October 10, 2022 • 61 mins
Celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day with the brilliant and powerful Saankaláxtʻ Ernestine Hayes. Listen to her lecture titled, “An Alaska Native Memoir: Our Lives are Stories Telling Themselves” which was recorded by the Sealaska Heritage Institute during their fall lecture series. During her talk, she addresses the many harmful tactics of colonialism and ponders what Native America would be like now if colonialism had not happened. Here’s to wonderful Indigneous futures!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
To cut your hand. She cut ye are yah, Yes,
she cut. She's a cool has to eat it does
she has to g s a h then ate cheats
in khan coway. Try you happy Indigenous People's day. If
(00:24):
you know some Indigenous people do something nice for them today,
like give us some food, some water. It's coffee, maybe
all the land back. I don't know. They tried to callings,
(00:57):
try to genocide it. I'm still here with the tongue
rope and yeah t wouchins wine art, Yeah ta an tink.
(01:21):
Thanks for tuning in, folks. We are here together. Being
together is a wonderful thing. Talking to each other, listening
to each other. And this whole thing t is coming
to a close the first season. Who knows what's gonna
(01:42):
happen after this Stay tuned. It's a mystery and it's
up to the creator the I heart folks, who knows. Anyways,
as we start to wind this thing down, I thought
we should une into an incredible voice from Alaska, perhaps
(02:05):
these strongest voice in Alaska, certainly one of the most
important voices. Sanka Ernestine Hayes, the former Writer Laureate of
Alaska Coagwantan an elder a wonderful, powerful human being who's
overcome tremendous obstacles to become a teacher, mother, grandmother, and
(02:30):
who deserves all the good things ra Usu. I hope
that wonderful things are coming her way. So I want
to give a lot of credit and thanks to the
c Alaska Heritage Institute, who hosts a series of lectures,
who support a ton of language activities, And during their
(02:54):
lecture series, I approached their staffs and said, YO, could
can I use this? This was wonderful And I've seen
Earnesting talk a number of times and I'm blown away
every time I hear. So this was recorded in harsh
shook a hit. So it's a cedar. He's got red
(03:15):
cedar walls, this beautiful artwork all over the place. Uh,
but that means there's a little bit of background noise
now and then, So bear with us and focus on
the message. Focus on message, wonderful things to talk about.
I'll cut in a couple of times to take us
(03:37):
to breaks, and then um, there's an episode coming up
where we're gonna have to have a chance to just
sort of wrap this thing up proper. But to start,
we're going to tune in to a powerful and important
human being. Gonna cheege for allowing me to use this,
(03:58):
Gonna cheege to bring in good words to us. Gonna
cheege for persevering, trying, fighting the good fight, saying the
right things, smash the patriarchy and colonial practices. Let's go
sco down, gout coud hit. If you haven't seen it,
(04:21):
check out Alaska Daily. You can check it out on
ABC Hulu. I got on an Apple TV wonderful missing
and murdered Indigenous women. This whole thing's gotta stop. It's
gotta stop. It cannot be a trend that we live with.
Also check out Spirit Rangers on Netflix. What a time
(04:42):
to be alive. Molly of Dnaly on PBS Reservation Dogs
just wrapped in. This is for season two. Season three
is coming. I am looking forward to that. We have
a lot to look forward to, including vibrant living, healthy
languages and communities. So let's tune in. Ernestine Hayes, Yeah,
(05:10):
good cheese. So my family hastinating this hum this love
a place for seven county generations and can kan our
thanks for continuing to all place for those who came
(05:34):
before you, looking those whose spirit and ashes, nourishes, sent
her guests on the band and the clubs my home
chekan goodness, cheese gooch. That's a job for invitation here
(05:56):
potify stories by any one, an all own story in
these last few years is er com low points and
not so low points. It seems especially so in the
last hand full of years. All the stories from each
(06:17):
time memoirs, wums sweeping global narrative are all full of challenge,
failure and surprise, then calls and optunity for kee he
Ni cannot stop like he crept in with sock bagcock
(06:40):
came up from this team because you have got a
fuck chuck now called the coffee look up ship, not
work up good enough to take the Dutch and has
a tea shoot your call. My other snat was called
(07:01):
clay Erna GaAs he hates. My grandmother sing was Salad
Ruth Willard Ache my great grandmother Smoothie was calm Stephen
Annie Edlors Willard, my great great grandmother saying that's not
(07:22):
yet in revealed to me. My real grandmother died when
my mother was a baby. Her name was shock Cut,
and I carry her name. Generations beformed down five cloan
sisters strad with Norma from the original town not far
(07:45):
in the place that is now called Sinca. For purposes
of manage, each of the five clann sisters Head asked
to the intention of strengthening your clown alignments each of
the and copebal fas with the northern curtaining they who
lived in a vill egypt Club. Travel in those days
(08:09):
was a manner of planet which just as it is today.
Alliances in those days where matters of arthur and politics
just as they ought today. Marriage in those days was
terrible resolved. They're all too often the scillage. Those are
(08:32):
sisters whom naughty carry out the responsibilities, and their journey
was conducted in the spirit of love. Yon years they
blushed and cast their always scaling with him the thought
of needing the many many things no woman birth. They
did not sit still, and there was work to be dawn,
(08:57):
prosperous and circus down. They were generous that their supplies
at the camps and villages at which they stopped along
the way trading and can't get on. He had made
strong clan was stronger, rich, clid and small. How he
since the wolf clans bird had come to pass out
(09:20):
and the disrupted the vance that curtain generations before in
grassy place, the clan and the wolf passed after it
had by bold choices and decisive encounters, and could respected
their adass and the fear of those who chanted here
either and he called the raven bow, even the bitter water,
(09:44):
even the brown bear. When the ones could be excepted
to remain in the commus, when coolan and brothers and
sisters could still be found swimming in the streams and
numbers great enough to relive the all the glives for
the chap their seconds, when someone was waning but not
(10:04):
yet complete, when lady berries were still flirtations, and bed
bears who were not quite as cross as they had
been before the season's turned, and winds with fruit heats
of the coming weather. Five plan sisters packed the best
of their own belongings. Pack gives the men, not ones,
(10:27):
to get integistant relatives and cannies of the b sisters,
cousspans to pad brebons and food and blankets and firs,
and the sha treasures pad the robbing memories and lost
hopes and very comedy reboots and childhood WI should have
(10:47):
firmly resolved to find softas into knowledge to the college,
filled their bosses with treasure and knowledge and pistam and
tradition gel only for the purpose of manage their last claims.
Of those places when they came from, we're full of
(11:10):
famar eva. Or were there the place where the death
song I filled the street? Or there a place where
the biggest salmon varies unknown to guild pass that the
busy hard for seals the northernmost prop point gated promptarity
(11:32):
will said upon, and we had opted the finest last
seen me not following the england by the shame that
passed a long whine of beach and muck, or the
largest calls the most of these crowds, the most tended
being asparagus, waited for the people's grateful, hardest. And we
(11:52):
here path of men to take these fond sisters to
their destinies at the edge the growing spreading life age,
and to get on here the way that it's man
to take these sisters and all their children and all
their children's children into an unnable future. My old in
(12:20):
the spelling should like to tell me the story of
those sisters rename the plonies who the old actually the
old descendants I don't know how many generations before last
sister's child noil, but I do know they're one of
Bill's natural Any lines leads to my great grandmother caud Stine.
(12:44):
Yet they were Swillard buried in the family plot. You well,
what would now think of this Judo's old seminary? Do
the first Lusterns Todd cementary youth Sudy at the top
of the main street on me. You don't not call
Jane rich When they knew the ever Green Sanitaries was
(13:10):
in the late eighteen hundreds opened the door business, so
to speak. People will the greatest chicken rich Daddy helt
at a new cemetery, And it wasn't long before the
chicken the chill stile was divided into the loss. Where
do those rich people that could build big homes that
(13:35):
look down on their rest and count? But they took
again with not all the graves and really there moved.
People began to find bottle plots and cloning the exteriory
estimated dirt. They sall call us that were shut down
(14:01):
me pieces piece of scalp that had our mares still
clinging to. Many of the people who flies would be
desperated in that way, complaining to official, why don't you
(14:22):
those curdlings were signed by hardy barrels. Jilly, yo, fammy,
you got the STI successful and Annie was the originally
more traditionally credated. They're dead, sending along personal events to
(14:45):
ease to coming juney and leaving favorite food from time
to time to satisfying Appetite's not subdued by it. But
the practice of creation was seen as create and I'm
Christians who came early to save souls and to obliterate
(15:06):
non Christian customs. The forest custom of burying bones and
flesh and holding it down with heavy stone successful spiritual
conversion from heathen waves. An official, a White minister missionary
(15:26):
at the time, noted the irony the first enforcing Christian
burial and then digging up the bodies and throwing the
bones over the hillside to make room for big houses.
As people tried to find their once buried loved ones,
a relative of Chief Johnson was recognized by the handmade
(15:50):
blanket that had been buried with him. Playthings in a
bottle of medicine were said to belong to three children
by the name of Jackson. One man was recognized by
his burial clothes, two blankets, a pair of slippers, his trousers,
(16:11):
decorated glove, his leather shees. Somebody found a mitten with
part of a hand still inside, but no one could
be sure whose flesh still on grip beaded cloth. This
(16:31):
disrespect was no surprise. The colonial narrative at the time
taught that Indigenous beliefs, practices, and customs were without value,
and Indigenous people were pretty much wrong about everything, including
all their customs, practices, and beliefs, especially cultural narrative that
(16:56):
had to do with the beloved land. The chicken Ridge
Grave site slaw on private land, so permission had to
be given by those private landowners before any Native person
could search for the remains of their brothers, grandmothers, wives, children, husbands, mothers.
(17:21):
One woman, who could no longer find a trace of
her loved one that she had seen, asked a question
that even now remains unanswered. White men crowd natives out
from the land on which their very homes stand. Will
they not even allow are dead to have a resting place.
(17:46):
Anna Willard is now buried in that Evergreen cemetery where
people whose names appear on streets, Towns Islands history books,
and Chicken Ridge mailboxes. Mh rest not far from the
long fallen, now buried headstone that marks her own family plot.
(18:10):
From time to time, I've asked people to imagine what
would happen if in just a few years, the culture
we now live in, the shared narrative against which our
stories now unfold, was suddenly subdued by people who believed
theirs was the superior way of being. Their's was the
(18:30):
only true faith, their God, the only god, their language,
the only worthwhile speech, their version of the history, the
only one that method. Even before the Chicken Ridge Cemetery desecration,
it was the colonial practice to rummage through groves and
(18:51):
pick through human remains, looking for artwork and curiosities to collect.
If in a few years, people who are alive today
witness the graves of their loved ones being ransacked on
the side of a hill, the bones of their loved
(19:16):
ones examined and cataloged and stolen, even their bones, what
effect would that have? What trauma would be caused by
that one arrogant, austile colonial practice. I value the lesson
(19:38):
that such a story offers. The story about the treatment
of away dead because it shows how quickly the narrative
that gives context to our lives the change. Here's another story.
One time a man by the name of Yellow Tom
(20:00):
um hm I was living in a church basement so
he could stay sober and see his little girl, Patricia,
who was now living in the Fosby apartments with a
white lady named Mabel. Young Tom didn't know exactly how
it happened, but he knew his wife, Lucille, had left
town while he was out fishing, and Patricia was feeding
(20:23):
herself while she was waiting for someone to come home.
She rolled pieces of bread in sugar and waited. She
didn't want to open the can of little oranges in
case her mom really did come back, because that was
her favorite her mom's favorite food, and Patricia was running
(20:43):
out of sugar, so when a white lady came to
the door, she told that white lady she'd go ahead
and go home with her. Patricia was ten years old
at the time. By the time Young Tom got back
from fish, official people were agreeing with Mabel that she
could give the girl a better life than Young Tom. Ever,
(21:06):
could people like Patricia's teacher and a social worker. The
judge people like that, official people. They told young Tom
that seeing his daughter would be a lot easier for
him when he was sober, when he had a regular job,
(21:27):
and when he could give money to all the official
people for all the papers they had to fill out
that made it legal by their laws for Mabel to
take his daughter away from him. So young Tom sobered
up and stayed in count and found a job helping
(21:48):
people carry the groceries and rounding up grocery carts and
mopping floors and sometimes stocking shelves. Mabel got the pastor
of the church right down the street. They went down
a part of the church basement so young Tom could
sit there and stay one They let him have a
(22:10):
corner of the basement. Two walls made out of cardboard
boxes almost as tall as Tom made a little room
that had a bed he liked to say that was
made out of bed springs and back aches, and two
more boxes sat on the floor for clothes and little
(22:30):
personal things. It was summer and he was always tired,
so he didn't need a lamp. The first time he
bumped into one of those walls with his shoulder, he
knocked down almost the hole end of the wall. He
was amazed. He thought those boxes were heavy, substantial. He
(22:55):
thought they had something in them. Those walls kept Tom
in and kept Tom out. The pastor told him when
he could be by them, and when he couldn't be
by them. Mabel had said building them was her idea.
She said she liked them. Tom tried to respect that,
(23:17):
but it turned out those boxes were flimsy. They were empty.
He could see that those boxes were made out of nothing.
Now the reason I like this story, it's because those
empty boxes Mabel and the pastor used to make Tom's
prison are just like the nine and twenty century colonial
(23:43):
sinking that makes walls to keep people leaving and keep
people out, that says, even when an act is unacceptable
on its face, it's still okay to analyze graves and
take children if official people say it's okay. Those ways
(24:03):
of thinking are stored in empty boxes, And just like
the boxes in Tom's basement, boxes made out of colonial
thinking are empty, and they will collapse when we push them.
You well to a teacher to cut you on collapsing
(24:26):
colonial boxes like a little happy meal. It's gonna crunch
it up and just say no, thank you now don't
take the wrong message. Like what we are saying here
is that there are so many colonial lines and there
are so many things that are not examined, all the
things that were taken, all the ways that they were done.
(24:46):
But for now, we'll take a break. We'll come back
with the brilliant and wonderful Ernestine Hayes Hank Tight. We'll
be back. What's happening, baby? This call is a ship
got you down. You gotta get on this decoalization room.
(25:07):
It's time when language revitalization all across North America, the
land of the language coming back into the hands of
future generations, where it all laws rise up and have
their voices be heard, defeat all the colonial forces that
try to hurt you. Get a nation's creation myths, it's here.
(25:38):
It's its explanation of how things came to be the
way they are now and why that's a good thing.
It's values, its school lessons, law enforcement narratives that show
us what to consider beautiful, what to consider good, how
to act, how to look, how to want to look,
(26:03):
what to desire, what to covet who to be. Those
are boxes, just like the ones that made the walls
in Tom's basement. The walls that young Tom knocked down,
the walls we have been told to accept, are constructed
of nineteenth and twentieth century colonial thinking. Almost every official
(26:27):
source describes the long record of Native use and occupation
that took place before European contact as prehistory. That's an
empty box. Indigenous groups possess histories of thousands of years
of occupancy and exodus, relocation and settlement, exploration and discovery
(26:52):
embedded throughout the generations in legal process, artistic declaration, symbolic
regalian oil tradition, at least as accurately and in many
cases more accurately than the European system used for so
many years to build empty boxes colonial contact. Native cultures
(27:18):
possessed vigorous legal systems, effective educational systems, efficient health systems,
elaborate social orders, elegant philosophical and intellectual insights, sophisticated kinship
system complex languages, profitable trade systems, every social institution needed
(27:41):
for a culture to flourish for thousands of years. It's
a critical element of the colonial narrative that original people
have coveted land simply wandered around before first colonial contact,
mostly nomadic with no coherent government. Struck sure sort of
(28:02):
digging around in prehistory looking for something to eat. That's
an empty box. Today's twenty one century narrative, on the
other hand, recognizes that before colonial contact, indigenous societies possessed
(28:23):
vigorous legal systems that clearly defined land and water rights,
clearly affirmed intellectual rights to works of history and works
of art, emphatically confirmed social rights and responsibilities attached to rank, marriage, adoption,
(28:45):
and addressed all such other matters of concern to the
community and the nation. Today's narrative speaks of indigenous education
systems that, long before colonial con tech, had already produced leaders, artists, lawmakers, scholars, philosophers, hunters, weavers, carvers, dancers, dreamers,
(29:13):
all of whom have written, enriched and sustained tribal nations
for thousands of years. This is today's narrative. This is
a narrative witchy, within which our stories now fine context.
We can't deny that we live with residual twenty century thinking, values, beliefs, stereotypes.
(29:41):
All of us are subjected to socially defined roles and behaviors.
All of us are working out the stories our lives
are telling against the backdrop of a national narrative that,
for much of our lives has too often been composed
of artifice, hypocrisy, and arrogant boxes that are too often empty.
(30:11):
Hypocrisy and failure are essential elements of the colonial narrative.
We now examine shallow pursuits, Cartesian mindsets, categorizing, separating, strictly
defining everything from the way children are schooled, the way
(30:38):
calendars are constructed, the way time is measured, the way
our vary lives are sectioned off. But that narrative does
not well serve a human way of seeing the world.
And twentieth century narratives served colonialism and patriarchy, and racism
(31:03):
and capitalism, all those empty boxes. But that narrative does
not benefit, but rather harms our shared narrative and our
own stories. Every once we recognize that today's narrative is
(31:24):
far more substantial and full of rich context, we also
know it's a significant shift, and sometimes we wonder how
we'll keep going in that direction. I grew up in
the tritory of Alaska in the nineteen fifties. I was
born at the end of the Second World War in
(31:45):
the middle of the nineteenth forties. Nineteen forty five. I
was the only child of an unmarried mother. When I
was almost sixteen, my mother and I moved to California.
Nineteen sixties San Francisco ten social messages that were just
(32:07):
as strong as those of the nineteen fifties, the cultural narrative,
different in some respects and similar in many others. Most
of the elements of my story were undergoing drastic changes,
and as it happened, the national narrative, that larger story
(32:28):
was also undergoing drastic change. Peace marches, anti void demonstrations,
grateful deads, rocky horror, organic gardening, back to the land. There,
(32:49):
for a minute, it almost looked like a national narrative
might be heading in a different direction, a direction that
resists it colonial thinking. Well, as you can see, I
didn't stay in California. When I turned forty, I decided
(33:11):
that I would go back home or I would die
trying to get there. It took longer than you'd think
it should, but I made it. I ran into unexpected challenges.
I dealt with unpredictable issues. I had to satisfy officials.
I lived in my car, I stood in food lines,
(33:33):
I had to make do. I left the Sierra Nevada
Foothills and made it to the San Francisco Bay Area.
At the end of the summer, I left the Bay area.
Who made it to Eureka. At the end of winter,
I left Eureka and made it to Seattle, And at
(33:55):
the end of spring I made it to Ketchikan and
I stayed there until two years later. I made it
all the way back home to jama That was a
long trip. When I started out, I didn't know how
I was going to make it all the way. I
just pictured myself back home and I kept on heading north,
(34:21):
and I think that's where we are. Now. We have
a picture, and we're headed in that direction. We're turning
away from and century and twentieth century colonial thinking, and
we're changing the national narrative. It's now undeniable to even
(34:44):
the most stubborn that indigenous groups possessed and still possessed,
dynamic histories of thousands of years and have kept those
histories with elegant and accuracy. The cultural narrative we now
(35:05):
share has replaced empty boxes labeled prehistory with boxes full
of knowledge, knowledge developed over generations, knowledge that is the
result of practical observation and systematic study of natural phenomena
(35:28):
and human behavior, thoughtful assessments of predictable outcomes, intellectually sound
conclusions based on data gathered, organized, analyzed, and transmitted to
the community into the next generation. In established, tested methods
(35:54):
of education and preservation of knowledge. And those boxes of
knowledge are not the kind used to build walls. They
are boxes that bring light to all of us. The
application of that knowledge, when blended with community experience and
(36:17):
personal judgment, becomes wisdom and trans and tradition is the
transmission of that knowledge, that wisdom, that practice to one
another and to the generations. That becomes our narrative that
(36:43):
gives context to our stories today. Earlier I asked you
to imagine how things might be had it not been
for colonialism, to imagine a different world. We are on
the brink of that imagined world. We share a twenty
(37:07):
one century narrative. When we hear how the Chicken add
earn the devilfish Crust, we are witnessing the transmission of knowledge,
the preservation of history, a declaration of legal rights, recognition
(37:29):
of kinship, and the ceremonial practice of identity. When we
learn about ductin Ton and young A d. Crusts and
sucn A D totems. We are witnessed to highly effective
methods of keeping, preserving, and transmitting the history of a people.
(37:54):
I shared cultural narrative will be made rich by voices
of Yakatat and Ester's and takeaway the history. Our shared
cultural narrative connects us to the history from long ago
and to our more recent history. When we learn about
Morning Side, when we are told of the trauma of
(38:17):
nineteenth and twenty century thinking, we're reminded that the effects
of that colonial thinking remain fresh. In many cases, we're
reminded of a collapse narrative that we were all forced
(38:38):
to share. Now in the century, we are sharing our
new narrative. We see ourselves together in a new context.
When we learn about the National Academy of Sciences, the
(38:58):
Constitutional Convention, language revitalization. Throughout all of it, our stories
unfold within that shared narrative. Our stories connect us to
our past and to one another. Cultural narratives teach our
(39:20):
relationship to the past, imply our relationship to one another,
and shape our relationship to ourselves and two hours shared future,
and our stories shape our cultural narrative no less than
the cultural narrative once shaped our lives. Perhaps more so,
(39:45):
we here in Juno Zanti Kahini are fortunate that the
narrative that surrounds us is rich and full of opportunity.
Just the other day, I had the good fortune at
the place that's now called ak Rick to hear fran
(40:10):
Houston talk about how the ak Quan welcome new people
from other clans, invited them to be part of the
Auk village, to share and become part of their home.
We are still welcomed in that way. We are still
(40:32):
being welcomed and invited in that way. We're well made
welcome and invited to learn about language and place names
and history and art and Christs and balance and reciprocity
and respect and meaning and the life that is present
(40:56):
in all things. We are at the brink of fundamental change.
We're invited to add our strength to those changes. We're
invited to learn about prests in history, pinship, ways of
(41:16):
seeing the world that defy colonial thinking, that subdue colonial thinking.
And we begin by turning away from the colonial narrative,
opening the boxes of history and knowledge that are not empty.
We begin by making strong the cultural narrative we are
(41:40):
building today. We first, begin with our undisputed testimony that
upon colonial contact, indigenous nations were sophisticated and complex and
remain so today. Glynn get A not Thanda fuck you
(42:01):
have do suck. My clinking name is Santa Sucked blade
gar A not on this team, Hayes. You have to
as my white man name is Ernest teen Hayes. I
am Eagle burnt House people, wolfhouse cheepa kum, and I
(42:29):
invite all of you to join me as together we
craft a new narrative. And I ask you to invite
me as you craft new stories and a new narrative.
Let's find that new place together. Let's craft that new
(42:53):
narrative together, as together we push against those empty boxes
and tell stories of truth and respect and reciprocity. As
we decolonized, as we smash the patriarchy, as we undo capitalism,
(43:16):
as we denounce racism, as we resist nineteenth and twentieth
century thinking, and tell our stories within a truthful context,
as we change our shared narrative and make richer and
more meaningful this place that we are all so fortunate
(43:38):
to call home. Let's go forward and craft at me
narrative together, going to cheat. Thank you, thank you. I
(43:59):
left room in case there's questions or comments. I would
love to hear comments about your news stories, and especially
about the wonderful programs that are offered here at s
h I, the upcoming boxes of light that will be
open to us, that are evidence evidence that our legal system,
(44:25):
our kinship system, our rights and responsibilities and laws are
still alive. They're still here. They've been preserved and treasured
by all methods that are still successful. I would love
to hear your comments and questions and the cheat yea
(44:51):
what art yea? In a way to cool to ask? Yeah,
it was Uri but Joey Kink Yeah yeah, Clust get
(45:11):
the kid, Cazin Yeah your cuskt the kate a geeky
and cskau the kid Yeah we two kitchen Yeah yeah
yeah okay Hi t Yeah okay high ten y yeah Ohan,
(45:35):
look at de Cheese. I just want to give a
lot of love to Ernestine Hayes Sonch and just say
that we hear you. We don't want your words to
just echo out into space. So because of that, there
should be a response. Our ancestors are standing around you
(45:56):
as you deliver words that shake the earth, that bring
back good things. That have drifted away from us, a
little bit that people had taken lines that have been spread,
books that had been written that talked about how we
were from these perspectives of superiority, which are fake lies.
(46:21):
Gonna cheege for your strong words, Gonna cheege for standing up,
Gonna cheege for inviting us to share our dreams with
your dreams because we look to a brighter future. We
got a bit more from our brilliant friend. We're gonna
take another break, come back. I think one question, and
(46:43):
then she gives a wonderful response, Yeah, we'll be back. Once.
I thought about a million birds all around the world
sharing their songs and thinking about the way they've lived
(47:08):
and they're gonna live and this is the way. Yeah, yeah, cook,
Look to see we're gen your go to glow. We
(47:31):
were are like uh Lance Fitchell. She's for sharing a
beautiful vision. As you have said, education needs to be
placed based education by place based educators. What else needs
to change in order to get there? Well, I think
we first begin to change by technology and speaking out
(47:59):
our test timony that belies the empty box that Native
people were brought. Education and all those health and all
all those all those things that supposedly were brought to
Native people. I said when I was talking that language
(48:23):
revitalization appears throughout all the past, all the present, all
the future. There's no accident that people intent on destroying
Indigenous cultures targeted the language and targeted the children well
(48:48):
in the round and riches and dead people's bones and
everything else. But as a practice was the children and
the language. I would argue, those are the two most
important components of culture. We still have our children, and goodness, cheese,
(49:13):
we are seeing our language come back to full life.
It wasn't ever dead, but it needed help. And I
was fortunate enough to be working at the University of Alaska,
(49:33):
and when I saw that whole program, that language be
given life, I would say, the children in the language,
the children in the language. But we also see sophisticated art,
(49:57):
sophisticated art not only um bringing tradition forward, but creating
new and new tradition. And I know their new words
are being created and children are being taught new truths.
(50:17):
I would think that children in language, children in language,
everything else will come with it. I would think, thank you,
let's change. There's another question on on the live stream. H,
what do you suggest for those reconnecting to their indigenoity
(50:41):
but far from close relatives to learn from? That's really difficult, right,
And I said, I was going to share a question
that helps me when you know I am, I'm I'm
concerned with mundane concerns. Just like everybody. I had a
(51:04):
house fire, we all had a pandemny. We don't know
what we're gonna have for dinner, might do all that.
And I know that we're not going to make change immediately.
But colonization didn't take place immediately. It feels like it,
(51:26):
but it worked towards its goal, and I think one
of the good ways for us to work toward our goal.
I asked that question, what would it be like had
colonialism not taking place? What would our schools be like?
What would our houses be like? What would what would anything?
(51:48):
What would meetings be like? Certainly we'd still have WiFi
and zoo. I certainly we'd still have ME. I don't
know about new cars. I don't think we'd be so
dependent on roads. I think we'd have new boats. Signed Yeah,
(52:11):
and I wonder, well, how can we do that? It
just seems like such a big, big challenge So this
this year, my son, Robert Stevenson, and I are working
on a journal school district program for teachers called, as
(52:36):
was mentioned, place Based Teachers, Place based Teaching by place
based Teachers. And one of the guiding rules that I'm
trying to enact is what can we do to make
little changes to be more like it would if colonialism
(52:57):
hadn't taken place. Yah One of the things we're doing,
even though we've already got more than forty people signed up,
is we are going to turn away from single use plastic.
We're going to turn away from paper plates, We're not
(53:19):
going to use plastics, spoons and forks. Forty people. Who's
going to wash those tissue? But we're going to do
it because I really feel like, not only would that
be the way we would be had colonialism and capitalists
have not taken over our lives, but that's what we
(53:41):
have to do. Whether we're interested in Indigenous living or not,
that's just what we have to do. And so those
little changes were also making children welcome, right, because I
feel like that's what it would be right. We'd be
more we'd be more inclusive, right, And so those are
(54:03):
little changes, but I believe that little changes can sometimes
start a revolution, just like that first language, COPS has
grown into what it is today. So those little changes,
I'm I'm making little changes that put my days in
(54:27):
in a new direction. And you can do whatever little
changes you might make. You might not be you know,
I mean, it isn't the everyone who has three or
four people to help them wash for devisions. You know,
I'm not going to carry them around. And so maybe
that can't be the way you make a small change.
(54:51):
But you can make a change towards that direction in
the way that's meaningful to you, that presents as an
opportunity you. Let's all do that. Let's all do that.
It's my essential belief that here in Juno, here in
(55:13):
Southeast Alaska, here on he getting on, we are so
fortunate to benefit from the vision that brought this building,
this room. When we see across the street, the art
(55:35):
that we see everywhere, this is the place that change
is going to happen. This is the stronghold now of
our future. That vision has made Juno the place where
we can hear our language, we can learn our history,
(55:58):
and even as important that the teachings and the lectures
and the workshops that have to do with that everyone
is invited to. This is an inclusive culture, This is
an inclusive place. We understand that we had a shared
past that we're coming out of and we are we
(56:21):
are headed in a shared future, new direction. So I
think we see what kind of people can do and
we know that everyone can be part of it. Times
(56:43):
I don't have a questioner, I just have a comment,
A sock. I had the great pleasure of taking a
memoir writing class with you about four years ago, and UM,
I want to share that you helped me reclaim a
story that I've been suppressing for a really long time,
(57:04):
and that has helped me and my family to reconnect
and have conversations um and talk about the truth. And
so I just want to thank You're going to cheeche Um.
You've encouraged me and my friends to have more conversations
um and and do the work that it takes to
to perpetuate the culture. So choose. Thank you so hard.
(57:33):
I so appreciate that gonna cheese, most Noble Ernestine, most noble,
honorable person. You've just warmed my heart. You give us
the kind of optimism that we as a people need
(57:54):
to hear. More and more, we need to have our
natives and non native friends here that message you hear
you speak in your elequant way about the glories of
our history, about the glories of our culture, the knowledge
that our ancestors bequeathed to us and transferred through thousands
(58:19):
of generations. Ernestine, you are wonderful. You are wonderful and
in bringing us this positive message that we so need
at this point in time in our history, because we
still know we have challenges. But with your words you
give us hope and you give us optimism. Thank you
(58:41):
for your very very eloquent presentation here. Thank you. Gee,
(59:01):
this is the place and where are the people? Let's
do it. You heard some wonderful voices there during the
question answer period, and I just want to acknowledge David
Russell Jensen, who speaks cling Gett, who is a wonderful,
fierce advocate for change, change maker, a brilliant individual, as
(59:27):
someone who's very well educated in the histories of our people's,
our organizations. Federal Indian law. What do you know about
that or what maybe we'll get a second season We're
better talk about Federal Indian law. And then you heard
also Rosie to Whirl Honey, the CEO of the c
(59:50):
Alaska Heritage Institute, who has brought wonderful, wonderful things to
our people's for decades, tireless work, putting buildings, building programs,
helping people with their language, with the arts, advocating for
us on a federal level, state level. We got all
(01:00:12):
kinds of wonderful leaders in our region. We give love
to them all. We thank them for their energy, for
their time, their dedication, their sacrifice. Gonna chease you, Han,
I'm gonna cheese. This is the place and we are
the people. Gonna cheege Ernestine hayes Son. Go check out
(01:00:39):
her books, Tao of Raven Blonde Indian. Send her some
money to give her some help. She is amazing. Bring
her to your places and have her speak to people.
This has been the Tongue Unbroken, their project of the
Next Up initiative. Throw your name in the Hat you
Want Mick podcast, MCO podcast, Baby Tell Your Story Makes
(01:01:03):
Some Change. It's been produced by Daniel Goodman and we
got one, maybe two of these bad boys left. We'll
see you then. Stay strong. Gonna cheese
To cut your hand. She cut ye are yah, Yes,
she cut. She's a cool has to eat it does
she has to g s a h then ate cheats
in khan coway. Try you happy Indigenous People's day. If
(00:24):
you know some Indigenous people do something nice for them today,
like give us some food, some water. It's coffee, maybe
all the land back. I don't know. They tried to callings,
(00:57):
try to genocide it. I'm still here with the tongue
rope and yeah t wouchins wine art, Yeah ta an tink.
(01:21):
Thanks for tuning in, folks. We are here together. Being
together is a wonderful thing. Talking to each other, listening
to each other. And this whole thing t is coming
to a close the first season. Who knows what's gonna
(01:42):
happen after this Stay tuned. It's a mystery and it's
up to the creator the I heart folks, who knows. Anyways,
as we start to wind this thing down, I thought
we should une into an incredible voice from Alaska, perhaps
(02:05):
these strongest voice in Alaska, certainly one of the most
important voices. Sanka Ernestine Hayes, the former Writer Laureate of
Alaska Coagwantan an elder a wonderful, powerful human being who's
overcome tremendous obstacles to become a teacher, mother, grandmother, and
(02:30):
who deserves all the good things ra Usu. I hope
that wonderful things are coming her way. So I want
to give a lot of credit and thanks to the
c Alaska Heritage Institute, who hosts a series of lectures,
who support a ton of language activities, And during their
(02:54):
lecture series, I approached their staffs and said, YO, could
can I use this? This was wonderful And I've seen
Earnesting talk a number of times and I'm blown away
every time I hear. So this was recorded in harsh
shook a hit. So it's a cedar. He's got red
(03:15):
cedar walls, this beautiful artwork all over the place. Uh,
but that means there's a little bit of background noise
now and then, So bear with us and focus on
the message. Focus on message, wonderful things to talk about.
I'll cut in a couple of times to take us
(03:37):
to breaks, and then um, there's an episode coming up
where we're gonna have to have a chance to just
sort of wrap this thing up proper. But to start,
we're going to tune in to a powerful and important
human being. Gonna cheege for allowing me to use this,
(03:58):
Gonna cheege to bring in good words to us. Gonna
cheege for persevering, trying, fighting the good fight, saying the
right things, smash the patriarchy and colonial practices. Let's go
sco down, gout coud hit. If you haven't seen it,
(04:21):
check out Alaska Daily. You can check it out on
ABC Hulu. I got on an Apple TV wonderful missing
and murdered Indigenous women. This whole thing's gotta stop. It's
gotta stop. It cannot be a trend that we live with.
Also check out Spirit Rangers on Netflix. What a time
(04:42):
to be alive. Molly of Dnaly on PBS Reservation Dogs
just wrapped in. This is for season two. Season three
is coming. I am looking forward to that. We have
a lot to look forward to, including vibrant living, healthy
languages and communities. So let's tune in. Ernestine Hayes, Yeah,
(05:10):
good cheese. So my family hastinating this hum this love
a place for seven county generations and can kan our
thanks for continuing to all place for those who came
(05:34):
before you, looking those whose spirit and ashes, nourishes, sent
her guests on the band and the clubs my home
chekan goodness, cheese gooch. That's a job for invitation here
(05:56):
potify stories by any one, an all own story in
these last few years is er com low points and
not so low points. It seems especially so in the
last hand full of years. All the stories from each
(06:17):
time memoirs, wums sweeping global narrative are all full of challenge,
failure and surprise, then calls and optunity for kee he
Ni cannot stop like he crept in with sock bagcock
(06:40):
came up from this team because you have got a
fuck chuck now called the coffee look up ship, not
work up good enough to take the Dutch and has
a tea shoot your call. My other snat was called
(07:01):
clay Erna GaAs he hates. My grandmother sing was Salad
Ruth Willard Ache my great grandmother Smoothie was calm Stephen
Annie Edlors Willard, my great great grandmother saying that's not
(07:22):
yet in revealed to me. My real grandmother died when
my mother was a baby. Her name was shock Cut,
and I carry her name. Generations beformed down five cloan
sisters strad with Norma from the original town not far
(07:45):
in the place that is now called Sinca. For purposes
of manage, each of the five clann sisters Head asked
to the intention of strengthening your clown alignments each of
the and copebal fas with the northern curtaining they who
lived in a vill egypt Club. Travel in those days
(08:09):
was a manner of planet which just as it is today.
Alliances in those days where matters of arthur and politics
just as they ought today. Marriage in those days was
terrible resolved. They're all too often the scillage. Those are
(08:32):
sisters whom naughty carry out the responsibilities, and their journey
was conducted in the spirit of love. Yon years they
blushed and cast their always scaling with him the thought
of needing the many many things no woman birth. They
did not sit still, and there was work to be dawn,
(08:57):
prosperous and circus down. They were generous that their supplies
at the camps and villages at which they stopped along
the way trading and can't get on. He had made
strong clan was stronger, rich, clid and small. How he
since the wolf clans bird had come to pass out
(09:20):
and the disrupted the vance that curtain generations before in
grassy place, the clan and the wolf passed after it
had by bold choices and decisive encounters, and could respected
their adass and the fear of those who chanted here
either and he called the raven bow, even the bitter water,
(09:44):
even the brown bear. When the ones could be excepted
to remain in the commus, when coolan and brothers and
sisters could still be found swimming in the streams and
numbers great enough to relive the all the glives for
the chap their seconds, when someone was waning but not
(10:04):
yet complete, when lady berries were still flirtations, and bed
bears who were not quite as cross as they had
been before the season's turned, and winds with fruit heats
of the coming weather. Five plan sisters packed the best
of their own belongings. Pack gives the men, not ones,
(10:27):
to get integistant relatives and cannies of the b sisters,
cousspans to pad brebons and food and blankets and firs,
and the sha treasures pad the robbing memories and lost
hopes and very comedy reboots and childhood WI should have
(10:47):
firmly resolved to find softas into knowledge to the college,
filled their bosses with treasure and knowledge and pistam and
tradition gel only for the purpose of manage their last claims.
Of those places when they came from, we're full of
(11:10):
famar eva. Or were there the place where the death
song I filled the street? Or there a place where
the biggest salmon varies unknown to guild pass that the
busy hard for seals the northernmost prop point gated promptarity
(11:32):
will said upon, and we had opted the finest last
seen me not following the england by the shame that
passed a long whine of beach and muck, or the
largest calls the most of these crowds, the most tended
being asparagus, waited for the people's grateful, hardest. And we
(11:52):
here path of men to take these fond sisters to
their destinies at the edge the growing spreading life age,
and to get on here the way that it's man
to take these sisters and all their children and all
their children's children into an unnable future. My old in
(12:20):
the spelling should like to tell me the story of
those sisters rename the plonies who the old actually the
old descendants I don't know how many generations before last
sister's child noil, but I do know they're one of
Bill's natural Any lines leads to my great grandmother caud Stine.
(12:44):
Yet they were Swillard buried in the family plot. You well,
what would now think of this Judo's old seminary? Do
the first Lusterns Todd cementary youth Sudy at the top
of the main street on me. You don't not call
Jane rich When they knew the ever Green Sanitaries was
(13:10):
in the late eighteen hundreds opened the door business, so
to speak. People will the greatest chicken rich Daddy helt
at a new cemetery, And it wasn't long before the
chicken the chill stile was divided into the loss. Where
do those rich people that could build big homes that
(13:35):
look down on their rest and count? But they took
again with not all the graves and really there moved.
People began to find bottle plots and cloning the exteriory
estimated dirt. They sall call us that were shut down
(14:01):
me pieces piece of scalp that had our mares still
clinging to. Many of the people who flies would be
desperated in that way, complaining to official, why don't you
(14:22):
those curdlings were signed by hardy barrels. Jilly, yo, fammy,
you got the STI successful and Annie was the originally
more traditionally credated. They're dead, sending along personal events to
(14:45):
ease to coming juney and leaving favorite food from time
to time to satisfying Appetite's not subdued by it. But
the practice of creation was seen as create and I'm
Christians who came early to save souls and to obliterate
(15:06):
non Christian customs. The forest custom of burying bones and
flesh and holding it down with heavy stone successful spiritual
conversion from heathen waves. An official, a White minister missionary
(15:26):
at the time, noted the irony the first enforcing Christian
burial and then digging up the bodies and throwing the
bones over the hillside to make room for big houses.
As people tried to find their once buried loved ones,
a relative of Chief Johnson was recognized by the handmade
(15:50):
blanket that had been buried with him. Playthings in a
bottle of medicine were said to belong to three children
by the name of Jackson. One man was recognized by
his burial clothes, two blankets, a pair of slippers, his trousers,
(16:11):
decorated glove, his leather shees. Somebody found a mitten with
part of a hand still inside, but no one could
be sure whose flesh still on grip beaded cloth. This
(16:31):
disrespect was no surprise. The colonial narrative at the time
taught that Indigenous beliefs, practices, and customs were without value,
and Indigenous people were pretty much wrong about everything, including
all their customs, practices, and beliefs, especially cultural narrative that
(16:56):
had to do with the beloved land. The chicken Ridge
Grave site slaw on private land, so permission had to
be given by those private landowners before any Native person
could search for the remains of their brothers, grandmothers, wives, children, husbands, mothers.
(17:21):
One woman, who could no longer find a trace of
her loved one that she had seen, asked a question
that even now remains unanswered. White men crowd natives out
from the land on which their very homes stand. Will
they not even allow are dead to have a resting place.
(17:46):
Anna Willard is now buried in that Evergreen cemetery where
people whose names appear on streets, Towns Islands history books,
and Chicken Ridge mailboxes. Mh rest not far from the
long fallen, now buried headstone that marks her own family plot.
(18:10):
From time to time, I've asked people to imagine what
would happen if in just a few years, the culture
we now live in, the shared narrative against which our
stories now unfold, was suddenly subdued by people who believed
theirs was the superior way of being. Their's was the
(18:30):
only true faith, their God, the only god, their language,
the only worthwhile speech, their version of the history, the
only one that method. Even before the Chicken Ridge Cemetery desecration,
it was the colonial practice to rummage through groves and
(18:51):
pick through human remains, looking for artwork and curiosities to collect.
If in a few years, people who are alive today
witness the graves of their loved ones being ransacked on
the side of a hill, the bones of their loved
(19:16):
ones examined and cataloged and stolen, even their bones, what
effect would that have? What trauma would be caused by
that one arrogant, austile colonial practice. I value the lesson
(19:38):
that such a story offers. The story about the treatment
of away dead because it shows how quickly the narrative
that gives context to our lives the change. Here's another story.
One time a man by the name of Yellow Tom
(20:00):
um hm I was living in a church basement so
he could stay sober and see his little girl, Patricia,
who was now living in the Fosby apartments with a
white lady named Mabel. Young Tom didn't know exactly how
it happened, but he knew his wife, Lucille, had left
town while he was out fishing, and Patricia was feeding
(20:23):
herself while she was waiting for someone to come home.
She rolled pieces of bread in sugar and waited. She
didn't want to open the can of little oranges in
case her mom really did come back, because that was
her favorite her mom's favorite food, and Patricia was running
(20:43):
out of sugar, so when a white lady came to
the door, she told that white lady she'd go ahead
and go home with her. Patricia was ten years old
at the time. By the time Young Tom got back
from fish, official people were agreeing with Mabel that she
could give the girl a better life than Young Tom. Ever,
(21:06):
could people like Patricia's teacher and a social worker. The
judge people like that, official people. They told young Tom
that seeing his daughter would be a lot easier for
him when he was sober, when he had a regular job,
(21:27):
and when he could give money to all the official
people for all the papers they had to fill out
that made it legal by their laws for Mabel to
take his daughter away from him. So young Tom sobered
up and stayed in count and found a job helping
(21:48):
people carry the groceries and rounding up grocery carts and
mopping floors and sometimes stocking shelves. Mabel got the pastor
of the church right down the street. They went down
a part of the church basement so young Tom could
sit there and stay one They let him have a
(22:10):
corner of the basement. Two walls made out of cardboard
boxes almost as tall as Tom made a little room
that had a bed he liked to say that was
made out of bed springs and back aches, and two
more boxes sat on the floor for clothes and little
(22:30):
personal things. It was summer and he was always tired,
so he didn't need a lamp. The first time he
bumped into one of those walls with his shoulder, he
knocked down almost the hole end of the wall. He
was amazed. He thought those boxes were heavy, substantial. He
(22:55):
thought they had something in them. Those walls kept Tom
in and kept Tom out. The pastor told him when
he could be by them, and when he couldn't be
by them. Mabel had said building them was her idea.
She said she liked them. Tom tried to respect that,
(23:17):
but it turned out those boxes were flimsy. They were empty.
He could see that those boxes were made out of nothing.
Now the reason I like this story, it's because those
empty boxes Mabel and the pastor used to make Tom's
prison are just like the nine and twenty century colonial
(23:43):
sinking that makes walls to keep people leaving and keep
people out, that says, even when an act is unacceptable
on its face, it's still okay to analyze graves and
take children if official people say it's okay. Those ways
(24:03):
of thinking are stored in empty boxes, And just like
the boxes in Tom's basement, boxes made out of colonial
thinking are empty, and they will collapse when we push them.
You well to a teacher to cut you on collapsing
(24:26):
colonial boxes like a little happy meal. It's gonna crunch
it up and just say no, thank you now don't
take the wrong message. Like what we are saying here
is that there are so many colonial lines and there
are so many things that are not examined, all the
things that were taken, all the ways that they were done.
(24:46):
But for now, we'll take a break. We'll come back
with the brilliant and wonderful Ernestine Hayes Hank Tight. We'll
be back. What's happening, baby? This call is a ship
got you down. You gotta get on this decoalization room.
(25:07):
It's time when language revitalization all across North America, the
land of the language coming back into the hands of
future generations, where it all laws rise up and have
their voices be heard, defeat all the colonial forces that
try to hurt you. Get a nation's creation myths, it's here.
(25:38):
It's its explanation of how things came to be the
way they are now and why that's a good thing.
It's values, its school lessons, law enforcement narratives that show
us what to consider beautiful, what to consider good, how
to act, how to look, how to want to look,
(26:03):
what to desire, what to covet who to be. Those
are boxes, just like the ones that made the walls
in Tom's basement. The walls that young Tom knocked down,
the walls we have been told to accept, are constructed
of nineteenth and twentieth century colonial thinking. Almost every official
(26:27):
source describes the long record of Native use and occupation
that took place before European contact as prehistory. That's an
empty box. Indigenous groups possess histories of thousands of years
of occupancy and exodus, relocation and settlement, exploration and discovery
(26:52):
embedded throughout the generations in legal process, artistic declaration, symbolic
regalian oil tradition, at least as accurately and in many
cases more accurately than the European system used for so
many years to build empty boxes colonial contact. Native cultures
(27:18):
possessed vigorous legal systems, effective educational systems, efficient health systems,
elaborate social orders, elegant philosophical and intellectual insights, sophisticated kinship
system complex languages, profitable trade systems, every social institution needed
(27:41):
for a culture to flourish for thousands of years. It's
a critical element of the colonial narrative that original people
have coveted land simply wandered around before first colonial contact,
mostly nomadic with no coherent government. Struck sure sort of
(28:02):
digging around in prehistory looking for something to eat. That's
an empty box. Today's twenty one century narrative, on the
other hand, recognizes that before colonial contact, indigenous societies possessed
(28:23):
vigorous legal systems that clearly defined land and water rights,
clearly affirmed intellectual rights to works of history and works
of art, emphatically confirmed social rights and responsibilities attached to rank, marriage, adoption,
(28:45):
and addressed all such other matters of concern to the
community and the nation. Today's narrative speaks of indigenous education
systems that, long before colonial con tech, had already produced leaders, artists, lawmakers, scholars, philosophers, hunters, weavers, carvers, dancers, dreamers,
(29:13):
all of whom have written, enriched and sustained tribal nations
for thousands of years. This is today's narrative. This is
a narrative witchy, within which our stories now fine context.
We can't deny that we live with residual twenty century thinking, values, beliefs, stereotypes.
(29:41):
All of us are subjected to socially defined roles and behaviors.
All of us are working out the stories our lives
are telling against the backdrop of a national narrative that,
for much of our lives has too often been composed
of artifice, hypocrisy, and arrogant boxes that are too often empty.
(30:11):
Hypocrisy and failure are essential elements of the colonial narrative.
We now examine shallow pursuits, Cartesian mindsets, categorizing, separating, strictly
defining everything from the way children are schooled, the way
(30:38):
calendars are constructed, the way time is measured, the way
our vary lives are sectioned off. But that narrative does
not well serve a human way of seeing the world.
And twentieth century narratives served colonialism and patriarchy, and racism
(31:03):
and capitalism, all those empty boxes. But that narrative does
not benefit, but rather harms our shared narrative and our
own stories. Every once we recognize that today's narrative is
(31:24):
far more substantial and full of rich context, we also
know it's a significant shift, and sometimes we wonder how
we'll keep going in that direction. I grew up in
the tritory of Alaska in the nineteen fifties. I was
born at the end of the Second World War in
(31:45):
the middle of the nineteenth forties. Nineteen forty five. I
was the only child of an unmarried mother. When I
was almost sixteen, my mother and I moved to California.
Nineteen sixties San Francisco ten social messages that were just
(32:07):
as strong as those of the nineteen fifties, the cultural narrative,
different in some respects and similar in many others. Most
of the elements of my story were undergoing drastic changes,
and as it happened, the national narrative, that larger story
(32:28):
was also undergoing drastic change. Peace marches, anti void demonstrations,
grateful deads, rocky horror, organic gardening, back to the land. There,
(32:49):
for a minute, it almost looked like a national narrative
might be heading in a different direction, a direction that
resists it colonial thinking. Well, as you can see, I
didn't stay in California. When I turned forty, I decided
(33:11):
that I would go back home or I would die
trying to get there. It took longer than you'd think
it should, but I made it. I ran into unexpected challenges.
I dealt with unpredictable issues. I had to satisfy officials.
I lived in my car, I stood in food lines,
(33:33):
I had to make do. I left the Sierra Nevada
Foothills and made it to the San Francisco Bay Area.
At the end of the summer, I left the Bay area.
Who made it to Eureka. At the end of winter,
I left Eureka and made it to Seattle, And at
(33:55):
the end of spring I made it to Ketchikan and
I stayed there until two years later. I made it
all the way back home to jama That was a
long trip. When I started out, I didn't know how
I was going to make it all the way. I
just pictured myself back home and I kept on heading north,
(34:21):
and I think that's where we are. Now. We have
a picture, and we're headed in that direction. We're turning
away from and century and twentieth century colonial thinking, and
we're changing the national narrative. It's now undeniable to even
(34:44):
the most stubborn that indigenous groups possessed and still possessed,
dynamic histories of thousands of years and have kept those
histories with elegant and accuracy. The cultural narrative we now
(35:05):
share has replaced empty boxes labeled prehistory with boxes full
of knowledge, knowledge developed over generations, knowledge that is the
result of practical observation and systematic study of natural phenomena
(35:28):
and human behavior, thoughtful assessments of predictable outcomes, intellectually sound
conclusions based on data gathered, organized, analyzed, and transmitted to
the community into the next generation. In established, tested methods
(35:54):
of education and preservation of knowledge. And those boxes of
knowledge are not the kind used to build walls. They
are boxes that bring light to all of us. The
application of that knowledge, when blended with community experience and
(36:17):
personal judgment, becomes wisdom and trans and tradition is the
transmission of that knowledge, that wisdom, that practice to one
another and to the generations. That becomes our narrative that
(36:43):
gives context to our stories today. Earlier I asked you
to imagine how things might be had it not been
for colonialism, to imagine a different world. We are on
the brink of that imagined world. We share a twenty
(37:07):
one century narrative. When we hear how the Chicken add
earn the devilfish Crust, we are witnessing the transmission of knowledge,
the preservation of history, a declaration of legal rights, recognition
(37:29):
of kinship, and the ceremonial practice of identity. When we
learn about ductin Ton and young A d. Crusts and
sucn A D totems. We are witnessed to highly effective
methods of keeping, preserving, and transmitting the history of a people.
(37:54):
I shared cultural narrative will be made rich by voices
of Yakatat and Ester's and takeaway the history. Our shared
cultural narrative connects us to the history from long ago
and to our more recent history. When we learn about
Morning Side, when we are told of the trauma of
(38:17):
nineteenth and twenty century thinking, we're reminded that the effects
of that colonial thinking remain fresh. In many cases, we're
reminded of a collapse narrative that we were all forced
(38:38):
to share. Now in the century, we are sharing our
new narrative. We see ourselves together in a new context.
When we learn about the National Academy of Sciences, the
(38:58):
Constitutional Convention, language revitalization. Throughout all of it, our stories
unfold within that shared narrative. Our stories connect us to
our past and to one another. Cultural narratives teach our
(39:20):
relationship to the past, imply our relationship to one another,
and shape our relationship to ourselves and two hours shared future,
and our stories shape our cultural narrative no less than
the cultural narrative once shaped our lives. Perhaps more so,
(39:45):
we here in Juno Zanti Kahini are fortunate that the
narrative that surrounds us is rich and full of opportunity.
Just the other day, I had the good fortune at
the place that's now called ak Rick to hear fran
(40:10):
Houston talk about how the ak Quan welcome new people
from other clans, invited them to be part of the
Auk village, to share and become part of their home.
We are still welcomed in that way. We are still
(40:32):
being welcomed and invited in that way. We're well made
welcome and invited to learn about language and place names
and history and art and Christs and balance and reciprocity
and respect and meaning and the life that is present
(40:56):
in all things. We are at the brink of fundamental change.
We're invited to add our strength to those changes. We're
invited to learn about prests in history, pinship, ways of
(41:16):
seeing the world that defy colonial thinking, that subdue colonial thinking.
And we begin by turning away from the colonial narrative,
opening the boxes of history and knowledge that are not empty.
We begin by making strong the cultural narrative we are
(41:40):
building today. We first, begin with our undisputed testimony that
upon colonial contact, indigenous nations were sophisticated and complex and
remain so today. Glynn get A not Thanda fuck you
(42:01):
have do suck. My clinking name is Santa Sucked blade
gar A not on this team, Hayes. You have to
as my white man name is Ernest teen Hayes. I
am Eagle burnt House people, wolfhouse cheepa kum, and I
(42:29):
invite all of you to join me as together we
craft a new narrative. And I ask you to invite
me as you craft new stories and a new narrative.
Let's find that new place together. Let's craft that new
(42:53):
narrative together, as together we push against those empty boxes
and tell stories of truth and respect and reciprocity. As
we decolonized, as we smash the patriarchy, as we undo capitalism,
(43:16):
as we denounce racism, as we resist nineteenth and twentieth
century thinking, and tell our stories within a truthful context,
as we change our shared narrative and make richer and
more meaningful this place that we are all so fortunate
(43:38):
to call home. Let's go forward and craft at me
narrative together, going to cheat. Thank you, thank you. I
(43:59):
left room in case there's questions or comments. I would
love to hear comments about your news stories, and especially
about the wonderful programs that are offered here at s
h I, the upcoming boxes of light that will be
open to us, that are evidence evidence that our legal system,
(44:25):
our kinship system, our rights and responsibilities and laws are
still alive. They're still here. They've been preserved and treasured
by all methods that are still successful. I would love
to hear your comments and questions and the cheat yea
(44:51):
what art yea? In a way to cool to ask? Yeah,
it was Uri but Joey Kink Yeah yeah, Clust get
(45:11):
the kid, Cazin Yeah your cuskt the kate a geeky
and cskau the kid Yeah we two kitchen Yeah yeah
yeah okay Hi t Yeah okay high ten y yeah Ohan,
(45:35):
look at de Cheese. I just want to give a
lot of love to Ernestine Hayes Sonch and just say
that we hear you. We don't want your words to
just echo out into space. So because of that, there
should be a response. Our ancestors are standing around you
(45:56):
as you deliver words that shake the earth, that bring
back good things. That have drifted away from us, a
little bit that people had taken lines that have been spread,
books that had been written that talked about how we
were from these perspectives of superiority, which are fake lies.
(46:21):
Gonna cheege for your strong words, Gonna cheege for standing up,
Gonna cheege for inviting us to share our dreams with
your dreams because we look to a brighter future. We
got a bit more from our brilliant friend. We're gonna
take another break, come back. I think one question, and
(46:43):
then she gives a wonderful response, Yeah, we'll be back. Once.
I thought about a million birds all around the world
sharing their songs and thinking about the way they've lived
(47:08):
and they're gonna live and this is the way. Yeah, yeah, cook,
Look to see we're gen your go to glow. We
(47:31):
were are like uh Lance Fitchell. She's for sharing a
beautiful vision. As you have said, education needs to be
placed based education by place based educators. What else needs
to change in order to get there? Well, I think
we first begin to change by technology and speaking out
(47:59):
our test timony that belies the empty box that Native
people were brought. Education and all those health and all
all those all those things that supposedly were brought to
Native people. I said when I was talking that language
(48:23):
revitalization appears throughout all the past, all the present, all
the future. There's no accident that people intent on destroying
Indigenous cultures targeted the language and targeted the children well
(48:48):
in the round and riches and dead people's bones and
everything else. But as a practice was the children and
the language. I would argue, those are the two most
important components of culture. We still have our children, and goodness, cheese,
(49:13):
we are seeing our language come back to full life.
It wasn't ever dead, but it needed help. And I
was fortunate enough to be working at the University of Alaska,
(49:33):
and when I saw that whole program, that language be
given life, I would say, the children in the language,
the children in the language. But we also see sophisticated art,
(49:57):
sophisticated art not only um bringing tradition forward, but creating
new and new tradition. And I know their new words
are being created and children are being taught new truths.
(50:17):
I would think that children in language, children in language,
everything else will come with it. I would think, thank you,
let's change. There's another question on on the live stream. H,
what do you suggest for those reconnecting to their indigenoity
(50:41):
but far from close relatives to learn from? That's really difficult, right,
And I said, I was going to share a question
that helps me when you know I am, I'm I'm
concerned with mundane concerns. Just like everybody. I had a
(51:04):
house fire, we all had a pandemny. We don't know
what we're gonna have for dinner, might do all that.
And I know that we're not going to make change immediately.
But colonization didn't take place immediately. It feels like it,
(51:26):
but it worked towards its goal, and I think one
of the good ways for us to work toward our goal.
I asked that question, what would it be like had
colonialism not taking place? What would our schools be like?
What would our houses be like? What would what would anything?
(51:48):
What would meetings be like? Certainly we'd still have WiFi
and zoo. I certainly we'd still have ME. I don't
know about new cars. I don't think we'd be so
dependent on roads. I think we'd have new boats. Signed Yeah,
(52:11):
and I wonder, well, how can we do that? It
just seems like such a big, big challenge So this
this year, my son, Robert Stevenson, and I are working
on a journal school district program for teachers called, as
(52:36):
was mentioned, place Based Teachers, Place based Teaching by place
based Teachers. And one of the guiding rules that I'm
trying to enact is what can we do to make
little changes to be more like it would if colonialism
(52:57):
hadn't taken place. Yah One of the things we're doing,
even though we've already got more than forty people signed up,
is we are going to turn away from single use plastic.
We're going to turn away from paper plates, We're not
(53:19):
going to use plastics, spoons and forks. Forty people. Who's
going to wash those tissue? But we're going to do
it because I really feel like, not only would that
be the way we would be had colonialism and capitalists
have not taken over our lives, but that's what we
(53:41):
have to do. Whether we're interested in Indigenous living or not,
that's just what we have to do. And so those
little changes were also making children welcome, right, because I
feel like that's what it would be right. We'd be
more we'd be more inclusive, right, And so those are
(54:03):
little changes, but I believe that little changes can sometimes
start a revolution, just like that first language, COPS has
grown into what it is today. So those little changes,
I'm I'm making little changes that put my days in
(54:27):
in a new direction. And you can do whatever little
changes you might make. You might not be you know,
I mean, it isn't the everyone who has three or
four people to help them wash for devisions. You know,
I'm not going to carry them around. And so maybe
that can't be the way you make a small change.
(54:51):
But you can make a change towards that direction in
the way that's meaningful to you, that presents as an
opportunity you. Let's all do that. Let's all do that.
It's my essential belief that here in Juno, here in
(55:13):
Southeast Alaska, here on he getting on, we are so
fortunate to benefit from the vision that brought this building,
this room. When we see across the street, the art
(55:35):
that we see everywhere, this is the place that change
is going to happen. This is the stronghold now of
our future. That vision has made Juno the place where
we can hear our language, we can learn our history,
(55:58):
and even as important that the teachings and the lectures
and the workshops that have to do with that everyone
is invited to. This is an inclusive culture, This is
an inclusive place. We understand that we had a shared
past that we're coming out of and we are we
(56:21):
are headed in a shared future, new direction. So I
think we see what kind of people can do and
we know that everyone can be part of it. Times
(56:43):
I don't have a questioner, I just have a comment,
A sock. I had the great pleasure of taking a
memoir writing class with you about four years ago, and UM,
I want to share that you helped me reclaim a
story that I've been suppressing for a really long time,
(57:04):
and that has helped me and my family to reconnect
and have conversations um and talk about the truth. And
so I just want to thank You're going to cheeche Um.
You've encouraged me and my friends to have more conversations
um and and do the work that it takes to
to perpetuate the culture. So choose. Thank you so hard.
(57:33):
I so appreciate that gonna cheese, most Noble Ernestine, most noble,
honorable person. You've just warmed my heart. You give us
the kind of optimism that we as a people need
(57:54):
to hear. More and more, we need to have our
natives and non native friends here that message you hear
you speak in your elequant way about the glories of
our history, about the glories of our culture, the knowledge
that our ancestors bequeathed to us and transferred through thousands
(58:19):
of generations. Ernestine, you are wonderful. You are wonderful and
in bringing us this positive message that we so need
at this point in time in our history, because we
still know we have challenges. But with your words you
give us hope and you give us optimism. Thank you
(58:41):
for your very very eloquent presentation here. Thank you. Gee,
(59:01):
this is the place and where are the people? Let's
do it. You heard some wonderful voices there during the
question answer period, and I just want to acknowledge David
Russell Jensen, who speaks cling Gett, who is a wonderful,
fierce advocate for change, change maker, a brilliant individual, as
(59:27):
someone who's very well educated in the histories of our people's,
our organizations. Federal Indian law. What do you know about
that or what maybe we'll get a second season We're
better talk about Federal Indian law. And then you heard
also Rosie to Whirl Honey, the CEO of the c
(59:50):
Alaska Heritage Institute, who has brought wonderful, wonderful things to
our people's for decades, tireless work, putting buildings, building programs,
helping people with their language, with the arts, advocating for
us on a federal level, state level. We got all
(01:00:12):
kinds of wonderful leaders in our region. We give love
to them all. We thank them for their energy, for
their time, their dedication, their sacrifice. Gonna chease you, Han,
I'm gonna cheese. This is the place and we are
the people. Gonna cheege Ernestine hayes Son. Go check out
(01:00:39):
her books, Tao of Raven Blonde Indian. Send her some
money to give her some help. She is amazing. Bring
her to your places and have her speak to people.
This has been the Tongue Unbroken, their project of the
Next Up initiative. Throw your name in the Hat you
Want Mick podcast, MCO podcast, Baby Tell Your Story Makes
(01:01:03):
Some Change. It's been produced by Daniel Goodman and we
got one, maybe two of these bad boys left. We'll
see you then. Stay strong. Gonna cheese
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