Closed Captions Audio Described

Ladonna Brave Bull Allard (Standing Rock Sioux Tribe) explains the Lakota kinship system and concept of relations—how adoption, marriage, and trade connected tribes including the Arikara, Mandan, and Cheyenne. She traces Standing Rock's diverse ancestry, discusses treaty rights, and emphasizes how understanding lineage and tribal history remains central to Lakota identity and culture today.

Transcript

0:01 Many Voices and Corps of Discovery II. Um We are a multi-agency exhibit sponsored by many different federal agencies. You can see many of them on the banner here in front of you. Um We are managed by the National Park Service and we've been on the road since 2003. We kicked off in 2003 at Monticello, Virginia and we spent about three years total making our way out to the Pacific Ocean where we ended up in that area last year.
0:25 Our last stop I think was Vancouver Washington last year and this is our final year. We're making our way back to Saint Louis where our final venue will be uh the 25th of September in Saint Louis. It's been a very interesting journey for us. Obviously, it's been a lot easier on us than it was on Lewis and Clark. We've been staying in motels throughout our journey. But if you look here in the Tent of Many Voices, it's exactly that it's a place for people to
0:48 come from different backgrounds to talk about the impacts of the Lewis and Clark Expedition on them also. And in addition to that we do have a keelboat display over to my left, directly behind us. A National Guard set up as well. Our exhibit tent is to my right and we also have Steve Morehouse and a dugout canoe to my left. And we have an American Indian table directly behind the Tent of Many Voices. So I encourage everyone to experience all that we
1:12 have to offer here at Corps of Discovery II. And without any further ado, I'm gonna introduce you now to our next presenter. It's good to see her back in the tent again. I've not seen Ladonna in a couple of years. But anyhow, I'd like to introduce you today to Ladonna Brave Bull Allard and she is from Standing Rock. So please help me make Ladonna welcome.
1:34 [speaks Lakota] Good morning. Everyone. I want to tell you a little bit about myself before I start, I'm from Standing Rock Sioux tribe for people who don't know that is the home of Sitting Bull. And um I found that everybody can connect us when we say Sitting Bull, we are Four Bands. And if you know the separation between the Lakota Dakota Nation,
1:59 we are [speaks Lakota] and Cut Head, [speaks Lakota] and Black Feet. [speaks Lakota] Cut Head, or [speaks Lakota] originally come from the Jamestown Valley over by Jamestown, North Dakota, Ellendale, North Dakota and then the [speaks Lakota] and Blackfeet who I'll go into a little background as we, we get into the presentation are Lakota.
2:25 The reason why I tell you the Four Bands, people forget that there's a distinction between Lakota, Dakota and Nakota and Teton lump us into one group as Sioux and we all know we're all different. So now to me, my name is Ladonna Brave Bull Allard. In my country, you have to give your lineal descent before you start talking to people, you have to know who you are.
2:50 I am the daughter of Frank Brave Bull. Who's the son of Claude Brave Bull. Who's the son of John Brave Bull. Who's the son of Takanka Ohitika who's the son of Ospula Everybody should know their lineal descents. I am also uh a descent of the German Russians that came to this country. My grandma was Eva
3:13 Kuntz, whose father was Frank Kuntz who came over from Odessa. My grandmother was born in Odessa
3:21 and that's as far as I can go because I guess my grand, my great grandfather was an orphan that came on the boat. So that's a little bit about who I am.
3:33 I come from standing rock. We have 2.3 million acres. We're the fourth largest land based tribe in the United States.
3:43 We are a unique and that my tribe has always been considered isolationist. We've kept to ourselves for many generations. Not that's what my presentation is about.
3:58 The concept that we're all related comes from my nation, the Dakota nation.
4:03 We say that every day in our prayers, our way of life, we're related to everything around us. So we're related to you. We're related to the trees. We're related to the animals. We have a relationship with everything around us.
4:19 But in time and memorial, we have all intermarried with the tribes. So you may have Mandan over here, Hidatsa, Arikara, them Crows. There's always been intermarriage between the tribes, first and foremost. One of our tribal laws is you can't marry anybody you're related to.
4:43 That's your 32nd cousin related to your in-laws over there.
4:49 So it gets really hard because if you can't marry anybody in your bands or clans, you have to go to other nations to marry.
5:00 Our relationships are interconnected between marriage, adoption and trade agreements. Adoption. That's one of our sacred rights as Dakota people, Lakota people, we call it [speaks Lakota] that means that this gentleman and me have been conversing. We made friends. I really like him.
5:25 And so I asked him, will you be my brother? We have a [speaks Lakota] ceremony. He becomes my brother when you're [speaks Lakota]. That means more than blood. That means you become a relative through God and nobody can break that alliance. So we as Indian people tend to adopt a lot of people
5:45 still today. I have two brothers who are Japanese. I have one brother who's Jewish. He lives in Hawaii. I kind of figure I adopt one from Hawaii. They'll take me over there,
5:58 but we still do the adoption ceremonies.
6:03 The other thing is in our country, you know, when the contact came and the United States came, I think they kind of messed up things for people, at least for my people because the men always had more than one wife. You had as many wives as you can take care of. So some of our men had 6 to 7 wives, which for me, you know,
6:26 one of the keys is they always married sisters or cousins of the sisters. So all your sisters would be in one home. My husband said that wouldn't work today cause my sisters are too crazy.
6:40 They wouldn't want to be married to my sisters. But anyway, that, that was the general concept of, of the families. The other thing we did as tribes, uh we have our tribal beliefs about maturity in men and women.
6:56 So women, they make arrangements for marriage. 13, 14, 15 years old men, the average age for them to get married is 30.
7:11 We truly believe that that's about the time an average male can mature for a family. Isn't that terrible these tribal traditions? But the reason for that age was because a male had to do x amount of things before he could acquire a wife. He had to show that he was a good hunter. He had to show that he was able to take care of a home.
7:35 He had to show that he could take care of multiple wives, he had to have some standing. So in order to do that, he had to get out there and build up all this stuff before he could take a wife. So you just didn't say, oh, that girl's cute over there, you have to have all these things before you can go to her parents and ask for her.
7:58 But men wanted wives. So what did they do? They went to other nations and they stole women.
8:07 So and you guys all heard the story of Sacagawea, they stole women. So when you come to a tribe, all of them are mixed because the women came from all different tribes. That's just part of our culture.
8:28 This I'm gonna say, I say it's fast. Sometimes everybody says what our Dakota way, our our family structures are different. So all my father's brothers are my dads and I call them father [speaks Lakota] They take all the activities requirements the same as my father. So they can get after us. They can give us guidance.
8:51 We spend time with them when I was growing up. It was my uncle who took me to the movies because he was my dad. My father is still there. But all of my uncles are still there too. And those are my dad's. On the other hand, all my father's sisters are my aunties. They take auntie roles, they get you gifts and help you in your life. And stuff.
9:17 My mom's sisters are my mom's and we treat them as our mothers. My mothers, brothers are my uncles. So when you go through that kind of kinship, you'll find that you'll be related to everybody. Then all my cousins are my brothers and sisters. So when you come to any country and they say, oh, well, that's my dad.
9:41 I thought that was your dad. Well, no, that's my dad too. All your grandparents, brothers and sisters are your grandparents.
9:49 So now you can see how large this, [speaks Lakota] this family structure is
9:55 because everybody's related. And then if you're not related, you accidentally come into the camp and you're new, you're from a different tribe. Somebody will come up and adopt you right away to make you a relation.
10:12 It's the center of our life. First and foremost rule is respect your relatives. Second rule, you're related to everybody and if you're not related, you will be related. It's the way we controlled our societies, our camps, our government, everything it gave us structure.
10:34 Now, I want to talk to you about how far our people went.
10:41 This man was out in Ohio, he is Dakota. He fought in the war of 1812. He was the son of Red Thunder. They now reside on the Spirit Lake reservation.
10:56 One of the British agents took Red Thunder's wife. I mean Red Thunder's sister as a wife. And so now we claim relationship with a man named Dixon who fought in the war of 1812.
11:11 So just by this, we know that we have relatives in Ohio and wherever the Dixon family is, whether they know they're related to us or not.
11:24 This is where we collected all of our Arikara blood. Of course, the Lakota Dakota people don't like to claim Arikara, but we have Arikara blood. You go back to this long history of, of, um, Lewis and Clark. What did Lewis and Clark do when they were going home? They took two chiefs with them
11:48 White Coyote and Eagle Feathers. Eagle feathers was from my area on the Grand River. What happened was when they were in Washington or St. Louis. I'm not quite sure where Eagle Feathers died. He got very sick and he died over there
12:05 on the way back. They stopped in the camp to tell the, the people that their Chief died, Chief Gray Eyes. And I always kind of think of it's kind of like a misinterpretation because when these people were talking to the Indian people, they'd have a French guy who interpreted to an Arikara guy who interpreted it to Madan, you know. And so you go through
12:28 and I'm not quite sure how they understood that, but they thought that, oh, these guys killed our chief, they attacked a man named Enson Pryor
12:40 and White Coyote who was on the boat at that time and they end up going all the way back to Saint Louis
12:47 White Coyote was finally brought home by a man named Manuel Lisa
12:52 safely. Well, in this whole process, along with the, the inter wars that started happening between the uh Lakota and the Arikara Colonel Leavenworth. Well, Ashley party came up and the Arikara attacked them. Colonel Leavenworth said, ha ha these people can't get away with this. He met the Lakota
13:16 Nation down in Pier, made an agreement with them that they would attack the Arikara from the land. Leavenworth from the water. Um It's a big long story so I'm making it really short. Um With that process, the Lakota came in, they attacked on our winter counts. You can see two corn stalks as, as a reminder of the event for us
13:41 because all the Lakota filled their horses with corn because the Arikara had huge, huge gardens, corn and they also took women. It is that time that most of the, the tribes had Arikara blood
14:01 case in point. Sitting Bull's father took one of their Arikara wives. Sitting bull's half brother was named Crazy Dog. He was half Arikara people. Forget these little tidbits in history. Sitting Bull also took an Arikara wife.
14:25 Uh No, I I'll tell you a little bit about, about them Rees
14:34 they, they for a long time have been enemies of our people. So we go back and forth and tease about them. That's why I think it's important to make sure people know that we intermarried with them. And a lot of us have Ree blood, not me per se, but a lot of people on Standing Rock because the reason they, um, originated from this nation called Pawnee.
15:01 Have you ever heard of the Pawnee? A long time ago, the Pawnee used to do a ritual called the Morning Star ritual where they would sacrifice a female to the morning Star. They are the only nation that we know of that did human sacrifices in North America.
15:24 In my people, we declared them not human. And I know if a Pawnee reads this they'll be upset. But we declared them nonhuman. We didn't look at them as human beings because we couldn't see anybody could do that would be human. Second, they had the tendency of coming up and stealing our young girls for the sacrifice. So we have a long history of, of war.
15:46 So the, the two bands in the Pawnee nation got into an argument. One of the bands refused to acknowledge the human sacrifice and they broke off and they started coming north and they became the Arikara
16:06 as they started north. They were down Missouri Kansas coming up as they came further up. They were on the Missouri river. By the time Lewis and Clark came, the Arikara were camped on the Grand River after 1823. And you can ask the Arikara because this is part of their history too.
16:28 We ran them off the land and we took the land from them
16:34 along with the women.
16:37 And of course, you know, Standing Rock Sioux tribe is named after a rock. And the rock we claim is an Arikara woman who sat down with a baby on her back and turned to stone. So we have a lot of history with this tribe
16:54 and we have a lot of intermarriage this year man was Harry Chin. He has a, a great history. He dressed up like Uncle Sam when North Dakota had their welcome to statehood.
17:11 And it says because he did that is the reason why he died right after the parade, he fell over dead. So superstition with our people, they said the reason why he did that because he dressed like Uncle Sam.
17:24 But with him,
17:28 he and his family all married into the Dakota tribe.
17:35 He was brought up to help the the the Lakota plant corn from the Arikara Nation. You uh I don't know how many have been up at Newtown where you were um got to see the gardens up there. The three affiliated tribes since time in memorial have been great gardeners. They built great gardens, they had fields of gardens
17:59 and so they brought these people down into Standing Rock to show the Lakota how to, how to plant gardens, how to plant corn. So that's how this man came down, became a chief, family intermarried all there. And you got to understand there's a difference between Lakota and Dakota. The Dakotas over in the Jamestown Valley planted gardens.
18:23 They had huge gardens. The Lakota were primarily Buffalo and did not plant gardens. So there's a big distinction you can tell. Even today, the Lakotas primarily are not fish eaters and will not eat any type of fish. But the Dakotas eat fish. Uh Just small, um, things that we have in the tribes.
18:47 The pictures I'm showing you are historic pictures of Standing Rock. This is the boarding school at Fort Yates
18:54 This is also a, a picture of the, the old store and that was the river bottom there. About three days ago, I met the, the daughter. She's 80 some years old whose father owned that store. So it's pretty neat. But anyway, these are just some, some uh people from our reservation who have Arikara
19:17 blood that came from the battle of 1823 the Leavenworth battle.
19:25 We also have Mandan blood. And so I have the list of people's names in here who have Mandan.
19:36 Um One of the things that we always talk about is is the smallpox epidemic, you know, and the Mandan suffered extreme devastation from the smallpox. By the time Lewis and Clark came across my country on the Cannonball river. The Mandan villages were already decimated there by 1804
20:01 where I live not too far from my home is the remnants of an old Mandan village and it was a huge village. There must have been 1000 people in that village.
20:12 It was gone. By the time Lewis and Clark came through, they log it in their diaries. But you have to remember the French, the French had already been living in the villages 20 years. By the time Lewis and Clark came up the river, they said, where did this hatchet come from? The French have already been trading in there.
20:36 In fact, by the time Lewis and Clark came, the Dakota Lakota Nakota people already had an alliance with the British and formed an alliance with them.
20:52 We had a small alliance with the Spanish
20:56 and we had a huge alliance with the French.
21:00 The French man started coming down in the late 1600s into the Dakotas.
21:06 These French men all had Indian wives
21:11 just to give you kind of a background about these people that by the time Lewis and Clark came down, they were already mixed blood children in the camps.
21:22 These are some more um of the people who are descendants.
21:29 See the bottom line, my grandma, that's me, my grandmother, my great great grandma married Bloody Knife's son. As you know, Bloody Knife was Custer's scout
21:42 at the Little Bighorn. They say we killed him there. He was half Sioux and half Arikara and also a remnant of the battle of of um 1823.
21:59 My grandmother married and so today we have land from Elbow Woods which is under the water So it doesn't make any difference. But this is our link, although they had no children. This is our link to the Arikara.
22:15 These are some of the scouts for Custer.
22:19 We had Dakota scouts and we had Ree scouts with Custer.
22:25 And the reason why I'm showing you this is just to show you the interplay between the nations. Today. We can go through and trace all of our lineage to each one of these nations. I myself is I [speaks Lakota] and Cut Head from the Yankton Sisseton
22:45 from the Isanti Dakota
22:49 [speaks Lakota] Black Feet and Oglala from the Lakota Nation because my grandmothers all come from all these different bands.
23:00 Each person who, who knows their lineage can tell you this. And so even today, I have relatives in the Crow Nation, I have relatives in the Navajo Nation. I have relatives that three affiliated and I have relatives who are Chippewa. My husband's a Chippewa, by the way, that's the only relationship I claim with them. Yeah. But
23:23 when we talk about, we're all related in any country. When you come through and you're new, you walk up to the person and say, who's your family and you bicker back and forth and you'll say, oh well, I know your cousin here. So everybody talks about how they're related even today. So when I go to California to the Yurok Nation, I'll say this is who I am
23:45 and they'll tell me who they are and they'll tell me who they know in my country and we'll see how we're related. Everything we do is controlled by relations.
23:58 I don't find that in a lot of a, a lot of today's culture, we're back in the schools right now. And that's what I do. I talk about relationships with the kids who are you related to so that they can carry on this tradition as family structures go. You all know that as grandparents and I'm a grandmother and I'm very proud
24:22 if somebody told me how great it was to be a grandma. I would have been that first before a mom.
24:27 All grandparents raised their first born grandchild.
24:32 I was raised by my grandmother and my husband was raised by his grandmother. We are both first born. We raise our granddaughter [speaks Lakota] our sky heart yellow. Um And she's seven years old turned seven last week. Her parents are still there and a part of her life as my parents were a part of my life. But her grandparents raised us.
24:57 The reason for that is to that first born. We are taught lineage, we are taught history, we are taught culture and we are taught how everybody is related to each other. And then we are responsible for telling all the cousins, all the siblings and everybody else that comes after us.
25:23 Those networks are still in place in the tribe.
25:28 It is how we keep and do our best to keep our cultures alive. And they say that raising your grandchildren keeps you young. I don't know if that's true, but I think I'm pretty young. I have seven grandchildren now.
25:46 Relationships. I think that if we spent more time paying attention to our relationships, we'd be better people. If we became related to everybody and we respected our relatives, it would help the social world.
26:09 Not only that if we continued to understand our relationship to these beautiful cottonwood trees to this ground, we walk on to the animals we see we would have a better world. It is just my own opinion to have a relationship with everything around us. Just like each of you,
26:32 we are now related. We have met each other. So when I see you someplace else, I can say hi, I remember you.
26:39 We are now related.
26:42 I think it's a, a concept that comes from my people that I really, really want to deserve to go into the future.
26:55 Um This is me. I'm one of the advisors for the uh circular tribal advisors for Lewis and Clark. I am on the Lewis and Clark Governor's advisory board for the State of North Dakota. I'm Director of Tourism for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. I'm the marketing manager for the Alliance of Tribal Tourism Advocates and I own Tatanka
27:16 Ohikita historic tours and traditional food cooking on Standing Rock. And I compile all the history from my tribe. And one of the things I love is history. And so I can tell you that there were two brothers in 1450 who came across the prairie and came to a place called Spirit Lake,
27:40 which is now called Devil's Lake. And at that time, they sat down and they fasted and they had a dream there. And these two brothers in their dream told them that they would form two nations.
27:57 One brother stayed, one brother went west. The one brother formed the Mountain Crow people. The other brother formed the Hidatsa Nation.
28:11 Did you know that? Did you know that these two nations were formed in North Dakota?
28:20 Did you know that time immemorial, a long, long time ago, the Mandan were the mother tribe of the Lakota Dakota, Nakota nation
28:33 and they broke off and today the Lakota nation is the mother tribe of the Lakota nation and Nakota nation
28:45 and the [speaks Lakota] that preside on my reservation that are from Sitting Bull's people. Well, they have a mixed heritage. They started off as Oglalas
28:59 and about the 1500s, they fought the Omaha and they got into a big old fight over a war prize that they got from the Omaha and they got mad at each other. So one group split and headed up north. They became the Hunkpapa Nation. But they were so mad at their brethren tribe here that when they got up here, they held the first
29:21 Hunka ceremony, adoption ceremony that we know where they adopted a whole nation. It's a Cheyenne nation and the Hunkpapa Nation had a Hunka and they adopted and intermarried with each other. So everybody who is Hunkpapa has Cheyenne blood. And then in the 1500s, middle 15, beginning 1600s, they declared war.
29:46 Um The Pine Ridge are the Oglala and the Brule the Burnt Thighs. It's logged in our winter counts as the first civil war among our nations. And they went to war with their allies. The Cheyenne and the Ihanktonwan are the Yanktonai people. They fought the Oglalas and Brules and these people stayed mad at each other for a long time.
30:12 It wasn't until after Lewis and Clark came and the influx of the trading post started coming and stuff that they actually talk to each other. They actually finally band together and made it intertribal truce. And about 1850
30:32 because 1851 they sat down and they signed the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. Then from there, they stayed together as a nation. These are all tribal histories that we have that I don't think outside people get to hear our little inter wars and our battles. Of course, you know, we've always, always fought the Crow,
30:57 always, they've always been our enemies still today. We still have trouble
31:03 and because we know where they come from, we know who they are for centuries.
31:13 Isn't that terrible?
31:21 Pardon? [inaudible]
31:26 The Shoshones entered into an agreement with us about 1860. Before that they were further um west, they were in the mountains, uh Montana, Utah, uh Wyoming in that area. And there's a, a strict line at the Big Horn Mountains where we claim our territory.
31:49 And then these are the other tribes' territories. And so, uh about in the 1800s, we formed an alliance, we signed a treaty, I guess they would say with the Shoshone because the Shoshone fought with us at the Little Bighorn. These alliances are still alive today. The Cheyenne, the Shoshone and the Arapaho, we have tribal um alliances
32:14 with them that are still honored today. So I can go into Northern Cheyenne reservation and say I'm from Standing Rock and people come and feed me and take care of me and stuff because that alliance is still there.
32:26 We still are enemies with the Crows. So that doesn't happen when we go to Crow country. Just joking, I have Crow relatives these days
32:35 knowing your history is important to me. Knowing the history of North Dakota is important to me. North Dakota. I always kind of view both North Dakota and South Dakota as, as a place where a lot of history began on Standing Rock, who knew Jim Bridger started his career at the age of 17 there,
32:57 who knew Jebediah Smith first signed on with the Ashley Fur Trading Company, started his career. These guys were all in the battle of of 1823.
33:09 Some of them were with Ashley
33:12 who knew that Hugh Grant. I mean, Hugh Glass was uh attacked by a grizzly bear on Standing Rock and crawled 200 miles north to be saved. I always say on my reservation, we have a lot of history and of course, today we know all the stories Sacagawea had died there at Fort Manuel Lisa
33:37 December 21st, 1812,
33:42 we had the Lemhi Shoshone come down and, and acknowledge that she died there and took her spirit home.
33:49 We also know all the other stories
33:53 and we agree with all the stories Indian country. We always say, they say so that we know that we're not saying anybody else's stories are different than ours. We just acknowledge them all because we have Sitting Bull. And there are all kinds of stories about Sitting Bull that I have to go through every day because Sitting Bull died where he was born. Many Caches was a Cheyenne camp
34:19 where Sitting Bull was born. Sitting Bull's father also had a Cheyenne wife.
34:26 It's kind of funny when you go through all the wives and stuff and who they are and where they came from and how they came to be. We have a man
34:37 who was named Red Hail
34:40 and Red Hail. He rode clear over to the banks of Wisconsin on the Lake Michigan and he stole himself a wife
34:49 we don't know where she came from. What nation she was all we know. She had red hair and green eyes
34:57 and Red Hail, you know, was brother to Sitting Bull's father and his son was Chief-No-Two-Horns. And they talk about this redheaded woman who is the mother of all of these people. And we still have that story, but we don't know what nation she came from. We just know that she was taken on the banks of Lake Michigan.
35:22 So you never know. We may be related to all of you too. If you have redheaded women in your family
35:31 relationships, you never really know. I always tell people, you know, for me, I am a mixed blood. My grandma was Russian German. She was a redheaded woman too. We always have these redheaded women coming.
35:45 And so I've learned to be very proud of my Lakota, Dakota, Nakota history. I'm also proud of my German history. I'm also proud of each nation that I come from.
35:58 So if you guys have any more questions or anything, II, I can talk and talk. So I always have to watch myself. I have a microphone. So please, if you raise your hand, I'll bring the microphone around to you.
36:11 How do treaties affect are between the, the, the Indian nation and, and the, and the US government. What w what was the major problems with that? The treaties are the supreme law of the land? They still stand today. They will continue to stand until the United States crumbles. If the United States tries to disavow the treaties,
36:33 they have to disavow every treaty they ever made with any nation. We are in the US Constitution and then until you change the US Constitution, you cannot, I mean, you, you can change the treaties. Every president who's came in including the present one has said, how do we get rid of these Indians and these treaties? And found out they cannot,
36:57 they entwined us within their legal system so that they cannot, cannot get rid of the treaties. We still hold fast to our treaties. 1851 and 1868 we treat, we teach them to our children, we teach them to our tribes in our tribal office. Every employee must go through treaty training and we have a treaty organization.
37:21 We have a seat in the United Nations, the Lakota nation, the Mohawk nation and Navajo Nations have seats in the United Nation.
37:31 Treaties are very important to us even today. And yes, we've heard they're broken. They're no longer, no, they're good. They tell us our land base
37:43 and they tell us, see when our relatives signed those treaties, I always think, wow, what intelligent people, they said you could have this land but you pay this much.
37:59 Not in millions, billions or etcetera. You pay education for our children for time immemorial. You pay healthcare for our people. You pay, um,
38:15 for our resources. They wrote those in the treaties. Can you imagine what those people were thinking about how they thought of us those years ago? So that today we get payment for the land that people live on through these treaties. Oh, by the way, United States never gave us anything. First person who says we don't pay taxes needs to come pay my taxes.
38:40 I have to pay taxes every year. Uh, hoping drop a payment, I mean, uh, income level. So I wouldn't have to pay taxes. Only tax we don't pay is land tax. And because that's the United States government holds our land in trust and the United States will not tax themselves. Other than that, we pay every tax, every other individual in the United States pays. You have a question up here.
39:05 Just a refresher for me. Uh You said that the Arikara came from the Ponca and it, and Pawnee. Pawnee, excuse me. And, but they denied the human sacrifice. That's the difference between the two. So the Arikara did not do sacrifice. Thank you.
39:25 Oh, I had a question about young mothers because you mentioned that mothers, young mothers were married early. Where did, did they end up having older husbands? Ok. In today's society, we, we notice a lot of very young native American mothers. How, how do those relationships
39:50 follow out within the tribe? I guess that's a good question. We're, we're dealing with today's society and our old tribal customs. And I've, I've been asked this question. So I have to look at my own history thinking about where do we fit into the new society and their ages. Uh We don't have teenagehood in our, our cultures.
40:13 You become a woman when you, you ministrate, you're a woman, you become a man. When you do your deeds and go through your ceremonies, you're a man. And so we don't have this middle, middle age. So I started looking at all my grandmothers,
40:29 I have to say my, my daughter married at 16, which I objected to, but nobody listens to me. I married at 15, my mother married at 15. My grandmother married at 16. My great grandma married at 14, my great great grandmother married at 13. And I thought, well, how does that relate to today?
40:55 Because today we have different views of how things are done. So I started studying about why is this? And I thought, oh my, you know how it is to raise a teenage girl from now on, I'm arranging marriages for my granddaughter right now and I'm getting her married right away. Just joking. Well, maybe I've had 4 people I picked out already.
41:20 Um, it was, it was the way the culture is. Today we have a lot of young women. I always wonder if, if some of those things still are ingrained in us because we live in a different society now. And, and it's really hard to adapt to the new society rules. For us, we have had contact
41:43 for 100 and 25 years only. And so for us adapting is still hard.
41:51 Although we know how to use internet.
42:00 When you went,
42:02 when you say country uh in your presentation, what does country mean to you
42:09 is that you say uh the, the, the Dakota country and so forth and then, then there's the United States was the country. What, what does that mean in relation to, to each? First and foremost, I belong to my nation, Lakota, Dakota, Nakota nation. Our land base extends from the Big Horn Mountains to the Platte River,
42:32 to the Hart River, to the Missouri river. That is still our aboriginal land. There has never been officially land claims to take that claim away. We still have treaty rights to all that area. That is my nation. My nation still meets once a year. The Lakota, Dakota, Nakota nation meets on every one of the reservations in North Dakota, South Dakota Montana, Nebraska and three Canadian Provinces.
42:57 It travels to discuss my nation's uh problems and things that we are doing. Second in 1924 we became US citizens. So second, I'm a United States citizen. Third, my country has always been my country. That's just the bottom line. My family has been here since time, immemorial.
43:23 Some of the uh before this, I used to work with historic preservation. So some of the archaeological sites we have found up to 9000 years here on the Missouri River.
43:38 I guess I still had a question in terms of, of relationships and it would maybe be related to multiple wives. How then are children adopted into these families? When, when there are multiple fathers involved,
43:58 I mean, multiple wives. Well, I'm thinking more often of multiple fathers. For [inaudible] example, you know, one young woman has children from three different fathers. For example, how, how do they fit into the family structure in terms of knowing your family history? You're talking in today's culture,
44:24 grandparents.
44:27 It's the grandparents that
44:33 we have time for about one more question. If someone has another question.
44:43 Well, if anybody, I welcome you to come down and visit my country, I'll give you a tour. I really enjoy talking about my people. Thank you. Once again. How about a round of applause for Ladonna? Thank you so much for coming out today.

Tent of Many Voices

Ladonna Brave Bull Allard on Lakota Relations and History

Ladonna Brave Bull Allard

Lakota

45:43

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Ladonna Brave Bull Allard on Lakota Relations and History

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