Closed Captions Audio Described

Omaha elders and community members share personal narratives spanning military experience in World War II, traditional family life on the reservation, education, and efforts to revive the Omaha language. Speakers discuss historical hardships including smallpox epidemics, naming ceremonies, clan structures, and the challenges of transmitting language and cultural knowledge to younger generations in contemporary times.

Transcript

0:02 This part of the 10 of Maos, this program that we're having is, um, we're giving our our our elders an opportunity to talk about themselves, talk about their life being here on amaha reservation growing up, what it is and it's also a great opportunity for us to um. Be able to question them event to talk about the uh
0:27 time it's that they lived and the hardships they might have seen and um and also the uh this, this video tape here is gonna be uh recorded and stored at the National Archives Library of Congress. So this is something that is uh. Uh, very good that the, uh, the park service has brought to my people, the Maha people
0:51 has given us an opportunity to talk and, uh, them a time to share. So later on 100 years from now, there are children, the ones that are unborn, they're gonna be able to find them and they're gonna be able to identify with them. The first one that's gonna talk here is my grandpa.
1:11 Sure. Yeah,
1:13 Lawrence Cook.
1:21 Uh,
1:25 What they say,
1:27 I'm really glad to see you. Each one of your Here and uh I was asking my grandson here. Yeah, we have tribal leaders. And uh I was thinking when I come in the lounge. That I would see them here.
1:51 And uh I'm glad that uh some of the people that works for him. All my relatives are here. In the
2:03 Yeah We had the Omaha people.
2:08 My uh
2:11 My position Here amongst the people. And there's uh 2 And the #2, 2nd in command life. And my wife's here is folks' uh first. They They're the ones that uh are in charge of
2:35 uh Omaha, where here. And uh there, there's a humble clan. You're the one that uh prays for whatever happened. To our people. My grandson here folks are number 4
2:57 here. They're the kind of person that goes around and gathers things they uh they have to go ahead and do things like this. And uh my grandson here, there's one of them today. I was telling him it's good, you know. But you got yourself involved in,
3:21 in the more ways. I know his dad, the father of my nephew. In a relationship that way. And uh
3:35 I've been uh editing for A few days And uh last winter, I was telling him that I caught a bad cold and I Uh, sickness. er in my lungs. I have a hard time breathing.
4:00 And I, I try to sit still and try to be calm. And uh I believe in, in a religion way quite a bit. And uh. I was seeing my people that way too. And uh It makes me feel good.
4:27 We've had a hard time amongst our people, our people had a hard time in the past.
4:36 We are still that way. And try to So, pray to God. Very true, a great creator. More I tell them about that too. And uh
4:53 It seemed like uh the more we think about. Think about our great creator. You know, things worked out pretty good for us. For better
5:05 That way
5:07 That's the Of our people are great leaders. We have uh Our great leaders varied. Uh, the The old people that uh kind of get us together. I would say that that kind of, they've kept us together.
5:31 This way is more people. Yeah on our homeland. Uh, we have some of our people that's uh amongst people. I have a, a daughter, one of the oldest daughter. It's in Farmington, New Mexico at this moment. With her family
5:57 that way. Now we have uh different uh Our relatives that were they are
6:08 amongst people. Uh, we have Uh, Today The gentleman I was here. One of the boys here, I think he's gone. He was asking me questions. About my family Uh, it's How many grandchildren do you got? great grandchildren?
6:32 I say roughly right off and I said, by 32.
6:39 Uh, I just turned 80 years old last November 11th. And uh You know, I'm getting up to the, to the point where I just can't. go on
6:55 anymore like I used to. And uh Because of the, the illness that that's got hold of me. I've been We're having a hard time. At home And I hear you. I really uh Appreciate something like this. Uh
7:20 The Someone could Yeah something like this. It's good.
7:28 Uh, our people, we've never done that.
7:33 So they were, uh people were very strict. And uh It's good that uh With someone Prejudice we are. I guess you almost need to be known.
7:51 Yeah, we. We're here and uh on our homeland here, been here a long time. I heard someone mention 1854. We've had some trees, yes. And uh The
8:11 Treaties among different people. Uh
8:15 Uh, yeah, I've been trying to study. The history of our, our people. For about 12 years now. And uh Uh, it's, uh, it's always kind of. Hard for me.
8:35 Uh To gather information.
8:39 So I Yeah,
8:42 Papa, um, could you share some of your, uh, Uh, experience your military experience when he was a young man. I know he was, uh, you're a veteran.
8:55 OK.
8:58 Service
9:00 service Yeah, I, uh
9:07 Uh here ask a question, I guess. OK, so
9:11 I hearing you that I can't pick out the words pretty clear what they ask. Yes, I've uh I think I had uh My relative here was in service. And uh
9:30 I went into the war in 1942.
9:35 Into the wall with Uh, German And I uh Spent most of my time. And 22 months, over 22 months that I've been. In Germany and so forth. Really good Shifting up from Texas after we took a few.
9:59 3 weeks of training. We're ready to go, I guess. So there's The shift us across. It took us 14 days on a ship. To get there And when we got there it wasn't a very good reception. Uh,
10:19 We have been out in uh. Uh
10:24 In the waters there for. Oh Probably 67 days. No
10:33 And some of the boys, you know, took off from the ship that just. threw themselves off into the ocean.
10:45 Uh, got all excited. But then uh
10:51 He was in the battle for Over a year and a half. And in Germany And I Wherever they're having Issues now I've been there And uh I think some. From the I. On the unexpected things.
11:17 that happened. And even to, to some of our men today.
11:25 You take the little children, they're just coming up. You know, Things happen to them. Over there now, right at this moment, probably.
11:38 But then uh Rece There's a person watching us. He's a great creator. Do we hope
11:49 That things will turn out all right. Calm down. Yes. Yes, I've been involved in, in the Battles out there and during World War II. He even got captured for 6 to 3 days. I was in German hands, you know, German soldiers' hands. uh,
12:14 we wasn't treated too good.
12:17 If there was very lack of food also chewing on it, uh, keep us alive. Uh, keep us going, getting the ranks like that. So,
12:32 And um And the 5 months before you know war was gonna be over with. I lost my brother out there. Uh, he was involved in Japan and because I was gonna be shifted to To Germany, you know, you had priority because you kinda had choice
12:55 to pick out where you wanted to go. So Picked up the war in Germany. Where I was going He was home Uh, he waited, I guess, a few days extra too, but he had to leave. And I came home for emergency leave.
13:19 Because I was gonna be going really soon.
13:24 Well, anyway, this, these are the things that happen, you know. Uh, so, but if there's any, anybody that question too, I'll try to answer them in this moment. Mm They're gonna, uh, when we get done, they're gonna ask questions. You're gonna pass it on to
13:47 my sister. OK. You want some? I'll pass this on to. I was.
13:53 What
13:56 I take. very Uh
14:00 OK
14:06 Well, I'm glad to see everybody here that there's quite a few here.
14:14 And I have, I had parents like Mrs. uh. Uh, Harvey had. They,
14:24 my mother and father.
14:27 But I figured that I only had The group was 6, but she said it was 9, but I don't remember that. But I lost 4 of my
14:41 uh brothers and sisters, 2 brothers and 2 sisters. So just her and I now. But we had a good life. But a good teaching. Things that was told in Indian, we were brought up that way, and we knew from right from wrong. And we always stayed home.
15:06 And we had my father farmed there for me.
15:12 few years and we had life doing things with him in every way.
15:21 And my mother was a. A woman that stayed home and did a lot of Good things like tanning and cooking and stuff. So we were all about that way. Everything was good for us. And we never knew. What Macy was as a young girl, as my brothers and sisters, we went to school in a country school.
15:46 Call it Webster Schoolhouse. We went through quite a few years until the bus came out, we came to Macy's School. And after that, went to school and walked to Dakota.
16:07 I
16:10 And they taught us teaching of relationship. Who were related to them there was a lot of old people, old men. Yeah did you
16:25 That we
16:28 Things like that.
16:31 And they had powers, but we never really took in powers either, maybe very few. And they had hangings and They had the other kind of doings, but. Kids were allowed to go in. So we stayed out most of the time.
16:52 But we had a good time. That's all I have to say. Thank you.
17:03 Um, good, good morning or good afternoon. Uh, my name is Karen Cook Tyndall, and these are my parents, and, uh, I'm honored, uh, to be sitting here today amongst my elders and, uh, my elders that spoke before me, and, uh. As, uh, growing up, uh, my, I remember, uh, living with my grandparents, um,
17:27 Albert and Bernice Robinson, my mother's parents. And uh we lived in a three-room house and there were, I'd say about 20 people living in there was a big, you know, as a family unit, my uncle's.
17:42 Um Aunt and uh we seems like we all uh got along for a living and you know 20 some people plus kids living in a household but it was you know it was a normal thing for us that's what you know what I remember and I could remember uh you know my uncles going out and.
18:04 Hunting all day and bringing back rabbits and my grandmother would cook those rabbits and that's what we'd have for supper. I mean, and then ducks, I remember wood ducks, they brought, uh, one, you know, back 11 day and you know, we, uh, she cleaned them and we ate them and they taste like fish, you know, I remember I, I didn't like that, but we ate it, squirrels, you know, it was uh.
18:29 It was um I guess hard times then for us, but you know, it was also, you know, a good, good time because we were all together sitting at the table and um Today, um, I'm, uh, really, uh, Honored to be sitting here with my parents. Um, I'm a grandmother. My husband and I have 8 grandchildren.
18:54 And uh
18:57 I'm, uh, I guess pretty soon I got a couple more years and I'll be considered an elder, but uh. Uh, growing up, it was, uh, it was hard. It was a hard time for us and uh but it was a happy time and uh right now. I, uh I'll be working with uh the at the Omaha
19:20 Nation School in the Culture Center and uh teaching. Uh, young children, um, a little bit about their culture with the help of my elders, and I'm, uh, really looking forward to that, and I'll be working, uh. Teaching in the classroom. I recently graduated from the University of Nebraska and I have a
19:42 Teaching certificate in elementary ed and also an ESL endorsement to the university, so I'm gonna put that in good use this coming school year. Thank you.
20:02 Good morning. Uh, I want to tell you my Indian name first. My Indian name is Hawa. And I belong to the Buffalo clan. I'm an elder. I'm 80 years old, so I've lived a long time. When I asked my brother what I should talk about, he said, talk about yourself. So, I love that, so.
20:27 Um,
20:29 I had 5 sisters and 3 brothers, and we grew up very poor. I don't ever remember living in a house till I was Almost a teenager to the government come in and build us a three-room house. So there we lived in a three-room house till we all grew up.
20:52 I remember going to school at Macy. There were a lot of non-Indians. We went to school with a lot of non-Indians. I never knew of discrimination until just a few years back. We all played together and
21:10 We didn't know we were a different color. I don't remember that anyway, but we all, they were farmers that lived among us and we just grew up with them. Uh I have 5 sisters and 3 brothers. We all Went to school here in May. And when the school
21:33 I burned down when I was in high school. Then I continued on to Flanto, South Dakota, which was a boarding school.
21:44 And from Flandro, I went on to another boarding school called Haskell. It's called Haskell Institute now or Haskell University now.
21:56 From there I went there and from there I got married. I married a man in the Navy and I spent 23 years in the Navy with him, brought my children up. As a military. Children Uh, I enjoyed that life very much because I got to see. The world, I guess.
22:21 Traveling, I did a lot of traveling. And after he retired from the military, I came back to the reservation.
22:32 For all those years that I was gone, I never forgot my language. I speak fluent Omaha. I never forgot it, so when I come back, I started. Teaching the uh language to our students. I've taught there about 20 years now at the Massey Public School. And We
22:55 are trying to revive our language. I will be working with this young lady, she's my niece. Uh, we'll be working.
23:05 Try to bring our culture back, but it's very difficult because we teach them, but when they go home, the parents don't know how to speak the language, so it does become kind of hard, but the kids remember and they teach them a lot. I'll tell you a little about my upbringing. We were, uh, like I said, we were very poor.
23:29 We didn't have electricity, no water.
23:33 We had to haul our own.
23:36 We had tall water, heat it to wash with. So I grew up very poor, but I was very fortunate to have a mother that believed in education. Uh, my brother, my father left us when we were all quite young, but my mother raised us, and she stressed education, so today, We are all educated,
24:01 um.
24:03 We have degrees, in fact, most of my family is in the field of health. We have uh Doctors, I have one sister that has 3 doctors in her family. A brother that's a doctor.
24:21 And we have a surgeon and pharmacist, so because of my mother. We have attained all these.
24:30 Good beginnings in life. So right now, part of my job is when I talk to young people, I tell them to get their education because I feel that it's part of my work that I'm doing at the public school.
24:50 I, one of the things I remember about my life, I also am a trained paralegal. I was a tribal judge here for many years too, so I did a lot of counseling to our young people too. So I've done many things, I guess. I just, 8 years I've done a lot of things. I don't remember some of the things I did.
25:16 But I love to go to concerts and I love the casino. I love to do a lot of things. This morning, I was learning how to play blackjack, so I'm gonna go over to the casino and I'm gonna play blackjack with all the men. So
25:37 I'm very happy that many of you are here too. You are interested in us. We've been here a long time. We have our own casino, that's our land over there, but yet, our casinos across over there. I guess that's part of our land.
26:03 I lived over in Hawaii for 3 years. When I was over there, they accepted me.
26:12 I dressed like them. I just, everybody thought I was Hawaiian Chinese, so that was OK because they treated me very nice.
26:23 So, I wanna thank all of you that are interested in us. So we must all get along.
26:32 Thank you. If any of you have any For my relatives here. And major will.
26:41 You've mentioned, uh, you're losing your elders, uh, as we all do, but I've never heard anything about your burial grounds or, or anything, and I haven't seen any that I know of. And could you speak about your uh your funeral traditions and your, and your burial grounds and so on, or do you want? The
27:05 F
27:07 Traditional funerals and burials.
27:11 Yeah.
27:13 Uh,
27:16 These are some of the issues that uh that we uh won't talk too much about. But uh Our areas I noticed um. There's uh One area up there by uh another side of Winnebago also. And uh
27:41 In that area, our people.
27:45 North of Homer. The vascular Uh, about 1 mile and a half. You, you start to go to Sioux City. You see the telephone are leading right to that, that farmer. And there's a high ground there. And uh
28:09 1795. It's where our, our people live there. Along that bluffer on the high ground. Uh, they can, uh,
28:23 what we call a uh Uh
28:27 And they made uh homes out of mud. They use that much for concrete. That way there was uh people there, you know how to handle that, you know, they, they took it, took a. And marked with grass. And fires right on the uh wood. That way, we had a
28:52 group there. The population was perhaps about over 1100. Uh, the reason why they lived there was that there were in that area that it's all lake runner. Uh, a lot of fish was there goes by
29:16 buying like that. That's why they stayed here. And uh they a lot of them uh big tall birds like car duck skin too. They live off them too. In that area, and we had our other group. Down there by Omaha. In a town called south of Omaha there
29:43 Davie. And here in Nebraska. And some of our group live there also. I'll be about 900 population. And here In that area there, the smallpox came. And took uh Uh, probably over 200
30:08 of our relatives, you know, the thickness la got to them. And uh the So this
30:18 Many folks were gone at a certain time of the year. Come into a place where they call
30:27 on to came up. In that area there's a the Acorn River there. There was a lot of buffaloes. Uh, room in that area and they came down there and went down there and uh. Took some of the buffalo area. And use them
30:50 for food. And brought them back all the way down and back up to the area where they're at, but, but I guess a certain here uh the year. Uh, probably. 17, uh. Twenties in there.
31:12 Where sickness come. And they, when they got home with the, all the food were, the family was gone.
31:23 Uh, and then wondered what happened to them. But the seconds got to me. Our thoughts
31:34 And it really took, took uh the family down, even to the children too. Well, these, these are the hardships that we had you know. Today Uh
31:49 Seem like the uh hardship is still with us. Our people are not in a real happy mood all the time today. We lost a lot of our, our family that way. So
32:08 then I tell my grandson here that it's good that you uh brought something like this, you know. And the family individuals chance to explain their, their family's life and so on that way. It's good.
32:28 I like to, I like to see our tribal leaders in here also. You know, help, help with the banks on here this way, but there's various ones here that, uh. are willing to help, you know, contribute their time too. Thank you very much. Yeah.
32:52 Oh, thank you, uh, Grandpa, Grandpa Lawrence and then my sister, my niece and my other sister. I say thank you for being here and thank you for sharing with us. Um, at this time, uh, we're gonna be having another program here. We have time for one more question? Sure, OK, yeah. The
33:15 When you said as a little girl you didn't have a home until you were a teenager, where did you used to live? We
33:26 Is it? Yeah, turn it this way.
33:31 Uh, I, I guess the government gave us these army tents. It was this huge army tent.
33:41 I remember it was square.
33:47 We had, we cooked and everything and then.
33:52 Like I say, uh, that's how I grew up very poor.
33:58 So the government come in and some kind of program that built us these homes.
34:08 I And I, I wanna say thank you to all of you again. Thank you for the uh your kind attention to my elders here.
34:24 On behalf of the National Park Service and the Corps of Discovery 2, and everyone who is here listening today, we all appreciate you coming out and sharing your stories with us. Thank you very much for stopping by and sharing with us today. Next program inside of the 10 of many voices will probably begin in about 10 minutes or so, and that is going to be Maxine and Rufus White, and they will be talking about the social game,
34:49 the hand game. So you may have heard some of our earlier presenters talking. Tapa. For their, their. Are both of you fluent in the language? Do both of you speak Omaha? Well, we don't always speak Omaha at home, but we do talk Omaha, but sometimes you forget words
35:11 we have to think about it or ask one another.
35:18 Yeah, we can speak our language.
35:23 But uh Are there very many people left anymore that can speak the language real well, or there's only a few people? Just a few, I think. A few years ago we counted, uh, she and I talked about this, and we counted about 40, 40 Omaha ladies and men that speak it
35:49 fluent name, but uh. There's probably less now since that time, uh, quite a few of our elders passed away and So there's not too many. Uh, elders left on our Omaha reservation. They're all young people and just like the Os the other night. Uh, I don't think nobody brought it to your attention. Maybe you didn't notice
36:14 because all those on the east side of the building, a hand game. They're all young people, just, uh, maybe 3 or 4 elders sit over there and, uh, on your side, I think she and I were about the oldest ones
36:32 over there. Yeah yeah. And they talk about our language, we're losing our language, which we are, uh.
36:41 Uh, at all our, uh, social activities, I like the hand game. Uh A lot of English is spoken. Very little Omaha language is spoken, and even our religious ceremony is like that. All young people in there, maybe one or two elders may be in there and, uh, just like our
37:06 annual powwow we call powwow, we call it harvest festival celebration, but uh the MCs. Uh, during the celebration, they all speak English, how they, how the Omaha is spoken. So do they still use the Omaha language mostly in the church
37:30 though when you're saying prayers and or when you're singing songs, they, yeah they do they do yeah. But they don't always speak it, you know, when someone gets up to talk, they always speak English.
37:45 There's only a few of us uh pray in our Omaha language yet. And uh There's a lot of young people that they pray in English English language.
38:00 We do, we speak in Omaha when we pray.
38:06 Now the children are learning, are trying to learn Omaha language that they taught that in school. How long have they been doing that? Has that been going on for a while? They've been trying to
38:21 get the last 15 years or so they've been teaching in a public school, even up to junior college, but uh. Uh, I, I don't think uh. They remember those children, especially, I taught for a while at the public school and uh
38:40 the junior high level, and uh some of them have uh They have forgotten what I taught them. I said, don't you talk to your mother and grandma? Yeah, I said, uh, they don't know what I'm saying, so they don't get to speak it and use it. So as a result, uh, they forget. And like she was saying, we don't speak it enough. uh,
39:05 there's a lot of words that we forget, we have to think about it before we uh. I think about the name of the word that we want to use. Uh, for example, uh, some, uh, Names of animals in our language, so some of them we, we have forgotten. And uh cause we don't use them
39:30 every day and Uh,
39:35 one year we were invited to uh. About the uh Apaches in New Mexico. To a weekend celebration. They invited some of our Omahas down and uh we went down in the van and we had some elders in there. Uh, we was almost there and uh.
39:59 We saw her an antelope. And we couldn't think of what our Omahas called the antelopes and uh you bet Paul Brill. Uh, he's made a great study of the Omahas. It was a language, and, uh, he was quite a bit of Omaha language and, uh, anyway, he lived in Albuquerque at that time
40:24 and we weren't too far from Albuquerque, so we went down there, we stayed overnight in Albuquerque and we went to visit him and we got talking about uh we're losing our language up there. So I told him, I said, well, uh. On the way down, I said we saw an antelope and heard an antelope, but couldn't think of a name and uh
40:48 all the elders in the band couldn't remember. And I, and I knew that name too, but I just couldn't think of it, and one of my relatives has that name too, and I was trying to think about him and but we couldn't think of it and I started talking to Paul Bueler about it and yeah, he said they called him Dahuo. He didn't have to think about it,
41:17 a white man, white man. So he knows the language fairly well then. He's studied it. He knows where we all came from too. You know everyone's family trees. The clan where clans they belong to and uh
41:33 Omaha personal names, uh, he knows a lot of people by their Omaha names. He's a bright man. He is. That's a lot of important information that he shared with. With the Omaha people because isn't that isn't all that information he's gathered available for people to look at and study and Yeah
41:59 I guess he got interested in it, uh, way back, uh.
42:05 Late 50s and early 60s, uh, our tribe were making uh land claims to the government. And uh they uh hired him to, I think Oval house probably hired him. He came back here and uh took enrollment of the whole trial. And uh
42:28 from that time he was involved with Omahas he was learning their traditions and language and uh
42:40 clans they belong to the names. The Indian names that we have, you can uh translate.
42:47 Tell us what it means, what it really means. So pretty intelligent
42:54 when you're given your Indian name, how, how is that like how old are you when you're given your Indian? I mean 4 days, 4 days traditional traditionally 4 days following their births. Uh, they give them names. Now who does the naming? Is, is there a ceremony involved in it or is there a particular person within the family that
43:22 gives the name? Early one clan did that. But as the years went by, uh, the families, uh, honored, uh, some elders, probably even within a client to uh give them names and name their children, but, uh, we don't fully follow that today. Uh, they, they honor some elders who they
43:46 sometimes most of the families know the name that they want the children to have and they honor the elder to name them. So, uh, she and I were honored quite often to name children. Now, how did you name your children? Did you select their names or did someone else?
44:08 Named by their grandfather. At the time he was living, so. He picked the name and translated it. don't know what it meant. But right now, since I'm the oldest in our family, My nephews and nieces come to me to name the children.
44:30 So
44:32 I tell him the name and he names them for me.
44:38 OK. But that's good though that they still do that, that they still turn to you and there's a lot of respect for elders I noticed that within American Indian groups. I mean they really honor their elders and take care of them more so than other cultural groups. Do you feel that way? That the community really still looks up to you for
45:00 guidance and like with the naming ceremony and that there's a place of importance for you within.
45:08 Yeah, I, I think they do, they, uh, Honor the elders like uh our close relatives. And our grandchildren. They always come to us and ask us things and like naming the children. Sometimes they already know what what they want to name them,
45:32 but then sometimes we have to go back and think who we could name that child after. And we usually go according to how uh that person lived.
45:45 That's how we picks up the traditionally, they give them 4 names to select from. And the person Uh, Tells the family the life that each person lived. Um Even health wise, where they were in good health or had health problems
46:08 and uh kind of life that they had lived. So the parents make their selection from Uh, the four names given him.
46:19 So were these names ancestors' names? So they're, they're named after somebody from long ago. So it's not like it's a new name. It's not like created, OK.
46:32 Yeah, a lot of uh our people.
46:36 Carry their uh great grandparents' day. The grandfather's grandfather, the parents, I named them after them too. Well, it's usually the oldest one that's born, that's named after their grandparents, great grandparents.
46:56 Now how many grandchildren do you all have?
47:00 Recovered one time. I forget. Yeah, I think we probably have more than 30, yeah. Yeah,
47:08 I would think so by now, yeah, that's a lot and uh
47:13 we have about 89 grandchildren. There's about uh 3 or 4 of them maybe we haven't seen yet, our great grandchildren. There's uh.
47:26 Dot Oklahoma and uh The mother or parents who live in Oklahoma, they live away from here, so uh some of them we haven't seen yet. Now will they come home for powwow? Do a lot of them come home? A lot of them came home. Let's see, we hadn't seen one of our great grand child until just last month, he brought them home.
47:51 They live in Arizona. So we got to see him.
47:58 But we're, uh, a family adopted us as their parents too, so we have all of them grandchildren. OK,
48:09 so we must have over 100, including them children there adopted
48:17 one of the unfortunate things, uh, in recent years, uh, we named a lot of children, uh. 4th day of summer we even named them in a hospital after they were born, but uh today is some young parents and we tell them, uh, call them by their Omaha names so they'll know when they grow up
48:39 what the Omaha name is and tell them what it means and uh some of them haven't done that and they come to us and they say, uh. Uh, do you remember what you name your child that we named so many that we forget what name we gave them and uh. That sometimes we ask them about what does the name mean
49:03 that they've forgotten that too. And just like I was telling a little while ago, uh, like a deer clan, and, uh, they forget that too. So it's unfortunately it's like that and I think what we should and I should have done, but we didn't know this all this gonna happen, uh,
49:25 we should have took the names of that child, uh, English name and also the uh Omaha name and have it on file when somebody comes to us and we can look it up if we didn't know that we thought about it after it was late. And
49:48 Now what is your Omaha name? Mine is uh me Deey. I belong to the Thunder clan. And what does that mean? It means, uh, Uh, sacred yellow moon.
50:06 And are there special qualities that came with that name that you, somebody's told you you're supposed to have special Qualities that personality. If they did, I don't remember it. Just like my great granddaughter, one of them has my Indian name. OK. And then the other one.
50:31 We have uh 33 great granddaughters.
50:37 They're close to us because uh.
50:42 They were born in Pender, and when they came back, they came home to live with us, and they've lived with us for the past, oh, they finally moved away 3 years ago. So now they call me every day, Grandma, we want to come home. Can you come and get us? So I have to go get him and bring him home.
51:06 I still consider our home their home. Technically it is anyway. They grew up there or not. They spent a lot of time with you, yeah, they do, and they're a lot of company to us and now they're getting old enough where they can help me like setting table and clearing the table off.
51:28 How I like that. How old are they, uh, the other, uh, the younger one is 4 and the older one is 6. At the age of those, yeah, I have a grandson that's 11 years old. And their and their mother, we raised her. I guess that's why we feel
51:51 closer to them because we had raised the mother too. Now was the mother someone that you had adopted or no because she was. The mother And the father, the father was in the service and the mother wanted to go back to school, so she brought them back to us and we just took them and kept them and raised them.
52:16 They went, they went back to their mother for a while, but. They came back.
52:24 So we've had them ever since they were babies. So, uh, just like the mother, she's like our own because we had her since she was about 6 months old.
52:37 This is another generation, so you raised the mother and now you're raising her children as well. They, they come back and then they go home to their mother.
52:49 Just going back and forth, one of the things those two little ones you mentioned one's 4, one's 6, when they come up and stay with us a couple of days or a couple of nights and when they want to go back to their mother downtown, uh, they don't say, uh, take me home to a mother. They say take me back to her mother's house.
53:14 They don't say with you, yeah.
53:17 And do you spoil them when they're with you?
53:21 I guess we do when they ask us for something just like the little one. Uh, our daughter came back and, uh, she says, uh, Grandma, I'm lonesome. I miss them, she said, so let's go for a ride. I said, you go tell Grandpa, see what he says. So he says, all right, let's go.
53:44 So we went up and drove up to Sioux City with them.
53:48 Now who's more strict with them? Are you more strict, or do they twist him around their finger and the older one does. Oh, uh-huh, but the other one, he, she bosses me.
54:04 The older one. The older one, I really felt sorry. I was just teaching her uh she got off the breakfast table, uh got through eating and. And I don't know what she did, but uh I was just joking now. I kind of Or reprimanded her or just scolded her.
54:29 It really hurt her feelings. She just cried and cried real hard
54:42 real bad because she felt real hurt. Oh, yeah, so I don't do that with her.
54:46 I don't like to see her cry. Yeah, that's hard. It's hard to raise little ones. That's a challenge for both of you, you know, being older and having to raise the young ones. What are you teaching them about being Omaha? I mean, are there things, I know they're very young, but have you been trying to teach them some of the language or, yeah, um.
55:10 We taught her how to count the older one in Omaha and. Uh, but lately we haven't been since,
55:20 since they moved away, we haven't really. Been teaching her, but she knew how to count to 10, almost to 20. But that was about it. But when we go to uh Sioux City or someplace, we see something, we say it in Indian, just like the river, Missouri River. So she knows she knows
55:44 how to say uh river in Omaha, and she, she surprised my oldest daughter. She drove us up there one day and she calls her grandma auntie. Grandma auntie, this is a Nishu day, she said that's what we call the river Nhu day.
56:03 Gee, is that what they call it? She said she didn't even know.
56:08 She's surprised. That's good. And the older one, she was trying to teaching her to count to 10 and uh I help her too and uh I come with my fingers 12345 like that and uh I was teaching her kind of reminding her. So I went, I went the opposite way.
56:33 I said yes this is I said in Omaha 12345. No grandpa. This is 5, a little bigger.
56:46 No, she knew. Oh, I'm gonna stop one minute. I'm gonna change.