's a hard game to win.
12:36 So I'm currently working on that one trying to get it down pat. But, um, just to kind of give you an idea where my research is, comes and goes here. Um, I broke the game down into two classes. The games of chance and games of dexterity. A lot of, uh, games of chance are like our dice games.
12:56 Um, dice are made of sticks. They were also made of, uh, buttons or deer horns, they take and cut antlers and make little buttons out of them. This stuff you'll be able to come up and view when we get done here. And, um, and there were a lot of minor amusement games, um, which you'll see here as we go through this. Um,
13:22 the traditional games had a purpose and that was survival. Um, the young Children took the bow and the arrow and they learned how to practice. They played really wicked games. Um, this here represents a wounded buffalo. It's called a wounded buffalo game. The cactus, which is real cactus has a red painted mark on it. Kind of like the ones in the picture on the end down there.
13:47 And they go, you shoot your bow, you shoot your arrow into the cactus and then you wound the buffalo. So whoever has this comes after the guy, he wound, who wounded him and he actually, they used to chase him and stick him and stuff. And, uh, you do have to rely on your buddies to come and put an arrow into it because when you were actually out hunting buffalo, it take eight or nine arrows to take a buffalo down.
14:12 So you rely on the buddy system, you rely on your friends to help you. Ok? And that's a wounded buffalo. If you do come up and touch these things, be careful because that is real cactus. Ok.
14:26 Um,
14:28 yeah,
14:30 a variety of equipment that we use, um, we use all kinds of different things. We use buffalo hair and if you have never smelt it or touched it, you can freely do that up here. We use buckskin hide. Um, we use the shavings off of our willows. We collect them and then we tie them together to make our balls. Ok? You could take a ball
14:55 and the fur and the hide and put it together
15:01 and you end up with a little doll head. Ok? And then you build a dress from there. So it's pretty simple stuff. It's just a matter of, um, what they had to use and the different tribes from across the country had to use different things because of the, uh, the weather climates. Um, did, you know Indians read for years? Hundreds of years.
15:24 They used to look up at the sky and they'd read the sky what it was doing. You know, they look into the water and see what the water, how the water was. They'd read the, the Fastness, the swiftness of water they've bred for a lot of years, um, in a different method. Um, when we go out and, uh, to harvest our equipment that we need, um, we do praise, we pray over our equipment.
15:48 We leave the offerings on the land before we take it. All of our equipment's prayed over and stuff and it's really done out of a lot of respect when I do introduce the games from different tribes. I do with respect to that tribe and their cultures. Um, it's more, more likely than ever that I did talk to an elder and stuff and learn more about the game
16:11 with the ones that we've came forth with. Um, we use Teeters, we use willow, the whole piece of the willow. We keep the top part and make our rings and stuff for our games. So we don't waste any of it. We use imitations you, um, a long time ago it used to be like squirrel gut and stuff like that. Yeah.
16:33 Um, this is a, a tusk off a wild boar. I still haven't implemented into anything yet, but I'm working on it.
16:41 You know what this is, uh, you know what natives used to call it a pig skin, pig skin. Y'all heard that,
16:51 um, we do have major league baseball players and people in sports that came a long way. Um, some tribes use corn and corn tusks and stuff to make their equipment with. This is a ring made with, um, corn tusks. Ok.
17:10 Feathers of different type types of birds that we used.
17:19 And
17:23 some of our games probably haven't been seen for over 182 100 years.
17:29 So, um, with that, we're gonna show you a short video, kinda give you an idea of our teachings with the kids and then we'll dive into the games. Ok.
17:58 Maybe.
18:07 Ok.
18:10 Um, I'm gonna start introducing a few games here. This is called a Hammer. The Illinois Indians from Illinois, which, when I was down, I couldn't find any. I don't think they exist anymore. I think they kind of deteriorated on the trail of tears. But, um, this hammer would be off, offered to, uh, an elder who was, wasn't quite to be chief, but he had a lot of honors.
18:34 He was a good warrior. He might have been a good hunter. He might have been a good provider for his, uh, families. Um, he, they take this thing and they'd have a ceremony, get together all of the tribes people and they'd take and grease this up with Greece and all the young strong men would get together and chuck this out to him and they literally fight over this thing.
18:59 Um, just because you were the first one there and grabbed it, didn't mean you were gonna honor him with it because it slip away from you kind of shows you how simple life would slip away, you know, and they get out and they'd really do hand to hand battle for this thing. It'd be 56 of them tugging on it at once and none of them would get it. And the one who was the strongest and, uh, got this thing, got an honor,
19:23 the elder with it by presenting it to him. So it was kind of a good little thing.
19:33 And the staff here, um, represents our traditional games. Uh, we got sweet grass for our spiritual on the end here in eagle feathers. We're currently building another one to pass on to the next tribe.
19:50 How we saw that film?
20:07 000.
20:12 The most important thing about these games is that it teaches cultural values. It also teaches students a little bit about their history, their cultural history from tribe to tribe and also explains the differences from tribe to tribe. Not all tribes did the games the same way. So there's a lot of differences. So the students get a chance to learn that and also the students get a chance to learn
20:35 that these were a means of survival. A lot of the tribes use this, these games for a means of survival. A lot of these games teach a lot of things such as stamina endurance, a lot of intuition.
20:51 And also remember that you get your parade over and everything so you should be hurt. Yay,
20:59 you go for it
21:01 that way. Oh, no, no, no, no. That's,
21:07 this is Shinny Step.
21:14 My name is Jacob. I learned how to throw uh arrows today from Mr B Tail. And it's pretty cool. And if you hit the target the next on this, then if it's feather to feather, then it's six points and it's like this, it's two points and if it's just kind of close like this, then it's one point.
21:39 Ok. In the background, you see the two boys throwing arrows. It's a game that was developed in the early 19 hundreds on a pro reservation, I believe at that time, our neighbors, the northern Cheyenne were also practicing the games and there's a lot of walking, a lot of throwing and the distance we use is about 100 and 20
22:04 to about 141 ft. Watching these two young boys from a different tribe utilizing it and be able to develop some coordinations with it, you know, makes my heart kind of sink. You know, something I done for the kid, but not only for my nephews, but here I extended out to other tribes.
22:38 Go behind you. Look,
22:42 but we're here. I got it.
22:49 Get up. Well,
22:52 yeah, there you go. There you go. This guy's played before,
23:02 ok?
23:04 As people, as Indian people growing up and we play the games and we interact. We got to know kids from other areas and it was just the natural discipline process that the games teach, um teach us discipline, teach us sportsmanship,
23:27 accuracy and all of the things to build us up to, to become good adults.
23:47 I do.
23:50 Oh,
23:56 all right, Mr
24:01 No.
24:05 Hey,
24:11 and
25:08 one thing about Ken didn't mention anything about this. Willow. Here this stick. If your wife beats you up, you know, you got something to defend yourself with.
25:17 Well, next, I want to introduce our traditional games. Queen name is Rachel Fish. She's from Great Falls and she's been with us for quite a few years and she's gonna say a few words for us. So let's welcome her again.
25:43 Ok. Um I would like to welcome you to the international traditional games. I would also like you to come and play some of the traditional games or you could try the Missouri River race. And also there is the horse races that you could try. There will also be a Power July 1st to July sec third at the Montana Expo Park in Great Falls. And I,
26:13 and I would like to thank you for coming here today.
26:22 Uh Thanks.
26:29 I'm gonna jump into a few more games here. Um
26:34 I found over 100 and 30 different tribes that played different types of dice games. So there's a lot of different games. Um Plums, stone game. It's pretty, pretty much universal with the Indian tribes. It's done with five dice.
26:53 Two of them have markings and the markings are the same on both sides and three of them are black on one side and white on the other. You have to have two of the same and three of the same color to win. And if you wanna learn, I can show you when you come on up. Um
27:15 Here's a game that we all can play here. Um You just bend over and pick up a stone. It's called Hide the Rock. You actually put it in your hand, you can put them behind you and you switch hands, you ask them to hand it to you. Ok. Um, when I was a kid I used to gather stones. Um, I was raised in, on the outskirts of hell on a place called Mock and Flats.
27:38 And there was still some prejudism when I was a kid. And, uh, sometimes I used to have to run home after school. So I'd have me rock piles closer to my house. I'd have rock piles and big sticks and stuff. So when it got too close to me, I had to, you know, run to my rock pile and start chucking rocks. But we don't want kids to be throwing rocks anymore. So don't do what I did.
28:05 Um, there's various stick games that we played too. Um, we use counting sticks to keep track of the score. Um, if you win, you'd get one stick, you know, then you just kind of progress and it was always an odd number of sticks for some reason. Ok. I'm guessing sticks is another game. Um,
28:27 a pile of sticks would be split behind you and you'd hold out your hand and somebody would guess how many sticks that were in that pile. So it was a good game.
28:39 Um, and then stick days. Now,
28:48 um, hand game was another big one. It's still used today and, um, at powwows and stuff it's done with 11 sticks. And you have, you have these things called bone dice. Ok. Um, you'd actually hide these, there were actually four of them. Um, the red marking ones and the plain ones and they determine on what side
29:13 of your people that you'd guess. I just kind of show you here
29:22 and the opposite team would guess what hand they were in. So they'd point this way or this way and the bone would tell you if this was on the outside or the inside. It's a game. You'd have to sit down and learn. I do got a tape that describes it better, but I ain't got that plan. Um, and natives used to gamble a lot, um,
29:44 with the robes and beads and things that they made gold and stuff. Um, they'd even gamble away their, their wives, their lodges. Um, they gamble away almost everything to this day. Um, there were hidden ball games, um, where you'd take, have four moccasins and you would take a
30:07 stone and you'd hide it in one of the moccasins and somebody guess which moccasin it was hidden in. Ok. Archery was very big. I like Vel's bow. Um,
30:22 um, many of the tribes played, um, variety of different games. I found over 30 tribes that I'm working with and they're different games that they played with the bow and the arrow. They take, they take and shoot arrows up in the air to see how many they could have launched before the first one hit. Some of them used to have up to 8, 10 arrows up in the air before the first one came back down. Ok.
30:46 They do target practice, um, shooting at different implements. Uh, they, they actually take just the arrows and to take tosses to see how far they could actually throw them. They have little targets out there like a fork stick and they try to get the arrow to land within the fork to win. Ok. Little games like that
31:11 for accuracy and stuff.
31:15 Um, they also hunted young birds and stuff when they were kids so that when they grew up, they, you know, they could provide for their families by killing animals and stuff. Um, there was a, there's a story I'll share with you about, uh, hunting rabbits. A young gal challenged her young buck to a rabbit hunting contest. Um,
31:39 and they'd go out together if she shot a rabbit before he would, he'd have to wear her clothes back to camp, they'd switch clothes. And, uh, if she got another rabbit before him, he had to pack her firewood back to camp, wearing her dress. So you learn to be a good hunter because she didn't want to go back to camp, wearing your friend's dress.
32:06 Um, I found 92 tribes who played hoop and Paul. This would be our hoop and we'd use spears
32:23 and you, you toss your spear through the, um, loop as it came rolling by to, to score points. Some had strings around and the the string wrapped around the, the, the arrow. You, you'd get points that way and different points were from different tribes. They have different colored beads and stuff. So it was quite a challenge and a lot of difference in the games.
32:49 Um spear the whale as an Alaskan game. They take a whale bone and hang it from a tree and you'd have spears and you'd be on each side of it trying to spear the hole in the bone. It's really challenging called spear the whale. It's Alaskan game,
33:09 I'll ring the stick and we will have some of these outside. You guys can practice with also the bow roar and I got my extras down there. Um This is ring, the ring, the stick, you got a ring and a stick. OK? You put this on the ground and you'd pull it up and you put the ring around the end of the stick.
33:32 Uh
33:36 OK. Yeah, I need a bigger hoop
33:41 in the. Thank you. OK.
33:47 Um Ring toss was another one, I believe that's where horseshoes came from. They didn't make their rings and they'd have their steak out in the ground and they toss their rings over the steak. OK? A lot of these games without inter inter European influence, I believe, ice hockey, field hockey camp and she gave me shiny. OK?
34:10 And uh the one we've seen the video, the run and scream, um They used to teach this game to the young kids to build up their lungs and stuff. Um, when they were older, they'd taken, be running with the buffalo and they'd scream and yell and they'd turn entire buffalo herds by y'all yelling and screaming. Also for our young Children, when they were down by the creek or something playing, they could run and scream for help.
34:34 So it was more of a, it wasn't just a game, it was more than the game
34:44 on ball races. Some tribes would kick a ball and they use wooden ones.
34:53 Hm,
34:55 I lost my wooden ball.
34:59 No. Anyway, they'd use a wooden ball and they, they'd have like a lake or something and they'd actually kick this ball all the way around the lake. They'd have races. They'd have two balls and two guys and they just actually get behind it and they kick it all the way around the lake to see which one could kick around the lake the furthest. And they used to wear Mokin, you know, man,
35:22 um, I found over 19 tribes who played different variety of different ball games.
35:31 I'm at Latt. I didn't bring my, at Latt. It was being used at school or something. But, um, you know, the big mammoth, like a water buffalo animals, elephants or whatever, the big animal. Well, they used to take the, at Latt and hunt, hunt the mammoth down and a lot of natives got killed hunting them.
35:52 But if I had that you'd really enjoy that. One. Cat's cradle is done with a string, just one piece of string. And you, you know how you see these kids interlocking a string with their fingers. That's cat's cradle. Ok.
36:08 Um, there are a variety of different ball games, um,
36:13 in June 2005 here, the 29th, the 30th, the 1st, 2nd and the third, we're going to do 23 types of games. We're going to play Shinny for exhibition and we're gonna play double ball. Um, with these guys will be outside practicing. They're gonna go ahead and kind of give you a live demonstration out there and, uh, game of lacrosse racket, um,
36:38 like you seen in the video, um,
36:42 and in the early 17 hundreds, the Ottawa Indians of Michigan, um, was playing a friendly game of racket outside of a fort and the soldiers were watching them. They were like 50 on each side. And about a half hour later, there would be 100 on each side and they just kept growing more and more Indians after there were so many of them, they just turned and they attacked the fort.
37:07 Uh, they took nine forts in one year playing games out in front of them. So it was kind of a war tactic too.
37:16 Um, the two individuals out back, they're playing a game of double ball. You cannot use your hand and touch the ball at all. You gotta use the stick and you can't pick it up or nothing without using the stick. Two goals are set up at the end of the field and shiny. Also, most of our team games involve goals at the end of the field and like football. Um
37:40 It's precise, it's mainly a women's game. Some tribes, it was known as the women's game.
37:51 Um and it was exclusively played by women. The balls vary in shape and size. Some are oblong like the sock and fox tribes. And this is a double ball. Usually that we take grain or something and put it in here, maybe rocks and pebbles, wrap it around with buffalo hair and then put buck skin around it. It's a double ball. Ok?
38:14 I will be doing now exhibition on too. Um, sometimes there were hundreds of people that came and seen different tribes and within one tribe there'd be a bunch of villages, um, within 23 miles and they'd all come together and everybody knew who was really the great guy on from one village. So they'd always bet on them particular guys. Ok.
38:40 Um, shiny too was, um, oh, I found a lot of tribes that played shiny. It was pretty much all of the, um, modern day hockey and everything came out of shiny. But, um, they'd come to camp and they'd have mostly the same rules as we use today. Um, from what I found with different tribes,
39:02 sometimes it'd be up to 12 villages watching and playing on the outcome of the game.
39:07 And uh the game consists of at least four players on the field at one time, but there could be as many as 100 people on the game. OK. Uh The bull roar is another game
39:22 and this is done with a stick and, and a, and a piece of wood. Um Sometimes believe it's made the wind blow. OK? And you spin it. Oh Let that one go. I seen that coming off here.
39:43 This is actually more fun than yo, yo.
39:47 But you can do different things with this. You can shape them differently and make them make different sounds. Um It was always my dream to, to have two of these going and actually doing a fancy dance contest, but I never did it, but it would be fun.
40:04 It's also known as a whizzer. A buzz. I need both my hands to do this,
40:12 but a button or a bone is rounded and put in between two sticks.
40:23 It's fine.
40:31 Ready to go.
40:36 Where's the kids land?
40:47 And uh when you get good at this, you can actually make this down.
40:54 Exactly.
40:56 This will carry up if we get it on the.
41:01 And that's a buzz.
41:05 I found 13 tribes that played buzz and two of them were from Montana, the Ghost Ventura and uh the crow.
41:15 Um Shuttlecock was another game. The Meca Indians from British Columbia played it along with 10 other tribes. They take it like the modern day, um, paddle. Ok. And then they take, um, this is called a shuttle cock itself. They got corn tusk in here with feathers. Ok. And the object of this game was to see how many times you
41:40 can keep this thing in the air or pass it in a circle. Ok. So it was a pretty good game. I think that's where ping pong came from
41:51 and not to forget horsemanship and canoe events. We do a lot of them. I have a few, a few additional little games. This is called prisoner escape. You put these on two individuals and they try to get away from each other. So I won't get into that. Um, vital videl. Do you have anything
42:15 I'm done with mine? Thank you
42:26 in 10 minutes.
42:29 Uh, he gave you,
42:32 they don't, they're not just games. They consist of a physical activity a long time ago. You know, you, you didn't see any Indian that weighed 2 £300 you know, they were all slim physically fit. So that's what part of these games were used for. Like the, uh, kickball, the games you just explained,
42:56 they, uh, consist of like your movement of all your body parts to be in physical condition. Why they done that long, long time ago was, uh, when they go out hunting, like he talked about a screaming game up your lungs, you know, in case you have to run either away from the buffalo or after it, you know.
43:19 But uh that's, that's what consist of these Indian games, you know, that the accuracy, throwing spears, the games over there, the shiny. So
43:37 um like he's saying, like uh Ken is saying here, uh it's, it's really similar with our tribe to what he just explained here. Uh Like we said, we really value, we really value our traditional games. And I am really fortunate to say that uh
43:58 they are being used among our uh Indian kids. And uh
44:05 I think that it's really good that we can come, come out and share, share what we have here. And then we um
44:17 we don't, we don't really uh put our white kids aside either because we would want them to learn too because after all, the voice of man, the 10th of many voices is all, that's what it's all about is for all of us to live in one peaceful way to get to know each other and to know what our games are and what their games are
44:39 and what we believe in and what you believe in that is why we uh we don't hesitate to show the white kids and the white people what we have because how are they gonna know if we don't show them and how are we gonna know if you don't show your way too? And uh but yeah,
45:02 myself, I'm mccree, I'm from Rocky Boy Reservation south of Harbor. And uh I uh I'm a very traditional person and we have a lot of traditional values at home that we still treasure. And we try to share what we know to our young kids from that start on up so that they won't lose their way.
45:26 So they won't lose their language. And in our school we teach our alphabet, we, we still have our alphabet that we, we have our pre dictionary that we still use. And uh
45:41 like these boys that are playing and playing the game, it's for physical activity like they say basketball. You know, it's really a popular game among our Indian kids too. And with that, you know, we don't, uh we don't hesitate and come out and show what we have because we want you people to know what we have to.
46:07 And we also welcome people on our reservation. You know, we don't, uh we don't look down upon anybody. Everyone is our friend, different nationalities. You know, we welcome them. We welcome them on our reservations as native people. That's the way we were brought up. So it's really good to be here. Thank you.
46:35 Hi, thanks. Once again from the traditional game society, it's been an honor. Oh,
46:42 thank you all for coming. Thank you.
46:46 We've had traditional game programs performed or presented by Videl and Ruby Stump several times with us in the tent of many voices and each time they bring the games outside and that's where the fun happens So we're gonna invite you to go outside. We're gonna bring these tables, all the games out and have you get a firsthand experience with those games. So please meet everyone outside
47:10 and also stick around because in 10 minutes.

Tent of Many Voices

Cree and Chippewa Leaders on Traditional Games and Cultural Preservation

Videl Stump

Cree, Chippewa

48:42

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Cree and Chippewa Leaders on Traditional Games and Cultural Preservation

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