Closed Captions Audio Described

Allen Slickpoo Jr. (Nimipuu/Nez Perce) explains the spiritual and cultural significance of ceremonial foods including salmon, deer, roots, and berries. He describes coming-of-age ceremonies, traditional harvesting practices, food preparation methods, and the connection between foods and Nez Perce laws and teachings. Slickpoo shares family stories of traditional fishing practices on the Clearwater River and discusses how ceremonial foods remain central to Nez Perce ceremonies, marriages, and community gatherings today.

Transcript

0:04 I want to welcome you once again to the Tent of Many Voices. It's a pleasure to be here in Lewiston as usual. We've been here seven days already. So this is pretty exciting. We never get to stop that long. One of the special things about this event that you're at is there are 390 national parks in the US. We're the only national park that comes to your community. So count yourselves lucky. Um I guess it's has something to do with that whole Lewiston name
0:28 just, just thinking, you know, um, before we waste any more time, I do wanna get going with this. We have a wonderful program for you. It's called Ceremonial Foods. We'll have Mr Allen Slickpoo Jr. presenting and so please go ahead and give him a round of applause and welcome him to the tent. (applause) Good afternoon. I wanna welcome each and everyone here today. I am. Uh
0:53 my given name is [speaks Nimipuutímt]
0:57 means the person who marked his legs. Years and years ago before the coming of the European people. The Namiipuu
1:10 had traditional enemies throughout the Montana, Canada, Washington, Oregon, Nevada. Utah, we had other tribes out there who, who disliked the Nimiipuu people and we become to learn how to dislike them for other tribes. You know, it was a, it was a common practice that other tribes would come into
1:35 Nimiipuu country here and they would uh take our children and take our, our women for slaves or whatever the reason they did. And in turn, we'd go back and we'd raid their camp. And there's a man that, that I received the name from that he was a, he was a warrior.
1:57 And during some of these raiding parties that were taking place that sometimes we had to take a life and [speaks Nimipuutímt] means mark legs.
2:10 And when our people took the lives of other people, it was considered a sin. So when an individual took the life of another individual from perhaps another tribe or, or Crow or Shoshone-Bannock people uh the Cheyenne people, the Blackfeet, those people were known as our traditional enemies. That this man,
2:34 when he took the life of those individuals, he had to take that spirit also because that's all we knew. Our lives were guided by the guardian spirits which we call Weyekin
2:48 and every individual had this type of spirit that was our guardian spirit that led us through our life. And when during one of these parties that this warrior [speaks Nimipuutímt] him, he went to perhaps uh get our children or our horses or our wives back or whatever it was that he took the spirit away from his individual
3:12 and he took the blood of that individual and he would mark his legs because that's what his Weyekin told him to do that was his direction and understanding what the history, the oral history that, uh this, he was a warrior who took a lot of lives and he was selected a lot of times to go into Montana or Southern Idaho
3:36 or up north or the Cayuse or whoever it may have been the Paiutes that we would um send parties to go search for these people. And this is what he'd done for the sake of, of their children, the youth and the women. So that's the name I bear today [speaks Nimipuutímt] That's the same name that my, my father has. Uh
4:00 and my borrowed name which we know as borrowed names like John and Bill and Fred and, and Alan, I am Alan Slickpoo Junior and I do have a son. His name is Alan also, but I wanted to explain that. And my last name Slickpoo, that's uh that's a name that's a very old name that at one time there was a
4:24 member of our family ancestor that we had. His name was [speaks Nimipuutímt]
4:31 is interpreted how
4:34 that this person, he got hit by an arrow from one of these neighboring tribes that were sought war on our people. And he was hit with an arrow and he, from that time in the leg that he walked with a limp [speaks Nimipuutímt] That's what that means. A man with a maimed leg or a wounded leg. And he lived up there in a [speaks Nimipuutímt]
4:59 area [speaks Nimipuutímt] we call, lives up there, uh, up there by, uh Stites and Kooskia
5:07 and uh
5:09 the white settlers who came in, they couldn't say that [speaks Nimipuutímt]
5:16 They thought and they looked around and they, they couldn't say talk in our tongue the way that we do. So they called him Jim.
5:27 Jim Slickpoo. Hey, let's call him Jim Slickpoop. So that's how we got the name Slickpoo. Uh The long, that's a short version of the Jim Slickpoo. And I wanted to explain that to everybody that. So it, it is a, it is a given name that we have just shortcut. You know, we all tend to take shortcuts and my name, my borrowed name is Alan Slickpoo
5:52 Junior and I'm from Kamiah live up the river in Kamiah, I, which we call [speaks Nimipuutímt] means upriver people. [speaks Nimipuutímt] means downriver people. So that's where I'm from. Uh Some of you may, I, I was talking with a lady out there before I came in. She was up in Kamiah on Saturday and we did a presentation on up there in
6:16 Kamiah I don't know if any of you folks that was at Kamiah I that day, but I wanna welcome you back uh to be a part of the our country here. This is known as [speaks Nimipuutímt] Uh My lineage comes from also in this area. Also [speaks Nimipuutímt]. There is uh two chiefs,
6:34 one was [speaks Nimipuutímt] [speaks Nimipuutímt], he was a chief for the [speaks Nimipuutímt]. With um [speaks Nimipuutímt] right here in this area, probably downtown Main Street or wherever in this area right here. This was the [speaks Nimipuutímt] Blue Band and across the river from the, from the confluence of the snake and uh Clearwater.
7:00 [speaks Nimipuutímt] means obsidian. He was a chief on the north side of the Clearwater at the conclusion of the snake. So that's my lineage um hereditary from uh two chiefs. Um [speaks Nimipuutímt] and [speaks Nimipuutímt] and also [speaks Nimipuutímt]
7:17 was uh which means um grizzly bear high above come from the white bird man down in a, in a [speaks Nimipuutímt] in the Salmon river area. So I, that's my lineage, I come from three different chiefs. Um But I wanted to explain that. Uh that's, it's always appropriate to explain yourself. You know, before you do a presentation, I'm going to speak on ceremonial foods today.
7:42 When we talked on the phone, we talked about, well, I'd like to talk about traditional food and I seen the program and, and where they put me on for ceremonial. So I thought to myself, what's the difference between ceremonial food and traditional food. Well, there could be a big difference. Traditional food
8:04 is, is a little bit different than the ceremonials. For instance, I was talking with one of the rangers out there and I was telling them, he said, well, there really is no difference. And I said, well, there is a difference because ceremonial. We have the salmon feast. We have the root feast. We have many different feasts. We have Huckleberry feast
8:26 and depending on what type of ceremony, that's the, the food that we're only going to eat. When a young boy
8:35 steps into manhood and he's gonna be a provider for his family. He catches his first salmon or he kills his first deer to our people. That means that the individual is stepping out of boyhood and into manhood and he has committed his first sin. He has committed his first sin because he took the life of nature
9:00 and in doing so, the family gets together and they have a giveaway. They bring material goods, they bring beaded goods, they bring food and they, you have a feast.
9:14 Let's say the young boy. Now I'm gonna explain this here a little bit later. The young boy, this is salmon, this is dried salmon. The young boy catches his first salmon. He's trained to go out on the river to, to he's always been with the older people to watch, to learn how they, they catch the fish in the, in the traditional way.
9:38 Traditional I'm speaking of, um, old hooks or, or traps or however they may be modern day, we use dip nets and we still use, uh, gaff hooks. And that boy goes out there and he gets his first salmon.
9:54 The family will get together. Nobody is to eat that salmon until that, that big day. That's going to be that, that boy's big day. When he steps into manhood, the family will get together and they'll take care of that salmon. Perhaps they'll preserve it and they'll dry it like this. And back in the old days, that's pretty much the way they've done it is they dried it like this or perhaps they would smoke it.
10:17 And there's different ways to make your salmon. You can pound it and you can dry it up into small cereal like uh like flakes and the family will get together and they'll call everybody. All you people come on, come, come to our home. We're going to feast
10:35 this [speaks Nimipuutímt] Well, this young boy, he has got his, received his first
10:42 salmon for the family. Everyone come, all the fishermen will come and gather all the women who prepare the foods. They will come and gather
10:55 and the crier, the, the speaker, he will go around and tell everybody about what, what this boy has done and how the salmon was provided for our people
11:10 years ago during legendary times when all the animals and, and those chiefs and those beings in a river could communicate and speak.
11:22 The creator called upon all these animals and all these beings to come telling, telling them that the human beings are going soon be here.
11:32 And you have to all come forward to receive your name and to and to receive your purpose of life to for these human beings.
11:43 And there was a great big storm
11:48 and the creator told them on this third time, that you hear the thunder and lightning hit it's gonna shake the world. You have to come here to the longhouse to receive your name.
12:01 One by one. They all came the salmon, the deer, the elk, the bears, the birds, the eagles, the ground squirrels, the salmon, the suckers, steel head, the lamprey, the eels, they all came forward to receive their name. And from that time, they received their name, they could speak no more.
12:26 They couldn't communicate with one another anymore. Like we, we communicate as human beings. They could no longer talk the language that, that, that they were speaking to
12:40 and, and the creator. The first one was the, those of the, of the blood of the earth, the water,
12:49 The salmon, he was made chief.
12:53 There are many chiefs that were in the water because you all hear about the sucker fish, the steelhead, the eels, they were all chiefs, but there was only going to be one spokesman who was going to be the head chief and this is who he is right here, the salmon.
13:12 Other places you go, you hear the history of the, of the way it is and other tribes will say, and the salmon stood up and he spoke,
13:22 our people believe that he did not speak. Because once the, the human beings, they came and received their given name, the [speaks Nimipuutímt],
13:32 the fish is [speaks Nimipuutímt] and the [speaks Nimipuutímt] is the salmon that he received the name and the [speaks Nimipuutímt] that he was no longer going to be able to communicate with any of the other beings.
13:45 So this is, this is what they do. They, I wanted to explain that about the salmon and then the deer, they all received their name and there's other beings that refused. They chose to be the way they are today.
14:02 And if you can understand what I'm speaking of there, that there are other beings that are, let's say they're, they are in hiding. Somebody might sight him once in a while. Somebody might hear him once in a while, but they don't have a name.
14:20 And that's still true to this day because a lot of scientists and historians, archaeologists, scientists, they're all anthropologists, they're all looking for these beings, but they, they're so elusive that they can never be found. The creator said that from this day on those people, they're going to have to live in shame that they're going to stay in shame
14:41 and they're not going to be amongst the rest of us like we have here or in the forest, even those other animals, those other beings are going to be afraid of those that are in the forest because they chose to be the way they are. And today we choose to be who we are, our different walk of life. Some of us, we don't have a choice. But you know, I just wanted to explain that.
15:05 So all these receive their name, every single one of them, the, the salmon, the deer, the bitterroot and the kouse and the tea. This is some of our ceremonial foods.
15:19 And when that happens, when I'm speaking of ceremonial, this is traditional food and ceremonial food. When we're having a salmon feast, this one sits up front. This is the only one that comes into the home. It's the only one that goes to the longhouse. The crier will go around and he'll say today the first salmon has returned. This young boy has caught his first salmon. He has taken the life, he has committed a sin
15:44 and it's nothing bad. You know, understand that it's nothing going to be bad for that child. That child has already been trained to know what is going to happen through teachings from our elders or our fathers, our mothers, our grandparents, our grandmothers and grandfathers to a young child, the grandmother and grandfather was always mentoring them and helping them out
16:08 as someone who they really looked up to their [speaks Nimipuutímt] or their [speaks Nimipuutímt]. That means their grandfather paternally and maternally, they would look up to them and seek their guidance and, and at the same, same time, they're building up this young boy saying he is the son of so and so he, he done this. He has been trained, he received his first salmon.
16:29 Now from this day on, he's gonna be, he's gonna be known as a fisherman. He is going to be known as a provider
16:39 that he has caught his first salmon anytime in need you people and that you need fish. Call upon this boy, it's his duty to go ahead and be a fisherman for you. Those of you who can't fish, this young man will do it for you. Same way with the deer when the young boy goes out and gets his first kill,
17:04 he gets his first deer. A ceremony is called in the same way. All the hunters, all the fishermen, you all come, come to eat this deer meat with this boy
17:18 and it'd be up to the grandparents or the parents is to call upon everybody. Well, let's call this gentleman over here. He's been a known hunter. He's hunted many years. He's 87 years old. This man over here in this other camp in this other village. He's a teacher, he's made bows and arrows, he knows how to make the flint knives
17:41 call him in. He takes care of the meat. He's a provider. All these important people, they'll sit at the table up front here with, with the boy
17:51 and they will turn when, during the meal or after the meal, they'll get up and they'll speak and they'll give encouragement to this young boy and say from this day on this is what you have to do. You've seen it done with your parents, you've seen it done with your older brothers and your uncles and your grandfathers. The rituals that you do when, when we prepare ourselves to go hunt deer, hunt fish.
18:14 Same way with the women folk. When a young girl does her first route, or picks her first berry the same type of ceremony. But that specific food will be the main one. The ceremony will be for the salmon. The ceremony will be for the deer. The ceremony will be for this root here or this root here.
18:37 There's many different types of roots and I brought a sample of them today because I ate up all my huckleberries. I don't have huckleberries because we already had ceremonies and I used up last year's huckleberries. I don't save them. You know, they're not meant to be saved. They only come one time a year and, and everything like that right here. They're going to show themselves only for a little while
19:01 and, and all of these beings right here. They have a color, a very distinctive color that I've seen in a newspaper. It must have been Sunday that lights up the earth and were sacred colors to our people. And a lot of our people don't know that our own people don't know that sacred colors are the sacred numbers that go with these foods. But
19:26 that's what the color of, of these plants are. The purple and the yellow. You know, and, and ceremony when you talk about ceremonies, sometimes we're going to take these colors and we're gonna paint our faces. We're gonna paint our head with these colors during certain times because that's another ceremony. But we can talk all, it's gonna take a long time and hour, not long enough to talk about ceremonies.
19:50 But I just want to explain that that's the process of the deer, the fish, the roots and these are all ceremonial foods. These are all natural foods. People say, well, I'm not gonna eat that dirty old fish. He comes from the river and there's so much sludge and everything in the water. His pure as can be the only his, um, the only time that he's not sterile anymore is when we take a knife and we cut him open
20:14 his sterile. You know, them fish are the deer meat are the same way.
20:19 So they are good healthy foods. You know, we can talk about the, the Hanford area. They say the Hanford area has a lot of contamination. You know, the, the waste that comes out of the, each city all the way from up the hills. But you know, we still, this is our traditional food. This is what the creator gave us. He named all these food for us. And these foods right here, sacrifice
20:45 themselves for us. The fish has sacrificed no matter what, what you think that that salmon was meant for that boy on that day. And that hour, that very moment they came together and, and they met
21:04 that day was set aside for that young boy. This day was set aside for this young girl to get this route. And it's, it's really hard. I'm trying to do the best I can to explain, you know, about the ceremonial foods. So that is the process of the first salmon and the first deer, the first root and the first berry, uh, that happens
21:25 other ceremonies that we do have some. Uh, and like when life comes into the world, we're all happy
21:37 when somebody leaves the walk of life with us, we're all sad. I'm getting into another ceremony. But, but everything is so much tied together. You know, you can't just go along and talk about something and, and everything leads to a something else like our ceremonies. We have song, we have language, we have names for all of these.
22:02 And this is the food that traditionally and ceremonial that we set out on table, whether you go to a medicine dance or you go to a root feast or salmon feast. These foods are set in order.
22:16 And when one of us leave this walk of life, these foods are going to set in order. We, it's our responsibility and our duty that the creator gave us, that we have to eat these foods. Those of us who are left behind have to eat these foods that go along with it. Minus the berries. I, we ate our berries out
22:37 and most of important, the water sits right here in this respected order water salmon, deer. First root that shows himself is, is the bitterroot [speak Nimipuutímt]. This is what we call it. This is a bitterroot. This is here is kouse, this is kouse uh ground up and this is our ceremonial tea. This is [speak Nimipuutímt]
23:00 this is mountain tea that we get up in the mountains. And there's a different, you can find at least four other different teas along the river and along the creeks. And sometimes you can only find them over on the Salmon River breaks or high up in the Montana. They just have their own place where they grow. And that's why we were migrating people. When the salmon were first coming, we would come down to the low lands and,
23:24 and move down to the Columbia River. Some of us would go travel down the snake into the Columbia river and receive that first salmon. And there's different kinds of salmon. You all know there's many different kinds of salmon this one here is a spring salmon that was caught about a month and a half ago. Down on the Columbia River. We, we go down each year and we do our harvest down there and bring it back.
23:47 Summer salmon is on the way. Now, the, the blue back is on the move. The eels are on the way. No more. Steelhead. Steelhead are pretty much year round fish, uh, uh, year round food for people because they're always here once they're only gone for a little while and the suckers that come, they only come in the spring. They're seagoing suckers. We call [speak Nimipuutímt] and then there's the residents that live here.
24:10 Then we have the trout that return all the different species that live in the water and the [speak Nimipuutímt] the eels at one time. Uh The eels were so plentiful here back in the early days that the town of Asotin is named after, after the eel [speak Nimipuutímt] And once again, the, the non-Indian
24:32 the white settlers who come, who come in, they couldn't say [speak Nimipuutímt]
24:38 in a place where there's lots of eels. They couldn't say that. They said, oh, well, anybody know any shortcuts. Yeah, let's say a Asotin. Ok. It sounds good to me. So you see Asotin on the map of Washington today, but that's where that name derived from [speak Nimipuutímt] because there are so much eels up there.
24:59 But all these things are coming back to us and, and, and we pray for these things and we hold ceremonies, we hold ceremonies in our, in our longhouses or in our homes. And we practice, we sing these songs that are sacred to us. And uh we pray for the comeback of the salmon. We pray for the uh the roots to come back. We pray for the berries to come back and we pray for our travels that,
25:23 that the creator is gonna open our road so we can get to these places and get them. So after the salmon come,
25:33 these roots here, the deer are pretty much all year round. But this, this is the first root right here. This is [speak Nimipuutímt] Bitterroot and it's the first one who shows, shows up.
25:47 Next one here is the kouse these are all, all little ones right here because, uh, the family, the wife and girls, they, they pick all the big ones. Sometimes you get some real big, big ones about that big. You know, these are number ones. It's like potatoes. You know, you're selective These are number ones, you get the number ones and you put them in the grinder and you grind them up or however you want to grind them.
26:11 And this is what, this is, what it comes out to. And you and you make [speak Nimipuutímt] we call it soup or [speak Nimipuutímt] you make this and a lot of the elders, they like to eat this stuff, right. Every one of these can be ground up when this is cooked, the bitterroot. When it is cooked, it becomes, it looks real small right now. But once it cooks, it expands and it gets real long and, and
26:35 you ever tasted it, you'll know why they call it bitterroot. It has its own color. It has its own flavor. This one has its own color. The, the kouse has its own color. The only thing I don't have is is the camas, the camas that, that's the bulb, the berries and the camas is missing here. But this is our, our ceremonial foods that we are still feast on today.
27:00 And the story goes, you know that we, we talk, I'm gonna explain a little bit about these foods about the songs that we have that our laws that came down to us from the creator in threes.
27:17 Three. Three Three. For one set of law. And in our longhouses, we have nine drummers depending on where you go. This is the way we do it in my home. We'll take nine drums made out of deer hide and we'll sing nine songs because from the first time or from the first salmon when he comes,
27:42 you can almost get a calendar and time it nine weeks later, this one's gonna show up, it's gonna show his face. She's gonna be here only for a little while and then they're gonna go back into hiding in the ground. That's exactly what they do.
28:00 They, they're up on the ground for a short time. If you don't get out there to get them, they go back into the ground and, and if, if you'd have to really be there and to understand what I'm talking about, because that's what they exactly do. They do wilt and they do decay, but the root itself, it goes back into the ground, all of them
28:23 from the first time that this one shows up. Now, this one shows up in probably uh April. Nine weeks later, we have another one
28:37 from that time. Once again, minus my huckleberries. Nine weeks later, the huckleberries are ready for harvest.
28:47 You have one set of laws, three, another set of laws, three, then one more set of laws for a total of three sets. Three, you have nine, we have nine drums. We sing nine songs. Oh, I forgot. By the way, we're carried in the womb of our mothers for nine months, nine moons.
29:12 Does that make any sense to anybody?
29:16 This is how oral history has shown myself. And I'm explaining the best way I can. Other, other tribes. You go to the Umatilla, you go to the Colville, you go to other longhouse different bands here. The Nez Perce, the Nimiipuu We practice with seven drums for each day of the week. But this is the best way that was explained to me that I know how
29:40 because, and this is the way I choose to, to do our ceremonies with nine songs, one song for each moon. And so,
29:52 and in them songs, we have words that are interpreted to the three words, three laws, the three foods and the water. You sing them songs and we pass them songs on down to our children and they, you, you'll be amazed how much they pick it up. And I'm, I'm very limited on like a lot of our tribes, tribal members, very limited on speaking our language. Uh
30:16 because way back in the early days when I was a young boy, not early days, I'm still a young kid. But, you know, I, I was watching a lot of TV,
30:27 a lot of westerns and I always wanted to be the good guy. I wanted to be the cowboy. I wanted to be on the winning side, you know, like John Wayne or the Virginian, you know, Chuck Connors and The High Chaparral all them guys and the good old shows, Bonanza. I wanted to be the hero and I wanted to get rid of them Indians and so my little brothers had to be Indians while I was a cowboy.
30:51 My cousins and little brothers had to be the Indians and, and we're on the winning side, you know, because that's where we started learning about competition. And so some of our language was, was lost. A lot of our tribal members. We know, we, we, we're not fluent speakers. We can understand, I can understand pretty good when I hear a conversation because I grew up that way, hearing these foods being talked about my grandmother and my grandfather,
31:17 uh, in the, in the sweat lodges and stuff I used, that's all they would speak is, is, is our native tongue. And I learned a lot and I, I was able to understand it. And during my time, I was in our family, I was the only boy that was that age. The rest of them were four or five years younger than me, which were, they weren't able to go into the sweat lodge yet with the elders. And uh
31:41 they, they taught us a lot, the language and the ceremonies that we do. One of the ceremonies when you speak of fishing. 1973
31:56 our family was probably the last one to float the Clearwater in a, in a homemade boat that my uncle and my, my two uncles, Timothy Wheeler, uh Charles Hayes, Pete Hayes and my dad, they made this boat and they had the idea. Well, let's go and build this in this community center there. So they got this boat and they started bringing a lumber in, in the, in the community center and they built this boat.
32:20 There was a green boat. It was about 14 ft long, it was all done. They looked at the door.
32:29 How are we gonna get this out? Of here
32:33 anyway. They, they through different ways, they turned it and they turned it and they finally got the boat out of there. But in 1973 I was probably 15, 14 years old. And uh I floated down the river with my grandpa, my uncle Pete Tim Wheeler and my dad, we floated down the river sideways on a canoe just
32:55 like this flow sideways on that boat that they built and they built a torch.
33:04 Grandpa was a welder. So he got this long metal rod, built a basket on there. So, so deep and it was filled with pitch, put pitch inside that basket. And you had one person, I was one of them, a guy in the back holding that basket down while the other guy was holding up front and on each side, there's a man who had a spear.
33:27 We were looking for steel head at night time and that pitch would light up the water.
33:34 You could get, we've, we've tried to be commercial and do flashlights, but you get such a glare off there that, that we just couldn't see the fish or catch the fish. And so the time that's when that boat was retired, I was a young boy and that's the last time that I recall that was ever floated down the Clearwater. Uh catching steelhead in the winter time, water is low, you float down and you spear them steelhead.
34:00 And during that time, my, my grandfather, he wanted to stop at the store before we went down, ready to float down. And so we stopped at the store and he had a couple of drinks.
34:16 My uncle Tim, he went and speared a steel head and that thing was just kicking around like that. And everybody got excited and bring him in. He had a three pronged spear on a long pole. Them spears were set up to once they hit the hook, he would come and hang, dangle down. And that, that steelhead would be on there and he was kicking around and
34:39 Tim was getting all excited. My Uncle Pete was getting excited. My dad and I was holding the pole down and my grandpa was the elder. He was probably like 73 years old at that time. 72-73 he was born in 1900. Them, them drinks, few drinks that he had. He started reaching for that fish and getting in there and sitting there telling him to get back (mimicks water splash) There he went,
35:03 he fell in the river in the, in the winter time there and all he was worried about was his cowboy hat,
35:10 but he got his cowboy hat and, and we got the, the steelhead. So that's um how we do our fishing or prepare our foods. We do, we prepare ourselves, go through a lot of sweat, we go to the sweat lodge. We, we fast even to this day. Um, a lot of us, we don't fast but I,
35:31 I make it a point in my family and my children that because I had to do it. And I made the joke up there in Kamiah on Saturday that we fasted and we sweat for our food before we go hunting and fishing and we don't, nobody eats. We'll take the lunch, but we don't eat.
35:48 We'll save that meal until we get a deer. We'll save that meal until we get a fish because we come out of the sweat house and, and we, we, we wear some good, nice clean clothes and we go out that we don't have a body odor, the rituals that we do to cleanse ourselves, the purity of it, the old ways of the way our people did it way back in the early 1700's,
36:12 1800's. We try to still try to practice that today and this is what we do. And I made the joke in Kamiah I that the process that it takes to, to fast and to pray and to go through the sweat lodge. We wouldn't have got that deer. If I, if I would have done all that, I wouldn't have been able to run that deer down.
36:36 But that, that goes along, you know, with the stories and everything about our ceremonial foods and the deer,
36:44 the deer provided, that was the laws that was laid out for the deer that we decorate ourselves with the body that we make buckskin clothes that we use the deer toes and the dew claws for rattles, uh, ornaments that we use utensils. We use the antlers for, uh, we look for the, uh, two points. We get the two points.
37:06 We'll use them in our sweat lodge to handle the rocks. Everything was used out of the deer. Everything was used out of the fish from the backbone and believe it or not, my, my children, when they're all grown up, we'd have fresh salmon, we'd bring salmon home. My boys would be there. I get the eyes, they would eat the eyes, the elders.
37:28 We, we, we eat the head, we eat the tail, we eat the fins and, uh, the, the belly part, that's the best part. We know all the good parts of the salmon. This is our ceremonial food and the deer is the same way, the heart and the liver. And even when you open up a deer, when you're, when you're dressing up the deer, you, you see a, a layer,
37:51 a layer that looks like a cobweb over the,
37:54 over the belly. Some of you hunters may have seen that before. We pick that. When we, when we open the deer, we'll take that piece out very carefully, not to get no blood on it. Of course, we try to bleed our deer. We'll take that out and it'll just hang like a wet rag. But once you get it and you open it up and you put it on a tree, tree limb or something.
38:18 And by the time you're dressed in that deer, you grab that, that fat, that's what it is. It's fat. You grab that fat and you take it home. That also has a name. You pick it up, you take it home and the women folk, grandma and my grandmother and my mother and my wife. Now my girls,
38:40 they bake the bread and they, they take pieces of that and they put it over the, over the bread and that's their own butter. That's how we prepare our foods. That's our ceremonial food. So we use part of that intestine that, that one that looks like a cobweb and we'll take it out and we'll dry it because that has its own lard in it. So everything of the deer is very useful. And I told this in Kamiah
39:04 that about the, about the peace nook that Lewis and Clark came to met our people and, and they come and say peace, peace, we come in peace, peace. And our people looked at him,
39:19 [speak Nimipuutímt]. What does he want? Peace? Peace. And so somebody sent one of the individuals over to the camp to go to go get some thread, some sinew that come off the deer on the backstrap, the sinew on the backstrap that our people dried up and we tore it into small pieces. And that's how we sewed our shirts and sewed the motions, the sinew.
39:42 And that's what thread means in our language. Peace. So they went and got him and they went and got him some thread. Lewis and Lewis and Clark looked at him. What did he, I don't know, just take it. I don't know what happened. But that, that's, that's what the history tells us, you know. So the deer meat is, the whole thing is consumed the marrow inside the bones, uh,
40:06 for the elders and the old people, you get the bones, you get the leg bones off the deer in the modern days. You know, we get a hacksaw and we'll cut into it and then, uh, the meat that's bone, all the meat off there. And once the, all the meats off, we start preparing it to make jerky like this right here. This is fresh jerky right here.
40:30 And, and once again, the ceremonial, we're told that once the, the, a certain plant starts to bloom that that means that those buck deers are good, they're good to harvest. So we're, we're following our laws the best we know how because some of these certain, uh, flowers and trees have started to bloom and that they're starting to flower. So we know it's time, it's ok for us to go get a buck
40:54 and we still know that the, that the females, the does, they're carrying little ones. So, you know, we don't mess with the, does we just strictly hunt for the bucks? These are our ceremonial foods. Now, nowadays, when you have ceremonies, you know, we might say, well, sir, well, we got, it's time to eat because a meal goes with everything. Whether you're at a,
41:17 what you call a powwow, you call it the war dancing, this, uh, ceremony celebration. We'll go to the celebration. Well, it's time to eat some of these groups. They'll call everybody eat time. Everybody come eat some people during the powwow they'll go to their favorite stand and, and they'll, they'll have their own ceremony. They'll have Indian Taco or a hamburger. That's their ceremony.
41:44 But back in the old days, we didn't have mcdonald's or Burger King, uh Dairy Queen or anything like that. Uh We all we have is these foods right here and this is today. We still practice that way and we try to eat all these foods here. All these foods that we have in our homes right now. By the end of the year come fall time, we're going to have
42:07 at least six more of these lined up just like this all in order these foods along with the tea.
42:16 Because end of summer, there's another tea that grows in the creeks that we're gonna have and we'll get harvest them when they're ready. They're not ready yet. This one's not ready yet either. These here already came and gone and some of the delicacies that we have are the, are the eels,
42:37 as I was explaining that the eels used to be, uh, plentiful around here to people like, um, like my father's age and maybe a little bit younger than, you know, they used to go and they used to have, that Washington water power dam over here by PFI they used to have, find the eels sticking on the, on the concrete walls. So they'd go down there and they, they'd pick these eels off the walls
43:00 and you see these lamprey and they, they don't look too good, just like the sucker fish. They don't look too good. They don't look like they're healthy. But once you get it and, and depending on how you prepare it, it's probably the best meal you ever had. If you could eat caviar, if you can eat sushi, you can eat eels if you can eat all these things. If, if, if you can eat veal, you can eat deer tongue, you can eat deer heart,
43:25 you can eat deer liver. And I, I kind of got off track, but once you, I'll get back to the deer. Now that I mentioned it. That once you get that bone marrow, you cut that bone and inside, inside that bone, after you boil up the meat,
43:42 a lot of our elders and our adults will go in there and they'll dig that, get that marrow out of there. They'll pick up that bone you cut a bone like that, like stew meat and you get it like that and you just kind of, it softens up in there. Once you do eat a lot of us, we just get that bone.
44:00 It's really good for you, but it's not good for children. I'm not going to go into that, but there are certain foods that, that are people that we, we don't eat, we don't eat raw fish. We don't eat sushi. Everything has to be prepared for us. No matter, no matter what, you can't eat this food raw, you'll get sick. You can't eat this one raw. You'll get sick
44:25 like anything in time. You have to cure it. You have to cure your deer meat. You have to cure your fish. You have to let the heat get out of your deer. Even though the, the cold gets into the, the fish, you have to let your fish hang and you turn it a certain way so you can make, make some good jerky looking and dried fish like this or smoked fish that it's
44:47 all gonna stay intact and you can fix it up any way you want. And we still have these ceremonial foods. We have a lot of ceremonies, different things. We have first deer, first fish, first root, we have medicine dance, we have powwows. You know, we have marriages, traditional marriages and traditional trades.
45:08 If you're a hunter from the man's side, the man's family will bring deer meat and fish and give to the other side of the family. The women's side of the family will get the roots and the berries and the bead work and they'll give it to this side of the man's side of the family over here that's called the Indian wedding, the Indian trade. That's what all these foods are for too. So I was told that I have a little bit of time left. Um,
45:32 somebody give me the finger back there.
45:36 So, yeah, if, if we do have time for questions, I I'd be happy to answer questions. And I, I hope you enjoyed what little I had to share. I could probably spend, you know, even, even my 27 year old son, he doesn't understand all this and, and we started teaching all these things to him when he was an infant. You know, because when they're starting to teeth, we always had the,
46:01 the deer jerky and they chew on the jerky because that helped the teeth grow. And I tell my sister in laws and my sister, well, when your baby starts teething, I'm gonna cut that, get that, cut that throat out of that deer and clean it and boil it and clean it up because that's what our people used to use a throat for like a teething like a teething ring for infants. So everything is used. And, uh, I enjoyed
46:25 you as an audience. And, uh, if you have questions. I'd be happy to answer them. [speak Nimipuutímt]. Thank you.
46:36 [Offscreen] We do have time for just a few questions. So we'll start right here. [Offscreen] Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that.
46:45 About the bitterroot. You say it's bitter, uh, after you cook it, it's bitter. Do you, you, you obviously don't eat it by itself. It just goes along with other food then, huh? Uh, a lot of us we like it just plain. we like it just plain or we mix it up with the salmon. You can mix the, mix it with the salmon or some people put sugar on it. And nowadays a lot of people, they, they get the,
47:08 the camas and some of these other foods and they'll put sugar on it and we, oh, you like a little bit of root with your sugar, huh? Yeah. But you can mix it up. It's prepared a lot of different ways.
47:21 [Offscreen] Some other questions. No. Oh, right. Here's one. [Offscreen] Did you eat the wild mushrooms in the forest? Yes. Ceremonial. Uh, we call it [speak Nimipuutímt] mushrooms. We do eat a lot of mushrooms and, and they only show themselves for a short period and that's usually in the spring and the fall and we get them off the,
47:50 [Offscreen] Did you, uh, you mentioned the number nine? And, uh,
47:56 I know that the number of tribal executives is nine. Um, is there a relationship between the religious aspect you talked about and the political, I think that just coincidence because at one time, the way I understand that the, the tribal council was set up, you know, each,
48:18 there was going to be a representative from each church that was on the reservation. The those representatives come from those churches. And also they have two traditional members who consisted of the, of the nine. That's how we got the nine members. But
48:37 either either where you go, you might, you might go to the Asotin Band or the Wallowa Band, the Whitebird Band or the Clear Creek Band. Uh Depending on where you go. Even with our language, the language varies and just like the other tribes of the Umatilla Confederacy and the Yakama the Colville, the dialect is going to be a little bit different,
49:00 you know, they might, you might say something and I might say, you know, [speak Nimipuutímt] or something simple like that and somebody else will say it a little bit different, you know, like they say tit, you know, teeth, that's, that's a joke we have too, you know, um we, we tell our, tell our kids and oh, you sure have white tits and, and tit is teeth
49:25 Tits. You know, we talk about what teeth. So there's a lot of things that us modern day people do and that's one thing about our language. You know, we never had no, no cuss words. We didn't have no dirty words. Uh, four letter words like we do in a modern day society. And that came along with the laws like these fish right here, the deer and everything.
49:46 I'd like if anybody would wanna take a chance and try, it hasn't been approved by the USDA. But anybody who would like to try a piece of this fish, I can't take it home with me. I brought it here. Uh, I ate some on the way down. So that's why you see a little bit fuller in this deer jerky than right here. And some of this jerky here, anybody's willing to try it and you can,
50:10 you can try any of these two right here. But these, here they, these are mine. [Offscreen] Any other questions for Allen?
50:20 [Offscreen] All right. Thank you very much, [Offscreen] Alan Slickpoo Jr. [Allen] Thank you
50:27 It was a pleasure to have you here and have me talk about traditional foods. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen.