We're living culture.

We never died.

We never stopped being [Potawatomi Language] Neshnabé.

Pokagon Band of Potawatomi: A Song for Everything is brought to you by our presenting sponsors.

First Source Foundation.

The First Source Foundation is a proud sponsor of our communities, public television station WNIT Pokagon Band of Potawatomi.

: A Song for Everything is made possible, in part by a grant from Michigan Humanities, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Chris and Carmi Murphy.

Carmi and I thank the tribe for your engagement throughout your ancestral homeland.

Your generosity makes it better.

Yours.

Chris Murphy And our platinum level sponsor, University of Notre Dame And our gold level sponsor and our silver level sponsors Thank you.

[Potawatomi Language] Ngëmwen, Pokégnek Bodéwadmik [Potawatomi Language] Ngëmwen, Pokégnek Bodéwadmik this was a sketch that George Winter did.

He was an Indiana artist in the 1800s.

He was known to our people.

He extensively documented.

Potawatomi's, Miami's in painting form.

And the cool thing about his paintings was they were pretty much historically accurate.

He didn't embellish us with more feathers or add tattoos or anything to make us look more exotic.

He just kind of painted as how we were.

and I think that's what's kind of awesome about this particular sketch, is that you can see that some of them were in traditional clothing and some of them are actually just wearing what would be considered street clothing at that time.

In his journal about this sketch, he actually talks about how there was actually non-natives that were participating also, which is kind of true of how our powwows are now.

You know, pretty much all walks of life are usually welcome to come and watch and participate.

in order to understand our culture, you have to have that knowledge of the language.

language changes your mindset when you're learning.

You see more of how the culture, how the culture works and how our ancestors thought, everything that we have, are gifts from our ancestors, our traditional knowledge, our language, our ceremonial doings that they had to do in secret for a long time because it was illegal for them to do so.

And so partly it's a responsibility.

But the other part is that it's an epistemological framework for resiliency, tackling new problems with our ancestral wisdom, they're tools, frameworks, everything from climate change to political issues.

And so by honoring the past and those teachings, it makes us resilient to face new problems.

there was coming a time when the community, I think, was at a cat's whisker of losing who we were.

you know, the federal recognition as kind of the glue that holds the community together.

We were being denied our Indian-ness by other peoples, non-native and native, because we weren't federally recognized, which was extremely frustrating.

And so this professor from Notre Dame talked about another way of having a restoration of our federal recognition, which was to have an act by Congress.

So almost 60 years exactly from the time that we'd had our recognition taken away, it was restored to us.

And that has meant the rebirth of a nation and I wanted to say first, [Potawatomi Language ] migwetth.

[thank you] Thank you, everybody, for coming and for listening to me talk and for the long walk that we have ahead of us today.

It's really exciting to see so many people who are non-native come out and listen to Indigenous voices and our stories and to engage in that meaningful discourse with us in a really good way.

I had a great time this week getting to know all of you and spending time with you, your great group of youth I did want to remind all of our friends here that we're a tribe and that we're all family and that we should always be supporting each other.

So that means saying good things to each other, helping each other out, and just being nice to each other.

Because, again, we're all family.

and I want to remind you all that at your age, right, you are a treasure to this community.

you have so much potential.

You can bring so much to us.

Right.

But the elders are a treasure to this community because they have done so much.

They have seen so much, they have lived so much, loved so much, hurt so much, learned so much.

And so when we have a chance to to hear our elders speak to us, I really want everybody to see how important that is because they won't always be there.

And while they have the teachings and they're here to teach them and share them with you, I want you all to understand how important that is and just really really enjoy that and respect that and take that in.

What does it mean to be [Potawatomi Language] bodéwadmik ?

Well, it means it's how you live your life.

And I don't think meaning will ever change.

learning what you have from your seven generations behind you, what they have given to you and giving that back to the seven generations in the future.

[Potawatomi Language] mishkoswen [Vitality] [Potawatomi Language] mishkoswen [Vitality] It was important from the beginning that the tribe not be viewed from the outside as just a gaming economic opportunity.

We weren't just striving to open a casino.

I think sometimes the general public views Native American tribes as just a casino tribe, and there's more to it.

Obviously, this community has remained in this area in Michigan, Indiana, in the Saint Joe River Valley, So it was important to show our community that we live here.

We've always been here.

We're going to remain here and we're going to be good neighbors.

So also it is important to build the government in the community.

We have currently over 6000 citizens, which has grown immensely since 1994 in our enrollment, and it is important to try to serve all of our citizens in some way.

Development of our housing, where we have locations in not only Dowagiac but South Bend and Hartford creating opportunity for safe and decent housing.

The access to health care for all of our citizens is so important.

With all of the health needs and education opportunities for all citizens and continuing to preserve the land, preserve our language, preserve our culture, and remain a community that is so important for this nation, for the future, for the development of our citizens in the next seven generations.

Chi Ishobak We are a certified native CDFI and the CDFI is a community development and financial institution and back in the mid 2000s, when Tribal Council knew that gaming was going to become a reality, they wanted to be good stewards of some of those resources and they created or had Mno-Bmadsen chartered, you know, to look after the tribes.

Non-gaming got non-gaming investment and Chi Ishobak to look after the individual financial needs of our tribal citizens.

And so one of the things that we talk about with our clients at Chi Ishobak is what our ancestor did, you know who they were, you know, and how they live their life and how they they celebrated everything from the Creator Mother Earth.

You know, nothing went to waste.

Everything was planned for.

They were expert planners, you know.

And at some point between then and now, over the last few centuries, I think that's gotten a little bit lost, you know, Yeah.

It's always stuck with me through my life when I was a kid, my dad sat on a drum, white thunder.

And so we spend our summers going to powwows and.

And my dad said to me, you can't preserve a culture, you live a culture or else it's dead.

And so in my position here as the cultural sustainability lead, I try to I try to keep that in mind as much as possible.

And just remember that, you know, everything we do is part of maintaining our culture and for for what we didn't learn when we were growing up, where we're relearning and we're teaching each other and enough was remembered and passed on that it can give us an idea of how to do how to do anything in the right way and in a way that our ancestors can recognize and can say, Yeah, that's our culture.

We're doing the honorable thing and carrying on what our ancestors taught us.

I believe that those old, old ways are extremely relevant in modern times.

And they for me personally and many people that that I know in my family and community, they act as a guiding force still in how we navigate this American society that we're living in as Potawatomi people.

I felt like growing up, like, there was always a part of me that was missing.

There was just something that wasn't connecting, something that wasn't adding up.

And it was really my mother that was able to reach out to our tribe and get me and my sister involved.

And when we did find out, I remember my first event and my first interaction with my tribe was going to our culture camp.

And that that was really life changing for me.

It really felt like I was meeting the family that I never knew existed, and I felt like I was coming home, returning home for the very first time.

the first sound in all of creation was the shishigwen It was the rattle.

And that sort of resonates and echoes throughout the world and creation.

And after that it's sort of imitated through nature.

And then native people and all sorts of people sort of replicated that.

And it helps bring forth that first sound that was, um, musical and melodic.

like a rattle, it was like [ Brody vocally imitates a rattle] just like a heartbeat.

And that's what you hear in a lot of our, um, drumming and rattling and in the sweat lodge ceremony and all of that.

That heartbeat is so important.

is introduced to us when we were babies in our mother's womb.

You hear that heartbeat, boom, boom, boom.

Back in the old days, the mothers and fathers would sing to those singing, to those babies as they're developing.

when we dance out and powwow and we enter that eastern doorway, it's letting the Creator know, Thank you for letting me be alive.

You whoop and your holler and you just give your thanks and you shake your tail feathers and you're just so happy And you're just proud to be Neshnabé to be following that path.

Well, David was born 1973, and I kind of grew up with him.

And I always loved singing.

I was a better singer when I was younger, But here I am today and the lullaby had a couple of syllables in it that Potawatomi don't use.

But I didn't know that at the time.

I made this up myself.

A good friend, Majel Demarsh named it for me the Topash Lullaby.

I had never named it.

And I would sing this to all my babies was the first thing I do when they were born.

There was a mosquito.

And also my grandchildren.

I sing it to my grandchildren.

I've tried to pass this on to other family members and I'm kind of glad it's been recorded because that that's something that hasn't been done yet.

And it goes like, this starts with vocalbles, and then we go into a what I'm saying in the song is, Baby, don't cry, Your daddy's gone and it's insinuating he's like hunting or he's out, but he'll be back soon.

And that's what the song means.

♪♪♪[Barbara Ann sings a soothing ♪ lullaby] ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ [ Barbara Ann continues ♪ singing] ♪♪♪ then I would just rock them and sing it over and over.

One time I was helped teaching a summer school class language for kids.

at Zagbëgon it was supposed to be a naptime for them and I sang that real low.

And pretty soon they started getting quiet.

And before I knew it, the room was asleep.

So not that my voices is.

but you know that that's our family lullaby now.

We had a few of our tribal elders walk on this past year.

Just recently.

Some of the really prominent ones are really ones that stick out My mind was Clarence White.

He, when he walked on, he left, um, he left behind a legacy of knowledge and cultural teachings, ceremonies and doings and things like that.

Clarence White is was our spiritual leader.

He was awesome, beautiful human being.

He was so humble.

And so I'm going to start to cry.

He he taught us a lot.

He had he has patience of a saint.

He had you know, he always had good things to say.

He was a magnet.

So when people seen him, there was always a crowd around him because he just he just wanted to be in his presence because he was such a good person.

and then my father just recently passed away, Roger Williams, known as Kookoosh or Kche-Noden that one is a...

I can say that my dad definitely left a legacy for myself and my family.

Like he always shared everything openly.

My dad was really good at planting seeds with people, but as long as I can remember, he's always provided or shared openly our ceremonies, our teachings, and how he led that every day.

My dad's one of the people I know that truly lived that way.

one of the things I think we've realized as a people how important it is to document it's really sad to think about that.

We miss miss the opportunity.

So we're hoping to not miss any more.

In 2013, Tribal Council met with the fluent speakers up in Wisconsin to see what they wanted to do, because we didn't have a set language program here or anybody that was a speaker or a teacher.

Oh, we had community classes where there was things going on, but nobody could speak.

And so they said, send, send a couple of people up here and we'll we'll do a master apprentice program.

And so Karla Collins and I were sent to go up there originally for two years, and it was extended to four years, one year each time.

And so primarily what we did is we worked with Jim Thunder and Mary Jane Thunder.

oh, so Jim and Mary Jane were first born Potawatomi speakers.

That was their first language.

And so our language is about 85% verbs.

So there's a lot of things that are happening, and as you're learning, you start to seeing the world a different way is hard to explain until you start to experience that yourself.

We are because we speak.

And the richness that is built into the language is how rich we are.

And so, you know, that only became confirmed when Jim Thunder said the same thing.

if you do not speak Bodéwadmimwen when you cease to be Bodéwadmi.

Zagbëgon means.

Sprouts And it has to do with our students growing and developing spiritually and emotionally and physically and academically.

in our culture, we have something called the Medicine Wheel.

And part of that Medicine Wheel is our elders piece.

And then the other part is our youth.

And so we've been trying to bridge that gap by bringing in elders, having them read as guest readers and just over the past few years, we've been fortunate to have an elder cultural specialist come on board to the school and be able to get those people into our classrooms, make them comfortable to come eat a meal with the students, and to join us for different events and activities.

in the morning I greet them and when they come in off of the bus or with their parents, and usually it's bozho, mno waben.

And that's.

Hello, Good morning.

And then on Mondays, I'll come out and start the fire in the lodge then they'll sing migwetth song.

And then I'll end it with a traveling song.

And they they leave the lodge hugging each other or fist bumping or shaking, And then they all go out go about their day learning, speaking the language, learning cultural, traditional games and activities in.

It's really important that they they they know that they are important piece.

They're a part of that Medicine Wheel.

Connecting the elders with the with the young ones, I've had some grandparents want to come to my class of the the kids that go to the school because they want to be able to talk with the the kids about what they're saying.

And the kids say they want to eat something well they're saying it in Potawatomi and then the grandparents, they want to know and they want to keep supporting the kids and talking.

And, uh, so yeah, it definitely it trickles out from the kids out to the community.

Native Americans across the nation struggle with cultural identity.

So having that place, you don't learn that in traditional school systems with the text, with the curriculum.

You really have to return home to your community and experience that person, the person or as a community.

So taking that knowledge system, so many years has been taken from us.

And I'm very happy to say that, you know, with the Pokagon Band going into Zagbëgon having that leadership, having that vision of bringing educational institutions to our traditional homelands is so important because that's where they're going to get their whole history.

That's what I'm going to get their culture.

That's where they're going to get their language and giving that positive cultural reinforcement through that cultural identity will only project into their academic studies when they go to a public school.

[Potawatomi Language] zhabwiwen [Resilience] [Potawatomi Language] zhabwiwen [Resilience] Federal reaffirmation for our tribe has turned into a milestone in our history that's really worth celebrating, because what it symbolizes is a century long accomplishments of struggle for a community to go after something that they knew was rightfully theirs.

And so on September 21st, 1994, you know, that was, uh, a great day for all of us.

it testified to the resilience of our community and and our political savviness and our willpower to continue for the generations into the future.

the sixties happened to Pokagon Band just like it did to the rest of the United States.

And for lack of a better term, those baby boomer people within the tribe came back with a sense of activism or grew up with a sense of activism, and they wanted to they wanted to reclaim who we were and what it meant to be Potawatomi what it meant to be Pokagon Band And so they they brought this energy and they began to go back to the to the elders, back to their parents and their grandparents, and began to ask them, you know, who are we?

What's our culture, what's our history?

And and beyond just getting that information.

And they wanted to build something.

there were two events that really sparked sort of a revival, a renaissance for Pokagon Potawatomi people and those were the Women's Black Ash basket co-op, where women began to get together again and share the knowledge about making black ash baskets, which are not unique to the Pokagon Potawatomi or Potawatomi in general, but certainly iconic for us.

But they're made by other tribes too.

But they really identified this is what makes us Indian, is this basket.

You know, I can hold this.

The other thing was the Williams Daughtery family and others had really sparked and many others had sparked having a Labor Day weekend pow wow at the time at St Patrick's Park in South Bend, Indiana.

And that pow wow was another sort of public facing of us as Potawatomi people.

And it gave us a chance to come together as a community around the event.

And so that those were the two things that really gave us sustenance.

this tree has been with us for forever.

then provided for us all the things that we needed from strips like this.

We can make baskets and then that with the, with the log, with the bark, we can peel that off and we'll use it in our homes for the coverings the saplings will use to bend over to make the dome structure an art form, which I think is the the paramount or the quintessential Potawatomi art form, when you take one of these black ash baskets, it is a very site specific type of art form, because in other places where Potawatomi people live, say Kansas or Oklahoma, where these trees don't grow, then they're not able to continue that art form.

Now, over the years, many of them have come back to the Great Lakes, and we still share in that way with each other.

and we also understood that we needed to bring people, people back in, you know, because without land base, you, you know, you just slowly get spread out.

So we needed to bring people back in together again.

My favorite part about the powwow is to see the community come together with all the young ones and our elders and all of the teachings that are being shared within the dance arena and with the drums.

And it's it's just the sense of gathering and you can really feel the positivity.

There's never a lot of any negativity happening and there's so much being taught back and forth from the dance styles to the way that you behave and the way that you respect your elders.

And it's just this all encompassing gathering of of good feelings, The greatest honor that we get is when they call grand entry.

And at grand entry, we open the powwow.

What we do when we go around, we're all given tobacco.

We do all four gates, we do the main gate coming in.

The songs that the drums play is all.

It's all part of it.

And our, you know, the head veteran leads us out Eagles staffs lead it and then our Pokagon flag and then U.S. flag and then all the other the service flags and the P.O.W.

flag and um, Ogitchedaw is really an Ojibwe word, but our languages are pretty close together.

It means big heart.

Basically what it translates to, because the community recognizes that's what it takes for us to do what we gotta do.

I think that's what has made us great warriors.

also we always extend an invitation to any other patriotic veteran organization.

Come on out, bring your people.

We don't care if they're Native American or not, because we feel that we owe a debt to them for fighting for our country, our country and our land, because that's always going to be our perspective.

Again its baked into every indigenous cultural aspect that I've been a part of.

There is no powwow without the grand entry, without the drums.

I mean, it's, it's, I mean it's again, everything is wrapped up in itself.

So you can't have Bodéwadmi without language.

You can't have language without song, you can't have songs without Bodéwadmi.

So it's all wrapped up in each other.

I mean, there's this weird, like, like catch 22.

Like, you don't want to be so wrapped up in the past that you don't evolve.

So you got to be able to change a little bit, you know?

I mean, because that there, there's a certain point where if you're true to traditional, you're almost reenacting, you know, and you're not really representing what the culture is now.

And so what I try to do is, is take those traditions and adapt them, you know, to what life is.

Now.

I think a good You know what?

If you don't evolve or or change, you know, you die, you know, then you're no longer who you are.

Beadwork is meaningful to me because it's part of the what I hope to pass on to my children, both in terms of the practice but also reclaiming familial designs in the beadwork or designs made by specific families.

Because a lot of our artwork, whether we're talking about beadwork or applique, belong to a people, a place, a time, and sometimes they are clan specific with stories attached, sometimes they're family specific.

And we've lost so much that now we're in a state of resurgence and so I'm hoping that some of the stories I tell with my beadwork will carry on to future generations.

and I just really fell in love with the whole process then.

But what I like most about it now is that it's it's creating something with, you know, materials from the earth that when it's finished, will outlive me and everybody that comes after me.

And that's, you know, I really love that part of of making.

I really think that I'm able to make utilitarian things.

We all get to do that that you can use in everyday life and you can add more and more design elements to it as you go.

And, you know, I put a lot of symbolism on the personal pieces that I make, but that design, the more designer pieces that I make because it's meaningful and I think people really enjoy it in their everyday life.

So, you know, and that's what I encourage everybody that I teach to do too.

Art has always been a hugh part of my life since I was a child.

Copper came to me right about the time that I found the tribe, found my people.

And that was in 2014.

And it's just getting it's intensifying as time goes by.

well, I've always loved copper.

It's very malleable.

I like the colors and the way you can play with it.

And recently found out that it was important to the Neshnabé people.

And I also found out that they have been mining copper in northern Michigan or northern America.

Excuse me for like 6000 years.

And that's a significant thing to me because I'm still learning about the culture.

I'm new to it.

I feel like, for our artists, a lot of people in our our tribe are trying to reconnect, to bring back traditions.

And I feel like when we work with nature, with our clans, when we learn about our clans and what it means when we learn about what the the foliage means, what the fruits and vegetables meant to our people that we can then use in representation in our artwork today, it opens up a whole lot of storytelling that we can then leave for our children and keep those traditions growing.

some of us just went up up of north of Petoskey and learned cattail mat making from and now they're up there named Wasson and now we're harvesting these cattail leaves to make cattail mats to cover our lodges because we've been covering our lodges with tarps for years and we want to get back to covering our lodges with natural old materials.

Today I did a..

I got like a pan fried hominy with duck oil.

Today we have a duck egg.

Then we also have butternut squash with some maple sirup and creamy Amish butter and, salmon.

I got into the indigenous food movement.

because I was interested in these diets and it was a very big thing around here, all we all were getting back to our indigenous seeds because each tribe, especially the Potawatomi's and I was told that the reason that we're in this area is because especially the Kankakee marsh areas, because this is the the Garden of Eden it feels very special you could say, because I'm representing two things at once.

You know I'm representing on the Navajo Nation and I'm also representing Pokagon Band of Potawatomi.

So it just, it adds more.

Yes, it has a bit more weight, but I'm one of the people that never really took the step and know into learning my language.

So I'm one of the examples of, you know, the language dying out, we're transitioning into a new period where we're using technology like mango languages, to drive language learning apps and to be able to project the sound of our Bodéwadmimwen through technology devices that everyone has readily available.

In a large part of that is normalization of our sound.

You know, hearing it when you get an answering machine at one of the government employees phones bozho, you know thank you for calling or migwetth just any way that we can put the sound out there, that sounds natural.

You know, that's that's the purpose.

We try to do that just so everyone can hear, you know, what we're talking We have a card night because there's a social aspect to learning language to where you, you start to care about your fellow classmates and your lives start to come entangled, I guess.

I don't know if it the right word, but, so you have the social nights where you use a little language, but it's the camaraderie that makes you care about each other, and then you want to push each other to learn more.

having a department dedicated to culture, to history, to language, is vital for our nation.

And if we can teach and restore that language and the heritage that some missed out or don't have the opportunity because family members have walked on, they can turn to the tribe and this is where they can come to restore that language [Potawatomi Language] ėzhë bmadzëyak [Sustainability] [Potawatomi Language] ėzhë bmadzëyak [Sustainability] And one of the most pivotal things that we accepted and embraced into our community was Catholicism.

And it's even one of our legacies because through embracing that form of faith, you know, that was essentially what helped secure Leopold Pokagon's ability to negotiate for him and his group of Potawatomi to stay in the area because of how much we embrace that assimilation process and in and because of that, a lot of our old ways, our original ways of prayer had to be set aside and taken underground, I'm Pastor Casey.

of Good Medicine Way of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

It started back in 1988 when I got my call to ministry that I felt the Lord speaking to me that the way ministry was being done was really denying us our cultural identity completely.

and it was like we had to leave who we were culturally outside the church doors.

When we entered those doors.

And what I came to find out many years later is that's what assimilation was meant to do to us, And when I got into my teens, I felt that something could be different and that I could get involved in doing something different.

We're able to design a ministry that reflects a Native American kind of a pan tribal expression of how we can live out a Christian worship within our Native American culture.

So I follow the way that our our original people followed the the path that was set before us, those generations before us.

And keeping that tradition going.

And that's that's the path that I'm on.

pretty much most Neshnabé people follow that way whether they call it Midewin or not.

And if anything, our community is a reflection that there is no one path.

There is no one right way to maintain your sovereignty as long as the community is at the core of your decisions.

Having faith in Mamogosnan.

It will work out in the end and that's what the old ones in my community did back then.

And this is what we have now.

As a counil person or a tribal leader, what what am I going to do that will benefit the future generations and my thoughts are they revolve around the survivability.

We I believe the best thing that we can do within our tribal lands is to provide clean, drinkable water, have edible fish and game plentiful fish and game breathable air is within, you know, within our powers because without that, what else?

What else matters?

is life.

Water is everything.

Without it, we have no life.

And so part of the Shoreline project that I was involved in, it was really examining indigenous people and our relationships to water.

And what I noticed, you know, Western society kind of treats it does it treats water like it's a commodity that's meant to be traded and sold for profit or to provide entertainment to them, and it's sold to the highest bidder.

And there's very little regard for the harm that that's doing to the water.

And everything that resides within that water.

And everybody who relies on that water for life.

And so if we're going to be taking so much from her, we have to give back to her as well.

the water ceremony is women normally do that when we do that and it is our job to care for the water because we are life givers.

So when we carry those babies, we have that water within us.

So it is our job to care for it.

We sing for it.

♪♪♪ The Water Song is sang ♪ softly in the background ♪♪♪ And we put the water in a copper vessel They call it.

because that comes from our that that comes from Mother Earth that metal does and its pure and the things that are in that copper nourish your body so they'll tell you to drink out of copper to honor that and honor the water and to say thank you for that everyday.

[Potawatomi Language] mawtheshnowen [Coming together] [Potawatomi Language] mawtheshnowen [Coming together] So there are nine Potawatomi tribes that get together and the gathering rotates to each nation and the host tribe puts on a three day celebration for all of the Potawatomi and more recently, the indigenous people of Canada have joined, There's a language workshop that is attached prior to the actual gathering event, and they come together and work on language and teachings.

The North American Indigenous Games is comprised of athletes in I believe 16 different sports across Turtle Island, which is the United States, Canada and I believe this year it was about 5000 athletes.

Team Michigan is a basketball team.

They played at the 19 U level at the North American Indigenous games.

It's comprised of tribal youth from five different tribes within the state of Michigan.

If you look at the logo, you can see the C the P and the O that stands for Chippewa Potawatomi and Ottawa or Odawa, however you say it, and then the symbol around it represents the fire.

So the team's slogan was five tribes, one team, three fires, one dream.

And then we would get a let's go Michigan.

I don't think they realized how huge this was actually going to be untill they actually got into the stadium and they realized how many people were actually there and how exciting it was going to be I do know they were looking forward to playing more.

Obviously.

but I think they did they did their absolute best the opening ceremonies and you see Josh and Devin enter into their arena and their contagious smile that just lights up while they're looking up and.

And seeing everybody in the stands and seeing themselves on the big screen.

Just something that I don't think that they like really put into perspective that they would ever like experience something like that.

So it was similar to kind of how we have the Potawatomi gathering.

There's all kinds of like different vendors for like arts and crafts.

They had food vendors, they had like teachings, They had different teaching lodges that you could go into and play games and learn how to make things.

They also had performances by indigenous artists, musical artists.

Every night.

it was just a good opportunity.

We got to see all everybody that came out and just put on for our culture Yeah, like I know we only have 12 guys, so like every other team is pretty much bigger than us, but we tried to stay loud and keep the people entertained and stuff, so it was fun.

Yeah, it was a good show.

entertained and stuff, so it was fun.

Yeah and we had a way bigger crowd than we thought.

Michigan really showed up for us Our boys are now leaders and they need to continue to be leaders for our Pokagon citizens.

Just the fact that they had that opportunity they need to bring it back.

they need to share it with the kids.

every Native American has a gift and how they choose to give back to the community.

I think that that's the message that we need to fulfill, is being able to encourage them.

[Potawatomi Language] gigdowen [advocacy] [Potawatomi Language] gigdowen [advocacy] I have two family members that have walked on due to some violent acts that were initiated against them.

Initially it was started out as the M.M.I.W.

which is the missing murdered indigenous women, but over time it has evolved to change into the now M.M.I.P.

which is missing murdered indigenous people because we recognize and and we understand that it's not specific to just one gender, the MMIW has given me a voice and if I am one person to one voice, that's great.

But you find that all you have to do is speak and you'll find many, many women, children, the LGBTQ community, even men, It isn't specific to anyone.

Violence is violence is violence.

And the more we bring awareness to this, the better off we're all going to be.

so advocacy to me looks like just being in control of our own narrative.

I don't think it should be up to anybody else to be telling the world about who we are or what our motivations are or about our history.

That should be up to us as indigenous people.

And so, you know, really at any any space where decisions are being made in this country, there should be an indigenous person at that table.

And if there is not, it's just colonization all over again, it isn't a hobby.

It's not it's not a mascot.

It's not a cartoon.

I think people just kind of have this warped image of what being Native American is or what it should look like stereotypically.

Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 was established to provide a mechanism for tribes to have their ancestors and their belongings returned back to the community and institutions that live in a federal nexus that are associated with the federal government are required by law to comply with NAGPRA of 1990.

And so the primary goal is to return the ancestors and their belongings back to the womb of Mother Earth, where they belong and where they were removed from because we this is one of the most important efforts that we have as tribal communities today, because there are elders that are directly related.

You're talking grandparents that are in these institutions right now, and they're living in this in this mind space of despair And so to provide that emotional, spiritual healing for the community, we need to have our ancestors back home in the ground where we can protect them and make sure that everybody is able to continue their journey through that western door.

The historical significance of South Bend to the Pokagon Band, also known as Ribbon Town to our tribe, cannot be understated.

We have called this land home for hundreds of years so South Bend, Indiana, became known as Ribbon Town, and that's because that was where a lot of the, um, traders would end up because of the easy access to all the different, pathways that led into the area, the different rivers and water routes that led to the south bend of the St. Joe River is what led a lot of those traders there, which obviously they were there because the Potawatomi and Miami were there.

Um, but with them came a lot of European goods, a lot of European materials and European goods that, um, the old Neshnabé really liked was ribbon, you know, shiny.

You can do all types of things with it.

and a lot of communities I know that ribbons took on like ceremonial uses.

And so ribbons became an important element of our, of our culture, of how we decorated ourselves or even how we prayed.

And that is an example of not only our resilience, but, um, the vitality of who we are.

This moccasin is made with one piece.

So it's not multiple like a boot moccasin or has a separate sole.

It is a it's just a solid piece, which is which is kind of characteristic of moccasins.

Most moccasins are multiple different pieces that are sewn together.

So it really does to me to school around.

This gives us a throwback of a much older style of sewing and stuff and a real like it really shows a lack of waste, like there's just no waste when we use this one style because we're not trimming anything.

We're not we're using as many pieces as we can cut off of the hide.

There aren't any laces and stuff to the to this moccasin, and the puckers are a little bit identifying like everyone's like kind of thinking how they want theirs to like she wants hers more gathered.

And I thought it looked a little bit good, a little less gathered.

This is a real gathered one that I think might just be an individual preference, because you do have an individual identity and just your clothes and everything you wear, you know what I mean?

So there's a little bit of individual identity.

Even in a moccasin that is a certain tribe's moccasin.

I'm teaching fingerweaving some of our ancestors Used to use this for a finger waving as part of clothing to hold up their pants, tie their arms, or legbands Today, woodland dancers are bringing them back and using them in their regalia.

Somebody needs to carry these things on.

Somebody needs to remember it.

I think it's really unique that we're all able to be here together and learn these things and bring Candi in.

And Madalene and whoever the presenters are the to share their knowledge and for the whole community to learn.

And then they and then people here can teach their kids, even if their kids aren't here today, you know, and then if they you really get into it, it could be just a life skill that they have, you know, and then maybe they can come in and present it sometime someday day.

And just to keep it going and keep the learning going.

So whereas some of our older brother and sister tribes have found themselves in an other areas of this continent with our still being engaged with this land, I think it's our greatest So I think I think, you know, it was never it was never perfect.

But I think in a larger sense, I think America was forced to accept us more than if we were isolated.

I think we were forced to accept America more than if we had been isolated.

So I think I think in some senses, I think that that might have helped be healthier over the years, you know, just literally healthier, you know, better able to feed our families.

But, you know, working with language, the places where we go for our language now, we go to Kansas and we go to Wisconsin for our language because because they they were insulated.

And so they were able to keep their traditions, their culture, their their their language.

They were able to keep it much stronger than we were.

So, um, you know, the other thing, we're we're on our homeland.

You know, we're we're home and, you know, so we, we gave up a lot in order to stay at home.

We, we did we, there was a decision.

It was a decision.

And gave up a lot to stay here, you know, But.

But what we gave, you know, we gave gave though, you know, we're able to keep all our this you know, we've had people come from the from Western bands and they do exactly what I'm doing.

They they tear up when they see tall trees.

So so it's good and bad.

They say your children are the message you send into the future.

We have a strong future ahead of us.

never belonged anywhere in my life.

So to find home finally means everything to me.

And I'm most proud.

Not just being able to to say I'm tribal, say it in public, but I'm most proud of being able and most proud of being able to stand up for my grandmother, who wasn't who wasn't in a position or felt she wasn't in a position to be herself.

So that's what I'm most proud of.

So what I'm seeing now is my generation and the younger generations are starting to embrace our culture in ways that are our parents and our grandparents and our ancestors were not allowed to.

And so there's that reconnecting to our culture and that embracing of the culture and really just we have this understanding that these things are birthright.

And no matter what happens, they can't be taken from us.

Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, A Song for Everything is brought to you by our presenting sponsors.

First Source Foundation.

The First Source Foundation is a proud sponsor of our communities, public television station WNIT Pokagon Band of Potawatomi.

: A Song for Everything is made possible, in part by a grant from Michigan Humanities, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Chris and Carmi Murphy.

Carmi and I thank the tribe for your engagement throughout your ancestral homeland.

Your generosity makes it better.

Yours.

Chris Murphy and our platinum level sponsor, University of Notre Dame and our gold level sponsor and our silver level sponsors Additional funding for Pokagon Band of Potawatomi.

A Song for Everything has been provided by Thank you.

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Thank you.