#60 - Deossifying Myths at the Crossroad of Modern Tribal Boundaries - Tribal Research Specialist: The Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Shandin Pete (00:00):
So, um, I, I got a kind of an outline, but I didn't
send it to nobody, so we're justgonna freestyle it. You know,
this

Aaron Brien (00:08):
Shaun Dean always says, I haven't prepped for
this, or I haven't. I haven'tmade an outline. I've never read
one of his outlines. Never he'llemail to me, here's the here's
some notes. Never looked at him,and I've told him, I don't, I
don't look at him, but he stillinsists on doing them. But

(00:30):
that's the difference between aPhD and an MA.

I'm just saying that's not the only difference,
come on, there is. That's theonly difference. No, I say no,
there's. That's not the onlydifference. There's one

other difference.
Oh, you know, it's called comms.
You

pretty much

the difference I was going to mention.

Give me the thumbs up, if you can hear this ready.
This isn't exactly the introthat I thought it was going to
be. What I do. Oh, I switchedthe names all right. Here goes.

(01:41):
I don't know what I did. There'sjust a marker, pretty much, but
we're gonna listen to this placesolid. What? No, no, engage.
Pick your eyes up. No, no. Whatis this? What did I do?

Just what is there?
A song is there? I

grabbed the wrong one. I can change that real
quickly. There's a song, and I,I put a lot of work play the
song, not this one. Isn't theone.

What? Apparently, not that much. What the hell

happened? Where did those save Bucha League?
This is Bucha. Bucha. Where isit at? All right, I know where
it's at. I didn't test this.
God, darn it. What a dunce.

Hold on. If you could hear the first 10 minutes
of every podcast before we wethe stuff we publish, you would
have never agreed to. All

right, I'm just going to play gonna play this
right off. It's, it's, yeah,there's the right one. Can

you hear that? Yes, wow. What are we looking at
here? More

importantly, can you hear it? No, cannot hear it.
I didn't share the sound. That'swhy no son of a gun. All right,
let's do this again. Share soundokay. Here it is. Let's see If
you can hear this.

(03:22):
I about a month or so back, justjust by chance. We was getting

(04:01):
solution. Wanted to go to thebead store, you know, in
Spokane. So we went down there,and he strolled in, just out of
the blue, holy cow, acorn.
What's up? Oh, just looking forsome spots, or what he was
looking for, he's trying torefresh his gear. I guess he
hadn't wore it in a while. Oh,yeah, trying to spruce it back

(04:21):
up, get it into the 2000 20s.
Yeah, I don't know what it takesthese days. Yeah, next level
outfits out there, you know?

Yeah, you remember, you remember post 911 the
American flag

outfit for a while.

That man, ever since 911 you were talking about
somebody, he was like hisoutfits sure made a comeback.

The one I liked was this. Was pre 911 but the
one I liked was when peopletried to put the Canadian and
American flag together. Oh like,

yeah. They do the half flags on both sides. Oh

yeah, yeah,

yeah. I think even Black Lodge had a album cover,

oh yeah. Bit of maple a little bit of maple
leaf, little bit of starredstripes. Oh yeah, yeah. Oh
glory, holy glory and somemaple. You

better. You better say that with your chest.

You bet that's awesome. Yeah. So, um, okay,
acorn, he says, my postThanksgiving dinner is dried up,
leftovers. Oh, you gotta put itaway, man. You gotta wrap it up,
cover it, put it in the fridge.
But no, I don't mind a littlelittle dry meat, Turkey. You
know, that's when she

tried dried mashed potatoes. Sign me up, dude. Sign
me

up. Yeah. Man, yeah. Not a lot of things from
Thanksgiving you can leave outfor long. You ever had a bad
turkey.

You don't forget that. You know. The truth is,
give me a rotisserie chickenover a turkey any day. Yeah?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you have to, yeah.
What dothey do? Rotisserie turkeys. Why
don't they do rotisserieturkeys? That's what I want to
know. I think it's weird.

I don't know what the deal is with turkeys and
their management, because, yeah,they're really only big two
months out of the year.

And their management,

their management team,
their Becky management team, isdropping the ball, dude, because
chicken's killing it.

We need Costco to do a rotisserie turkey. Yeah,

chicken is killing it, dude. I mean, you got, you
got your fried chicken, you gotyour baked chicken, oh yeah, you
got your white meat, your darkmeat. You got your thighs. Yeah,
you got your breasts. You got,you got slice smoked, yeah,
salted, unsalted, yeah. I mean,you got chicken, chicken,

(07:17):
chicken fingers, chicken,chicken. You got Dino

bites, chicken nuggets, chicken patties,

dude, you got, you got, um, the combinations are
and chicken soup, chicken soup,chicken chicken noodle soup. You
got, oh,

buffalo wings, acorn buffalo wings. Oh buffalo
wings. We forgot about thebuffalo wings. Yeah,

so just wings, just wings, wings, buffalo wings in
general, wings. And meanwhile,why not turkey wings? Dude,
Turkey buffalo wings.

Who eats Turkey wing on Thanksgiving?

I do the dude the way I'm all dark meat, I'm all
dark.

You gotta go dark, dude,

even cornish game hen is killing Turkey, dude,
cornish game hen is destroyingTurkey, right? We get Turkey
management

online.

What is their deal?

I don't know. I don't know

explain it to me, man, well,

what? What's their life? What's their life cycle?
Maybe they can only get them fatone, you know, one time out of
the year. So they justconcentrate on the Thanksgiving.
I don't know.

There's no shortage of Turkey. I wouldn't think. I
wouldn't think it's all shortageTurkey.
I say youget Turkey nuggets going.

Why not Dino nugget? Dino Turkey nuggets. The

only thing that Turkey is doing outside of these
two months, Turkey sliced meat.
That's it. Yeah,

Turkey sliced meat. Yeah, what else is there?
There's nothing else, right?
Turkey,

Turkey, lunch meat.

Turkey,

well, you got turkey gravy?

Can you get turkey gravy? Oh, you can get turkey
bacon, can't you?

Which actually isn't bad. Dude, turkey

bacon. I don't think I've tried it. It's not
bad. It's not bad. Here's

I want to know something. You don't have to add
this in the podcast. If youdon't want you can edit this
out. But okay, I wanted to knowwhen did your people, the Salish
people, often referred to as theFlathead Indians. When did they
become dependent on buffalo?

Dependent on buffalo? That's probably um,
1650, 1720, I don't know, likewhen the horse started to
becoming a thing. That's what I

was. We're. Right?
They were not buffalo peoplebefore that,

I wouldn't say that we weren't, but wasn't as
dependent on it. It was, it wasenterprise of convenience. You
know, if there was buffalo, doyou like buffalo? There's elk?
You hunt elk. You

have? Do you have evidence for that? Like, is
there evidence showing thatthere was less in the record
before the horse, and then ithuge influx after. What are you
basing that off of I'm justcurious. Probably,

I probably read it somewhere, but I don't know
exactly where, but I don't knowwho exactly conjures up the
evidence, but it it seems tomake sense. I mean, why on earth
would you what?

What I mean, but that could be, that could be
argued, right? You could justsay that means killing Buffalo
was in large, larger quantities,yeah, versus sporadic spot
hunting after the horse, right?
So you could say, like theystill came about flow, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, because the the range ofwider than prior to the horse,
as far as I know,

and what, what was the, what did they make their
homes out of? The teepee. Whatwas the teepee made out of

the well before, I think prior to the skin tees, it
was the the Tuli, the Tulilodges.

So you guys were Tuli people.

Yeah,

Salisha Old Bull (11:35):
we're both planes and yeah, tow, we're both
Yeah.

So when the buffalo became more prominent,
and was the skin teepees,because they're easier to
transport than a bundle ofTulis, because they just bust up
you're trying to travel around,I would imagine, I would
imagine. But I think you knowthat you don't know that. I
mean, so from my experience, thethings that I've read and know

(12:01):
things that I've been told.
That's what I know. But yeah, Ican't cite a body of evidence,
or scholars, you

guys have an origin story for the buffalo, like when
the buffalo came to your people?
No, have you heard one? That'sthe real question.

There's, there's, there's stories where buffalo
are in in stories, in creation,stories.

Do you have ancient stories that have buffalo in
them?

I don't know if I could judge whether a story was
ancient or not, except by thethe actors in the story. So some
stories have human actors, whichseem, yeah, not, not
contemporary, as in, within thelast, you know, 500 years, but
you know, within a range, backinto, you know, the 1000s of
years, I guess, I guess, I don'tknow.

So you don't have them stories that are like some
of your oldest known stories,uh, related to monsters and your
creation and all that stuff.
There's nothing in there wherethere's buffalo so that. So in
terms of your oral history,that's that's recent, that those
stories are recent. Is that whatI'm hearing?

I mean, I would guess, yeah, it seems to make
sense.

Because I would, I would argue that, okay, I would
say that scientifically, it's,it's, according to the record,
the the flatheads have been inthe planes for a long time.
Right, right? A long time.
There's like two majormigrations to the plains and
then back to the plateau andthen to the planes again, yeah,

(13:40):
just based on, on the recordthat that yeah, there's, there's
ample scientific evidenceshowing that the flatheads
harvested buffalo well beforethe horse, yeah, and it would
almost be impossible for theSalish people to be planes

(14:01):
people and not be primarilydependent on the buffalo, even
before the horse. Yeah,

yeah. So those that did reside east of the
Rockies probably were having,yeah. Do

you think it's also possible that, like, there's say
there's three or four majorgroups of the bitter Salish.
We're just talking about themlike there's there's these sub
bands, and that they livethroughout different regions of
of the plateau and the plains,yeah. But over time, their
stories become molded into onething. So that also means that

(14:38):
certain groups of those bitterSalish, their narratives are
going to kind of dominate. Solike, let's just say, Yeah, this
is all fake, right, but let'sjust say you had a group of
Salish people that lived on theYellowstone, right, yeah. Then
you had a group of people thatlived in the centennial valley
down by Dylan. Then you had onethat lived in Hayden lake. I.

(15:00):
Ho, okay, they're all theculturally. The same group of
people speak the same language,and there's a lot of interaction
between them. Now, once they'replaced on the reservation, their
oral histories start to cometogether. Do you think that it's
possible for one of those groupsto become the dominant group?
Then that means their storiesbecome the narratives

for all groups.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Of course, ofcourse. We were just talking
about an example of this. Well,silicia was, was looking up a
story about the teepee from thefrom the crows, and I told her,
I said, Oh, that must beenadopted from someone, because
prior to coming to the Montanaarea. You all lived in the the
earth lodges, yeah,

yeah, yeah. They're Yeah, generally Yes, you're
right, yeah.

So then that story must have been something similar
to what you're just talkingabout. It was, it was, you know
became, became the crow. Storyfrom somewhere else, someone who
did use the, I would

actually say it's the story is crow. The main
feature of the story is not,right, the teepee. So the story
of white owl and yellow leggingsbeing given the teepee is really
the story of the origin of theearth Lodge. Okay, so when we

(16:30):
come here, we primarily adoptthe teepee because there was a
form of the teepee that existedamong the Hirata and the crow as
kind of a temporary home onlarge but, yeah, like a form of
wiki, but it was like a it waslike a TV, yeah? So that story
is then applied to a new item,as opposed to what you're

(16:53):
saying, which is the almost theopposite, where the story is
adopted. The item remains thesame, but the story, oh, yeah,
adopted. Okay, that is the casewith some things, though. Yeah,
sure, yeah, yeah, that's thecase. Yeah, yeah. So my, my
question is, is, when in my timeat flathead I would notice that
there was, like, a, there was adivision in the cultural

(17:15):
perspective of the planes,right? There was certain Salish
people that would say we're notplains people, to the point
where they almost rejectedemphatically all things that
represented the planes, like thepipe, even the horse. I heard
comments made about the horse.
Yeah, I heard this comment. Infact, this was a old story from
Johnny early where he saidmuseum was going to give back

(17:37):
some pipes that belong to theSalish and and some of the
people, they were saying, well,we don't want them because we're
not pipe people, yeah, which is,we all know that's wrong, right?
Yeah, we but so then there'sanother group of Salish people,
where the they're they stillseem to have a affinity with the

(17:57):
planes, like, that's theirplace, yeah? The sun and Smith
River, the mussel shell countryand all. Yeah, right, yeah. So
it makes me wonder if both aretrue. Both are true because of
what I was trying to get at,like, maybe there's these groups
are they were culturally thesame, yeah, and then as they get

(18:20):
pushed and forced into small,confined areas, there's also
cultural politics.

Ah, what? Not again? You get kicked out again.
Yes, oh, I was just formulatinga response, okay, yeah, I can't.
I gotta hear the rest of hisquestion, yeah, what was wrong

(18:50):
with this device? I forgotsomebody's

playing a little bit too much candy crush.
Somebody's got, got the prettygood YouTube streaming, probably
that 15 minute YouTube thattakes a bit of more buffering
time. Maybe somebody's, uh,decided to download some photos

(19:13):
from their photo bucket account.
Maybe somebody's copy andpasting from Google, some
recipes, or maybe, maybe it gota someone at just got sent a
funny tick tock in theirmessenger. They open it up and

(19:36):
they're watching it, on top ofmaybe some maybe your kids,
maybe they got their Wi Ficalling on, and they're took a
phone call talking to theirtheir bestie about the tea at
school. That's sucking up allyour Wi Fi? Well, maybe, just

(20:00):
maybe, Uncle Rico is parked outin the garage. Pull up in the
driveway. He knows yourpassword. He's talking to his
honey through the Facebook talk,or whatever that is, Facebook
talk. Yeah, he's got hisFacebook call to his honey over

(20:23):
in us. Maybe he's got two honey.
Maybe he's got one on hold,another one he's talking to
another one's from us, andthey're both kind of having a
chat, video chat, even videochat, that takes a lot of Wi Fi

(20:46):
and, uh, that's just kind ofsucking up all your Wi Fi. Maybe
you got some neighbors that kindof tapped in, hacked your
system. That could happen, youknow, you got a real easy
password, you know, 12345, oryour address, whatever that is,
they're just, they got on it,and they're just, they're going

(21:07):
to town in their Netflix. Idon't know what he said. He said
he didn't know. I got kickedout. Oh, actually, I kicked him
out. I was getting sick of himboth times I kicked him out.
Like this guy talks too much.

Did you kick me out?

No, I didn't kick Okay,

there was no group. There was groups. And
then what?

Well, just, you know, then they get onto the
reservation, or whatever it is,and they become the political,
the cultural. Cultural politicsdrives them to be the largest
group. So they that doesn't meanlarge in population, but large
in like the way they view theworld. So their stories become,
they become that. I heard atheory long time ago from I

(21:58):
can't remember who it was. Butwhen I first moved to flathead
and there was a story about amonster, and in some of them
groups, they actually said thatthat story happened out kind of
on the near the YellowstoneRiver by Livingston, or
something I can't remember. Butthen there was people who say,
No, it happened on thereservation. But that would to

(22:22):
me. Now that makes sense. Whythat would be, you know, yeah,

it could be, it could be that, but, um, the
groups like they really are notthe same, um, because the
ponderes were a lot more plateauthan the Salish, because the
Salish were the ones that hadthe bands that went out toward

(22:48):
muscle shell, or they went outthere for things. I don't know
how long they stayed out there,but for seasons or whatever. And
then the ponderes were the otherway. There's two bands of them
for sure. Like, I don't knowhistoric, I don't know like,

(23:10):
anciently or historically, but Iknow ours was the lower, the
upper, there's the lower and theupper, and then we have
dialects. But our dialect iseven similar to the okanagans
all the way up in Canada. Sosomewhere in there, there was

(23:33):
some offshoot. And so I think,Well, I think, like part of it
too. It's like the melding ofthe stories, like, definitely
affected by the church coming.
Because, you know, when thechurch came, it came before
church came to us, before itwent to a lot of people. And you

(23:55):
know, that definitely had a hugeeffect. But then also the the
area where we're at, that'swhere the ponderes were mainly
at, you know, and then we werelower. We were staying lower,
you know, below Missoula. Sowhatever happened, whatever

(24:22):
happened politically, I wouldsay more the politics is what
kind of changed all of that,because, and when it came to the
whole land grab and allotmentand stuff like that, like that,
really affected everything.
Well, I'm

talking specifically about cultural
politics, like tribes, culturalpolitics, certain groups being
the authorities and pushing outold narratives. Are different
narratives and certainnarratives becoming dominant.
You know that's it's becausethat can happen without, without
even the reservation, or withouteven the church, or with. Out.

(25:00):
It's just, I think it's justpeople in power and whatever
that power happened, yeah, so mythought was just simply, like,
maybe there was a group that wasprimary, late buffalo people for
a very long time, but becausethey weren't the cult,
politically cultural, powerfulgroup, yeah, when? When those

(25:23):
over time, their narratives bekind of pushed to the bottom, so
then it makes them appear to belike a seasonal people, like,
oh, they just went out thereonce in a while, and then they
came back. Or, yeah, or really,well, that's just where they
lived. Yeah, yes, just there,you know?

Yeah, no. So that's,

do you think that people in your in your
communities, talk about thatstuff, or does it it because the
feeling I get not to soundnegative, but is that they don't
look at culture that way. Theylook at it very like linear and
very when the way they createcurriculum to teach culture,
it's like there's officialversions of things, and I think

(26:03):
that can be real dangerous. Thatis,

it is to like worldview.
I think it gives people anopportunity to really push back
on on understanding the pastthis, if you think you already
got it officially sanctioned,then what's, what's the point? I
even trying to understand more.
It's like, Well, we already knowso Exactly, yeah, so, yeah,

it's already there.
It's all there. Yeah, it's justall there, right? You know, we
don't have to explore anythingelse or examine anything else,
yeah? And really, we got itfigured out. I think, I think
that the preservationist on theFlathead Reservation are just
now getting to that point.
They're just now getting to theearly stages of questioning.
Yeah, things like that. Yeah,dissecting problems and

(26:55):
dissecting narratives. Yeah,yeah, trying

to break the mold of the past. I just went through
my master list of our sort ofcreation stories that I've been
putting together over, I don'tknow how many decades, and I
found three stories about theBuffalo and get this two stories
about whales out of the I don'tknow, 100 or so that I have,

(27:23):
all right, okay, well, let'sYeah, so that's it's interesting
because it, I don't know itpoints to this. And I doubt this
is what I doubt in what you'resaying. I doubt there was a
dominant group going aroundpolicing creation stories. Oh

(27:45):
no, you're talking about, don'ttalk about whales, talk about
buffer. But there was wherethere were the dominant ones. I
don't, I don't, how, why? Imean, that seems strange. That's
what culture committees do. No,I'm talking about the past.
Dude.

No, I'm not saying so. I'm not saying that they
policed people. I'm saying that.
So go back to this luck thing.
Let's go back to this luckthing. Okay, okay, bear with me.
Bearing with there's a certaingroup people that seem to be
producing lucky and fortunatepeople, right? That means those
people are going to be used forthings and ceremony things and

(28:25):
name giving things. So let'sjust say there's a certain group
of people that for whatever era,yeah, they they seem to be
producing these people. Thatalso means when, when a young
warrior wants to pursue hiscareer and his warrior career,
he's going to get a key personto guide him, or to maybe even

(28:45):
use their sacred powers orwhatever. So those people, yeah,
their advice and whateverthey're telling the young, this
young warrior, yeah, it's goingto be from your thing. So if you
start to look at your oralhistories, you'll find that
they're rooted in the samepeople. Like you'll go to like,

(29:06):
oh, this story comes from so andso. This story comes from so and
so. Now, why did those storiessurvive? As opposed to Joe Schmo
story? Because people were usingthat person. People were finding
credibility in that person, andpeople were finding cultural
value in that person, yeah, nowthat person can be part of a

(29:30):
bigger group, and there'sseveral people in that group
that are seen that way. And thenpretty soon, that group's thing
becomes that. Now they're notwalking around saying, your
story is horrible. We're notgonna it's just, what are they
being used for? Yeah, so like,for example, there was a time
where the sword Clan of thecrows was producing a lot of

(29:51):
leaders. There was a lot oflike, chiefs and headman and
prestigious lawyers coming fromthe sword P. People, yeah, that
doesn't mean they're out therebullying everybody to be in the
forefront. It's just, it's justkind of happened, yeah? So that
also means, like, Chief plenty,because there was a book wrote

(30:13):
about him, right? Yeah, well,he's a sore lip, pretty shield.
There's a book about her. She'sa sore lip. Okay, right? Yeah,
yeah, that means those twostories are sore lip people. So
that becomes their stories arethe most talked about male and
female version of crow.
Individuality to today ishoneycum, pretty shield. Now the

(30:35):
pretty shield story is going tobecome this spokes story,
spokesman story for all crowwomen, when that's not the case
in reality, but it becomes that,because it's the crow of crow
female narrative, right? Well,her stories become known. So
whenever we're talking aboutwomen, and then in the northern

(30:56):
plains, pretty shield getsbrought up. It doesn't mean she
put herself there or she pushedsomebody out, but because her
story is prominent, right? Yeah.
So that's, that's my idea, thatjust because, like, say there's
two stories of wells, that canmean a lot of things. Yeah, it

(31:21):
could also just mean there's twoinstances so they remembered
them. It'll call also mean thatthere was 1000s of well stories,
but nobody cared about the wellguy. Yeah. So, so those two
stories survived, yeah? Sothat's my question. Is, when I
talk about the planes withflathead people or Salish people

(31:43):
in the Buffalo there's thisweird thing that happens where
it's like, wow, we're not reallythat. We're not really this.
We're kind of that. And thensome people are like, all about
it. We're totally plains people.
So my question, my my thought,was like, Why do some of those
versions get pushed out? Someget pushed to the forefront? And
we've had this conversation nowwhere there's a lot of Salish
people wearing basket hats andand going on canoe journey. I

(32:05):
know what I mean, the basket

Yeah, well, some of that was, I remember
listening to the episode, and Iwas getting after Sean doing
some of that stuff was a part ofof who we were because now it's
like we're so inner mix. That'sthe other thing too. Is we're so
intermixed between pondering andSalish, like, you know, that

(32:30):
that's, that's a whole thing,you know? And but because we
were like that, like we have, wehave lots of stories like, about
our life being plateau, youknow, and and just because those
things are pretty much gone,like in terms of the women who

(32:51):
were always practicing thatsomehow, you know, like beating
or whatever, like weaving,somehow that thing never made
it. And so then you have, like,a few people who know that their
great grandmas did it orwhatever. And then there's,

(33:12):
there are still pictures likethey made it, like some people
made it to the point, like,where the camera was here, and
they had these weavings, butthen it just never made it, just
never carried on. And a lot ofthose things we traded for, you
know, and so it was there. Itjust wasn't something that was
like the strong thing. And sothen it went away. So then it's

(33:38):
gone, you know. So then you havepeople who try to do it, but
it's all awkward now. It's like,in that awkward stage, one of
those awkward things, like,because there's so many people
that don't know anything aboutit, like, even when they try to
do it, it's real strange. It'slike, oh, that's not us. Or, you
know, somebody would thinkthat's not, that's not who we
are. But mainly it's becausethat's pretty much something

(34:00):
that kind of, like, justdissipated off of of what we
were before, you know, butthat's the same as, like, when
people will say we weren'thorsemen, like, I've heard that
before, like, we weren't home,like, what? That's not true.
Like, that's definitely nottrue. Like, we were really good
horsemen, like we had, we havestories like, of when the, I

(34:24):
don't know, whoever does thePony Express would come up and
get horses from us, so I don'tknow, like, some of that stuff
just went away, but that thatwas out of our control, you
know. But now it's like all theall the inner marriage and all
the cultural melding, like when,when you have somebody trying to

(34:46):
go back, trying to get thatguidance, and then you're you
have somebody who's taken thatauthority upon themselves to be
the cultural bearer, orwhatever, maybe they are more
pondering. Or maybe they aremore Salish or whatever, and
then they end up, you know,telling what they know, but, and
then that's what, that's whatgets carried on, you know. And

(35:09):
then, just like you're saying,just because that's who kind of
got appointed to do that job,you know. And And nowadays, you
know, it feels like just to dothat, sort of like you gotta get
paid to do that. You literallyhave a w4 for that.

Well, I ain't even gonna do it.

I cultural propagation, that's hard work. I
really need to be compensatedfor that with benefits offer

match my current rates. Anyway. That was just a
thought. It was just a sidething, because there's like
things that, when I lived therethat I kind of always went, went
home and questioned, but I hadno right. I still don't, but
it's just curious curiosity,because

it's it's interesting, because the same
thing happens as we imaginehappened in the past. I think
this is there's, there's adominant group that prescribes
to a certain thing, and thatdominant group happens to be
whatever is sort of sanctionedby the current tribal
government, I guess so they setthe standard for those who want

(36:36):
to know and for those who needto know.

And that doesn't necessarily mean that their
intentions are all negative. Sofor example, culture committees,
culture committees there, thereis proof that there's some
negativity that comes out ofthose endeavors. But the
intention was to preserve asmuch as we can and to also make
things like accessible, but butin doing that, things are

(37:02):
edited, meaning like, like,yeah. For example, there's like,
two or three versions of thecrow creation story, but yeah.
And by no fault of the culturecommittee, they kind of
prescribed to one, yeah, Isubscribe. I can't remember what
the word is, but yeah. And sothat became the official crow
creation story. Yeah? It alsomeant that these other ones kind

(37:24):
of got pushed to the side, justas a result of that,

yeah, became it became redundant, right?
Pretending

that was my that was just like, I'm just kind of
thinking about that and thebuffalo. If English people do
know that about their presenceon the plains, and won't say
planes that's really loose,because I don't really consider
the Northern Rockies and theYellowstone ecosystem part of

(38:01):
the plains, and the way that isreally designated, you know,
because I would not consider propeople up here planes people.
We're not, I think we're an inbetween, much like the black
feet, much like the Shoshone andlike the better route Salish,
you know, we're probably morealike in those groups. Oh yeah,
we are with, like, Omaha. Whoare people? Omaha, Omaha, in the

(38:24):
Ponca.

It would be who views anyway we say their names
correctly. Otherwise they may.
They would medicine to speak toyou.

It would prove us to probably stop now because
they're going on. Howlong has this been going? I
don't know. How long we've beenrecording. I don't know.
Yeah, we talked. We talked for45 minutes about, yeah,

you know, there's, there's a whole new and this is,
you've seen it, the whole, wholenother pride in, in the in the
other Salish group that lives onthe Flathead Reservation that
started seemed like within thelast couple decades.

Uh, yeah, I could even, I could I witnessed it,
yeah, when I, when I first movedthere, that that wasn't the
case. And then, no it, when itstarted showing up, it came
strong, yeah. And actually,that's, and I'm not saying
that's negative or positive, butjust the idea that putting

(39:30):
themselves in the forefront,you're talking about, the
pondering, yeah, yeah. To me, Inoticed it when the late Pat
Pierre became more of a culturalfear. And I really, I got along
with, here I go and sweat withhim. And like, I learned a lot
from him so but once he becamehe became a cultural figure
through the language school, andit seemed like with him. And of

(39:51):
course, he's not the only one,right? Sure, but

sure again, but I think that's

the forefront represents. Yeah, you know.
Yeah,

that's, that's just a sign of that. What the
hell was I going to say? And Ialready forgot that's sort of a
sign of that, that, that ideathat, you know, things, things
are malleable, not so safe andstone. And I would hope that
young people listening to thiswould would take that whole idea

(40:23):
that, yeah, you can look atSalish and then and you can see,
okay, well, yeah, there's twodifferent Salish groups there,
and we can promote a certainlevel of independence culturally
from one of the other groups.
That, even though that was sortof, there's a healthy way to do
that, yeah, even though that wassort of ingrained a bit, and
even in, even in tribalgovernment paraphernalia, if you

(40:44):
will. But yeah, you had, thenyou have to inspect all the
creation stories and say, Well,what are these? Where are these
come from? And how did we sortthrough them? And are they even
intact? What, what? There's moreto learn there. They're not set
in stone. Yeah?

And I think could be fun. I think that somebody
would have a lot on doing thatlearning, yeah, stuff, it would
be pretty cool. And I don'tthink, I think it's coming, and
it's in its early stages, but,yeah, it'll be fun to see Salish
scholars start to question thoseboundaries, yeah, yeah, you
could say that there, there,there is a legitimate resurgence

(41:26):
of Salish and pondering worldview and participation. Yeah,
so, so maybe it's in a healthierstate now to start looking and
examining those things, dude,yeah, kind of cool to see. You
know,

yes, we shouldn't let culture become prefunctory
or ossified in its currentstate.

Prefunctory, no.
That means

meet your hat goes sideways.
That's enough, man, it's enough.
Okay, quit it. Quit it. I think

we say Lucius, we need to have salisha more on the
pod. Yeah,

you round us out a bit,

I think so, kind of like a bean bag, right?

Kind of like a bean bag,
like you got it in a corner,looks cool and comfy, sit down
at every other and then, butthen it gets kind of hot, so you
gotta get up. No, I'm the guy onthe

couch. Am I the guy in the couch?

Yeah, so it's just the guy on the couch. Yeah. And
every once in a while, we'll belike, right, Salish,
you guys are idiots.
I can't I'm having this problemsay, and hopefully you can help
me with this. I'm having aproblem getting Shaun Dean to
argue with me. I want him toargue with me more. He's

not gonna argue with you. He won't do it.
I'm like, Come

on, dude. Like, I need some we need some heat on
the pod.

Well, I don't know are we talking about
Thanksgiving.

We had to

figure out a topic that we disagree on, then that's
Oh,

yeah, yeah. I don't think you guys disagree on
much. Let's think

of something we disagree on. It'll be our final
episode.

You should have a formal you should have a
formal debate, and then thendebrief. There you go. That

means that we would have to find a topic where I'm
on the opposing and our problemis that most of the time I I'm
in agreement with Shaun Dean, Ithink more so than

Yeah, yeah.
But so we need

recently, though, I asked him, I said, we need to
get this lady on the podcast whoI sent you that YouTube link. I
can't remember her name, but Iwant her on the podcast, and
you're like, I don't know,because I want to argue with
her, and I think she'd be up forit.

How would you do it? How would you do it,
though it would be so hard. Oh,

it flat propeller, like, I oppose what you say, but
we're looking to have you on thepodcast to have an intellectual
conversation. Oh, okay, but I'malso, I also have a lot of
respect for people who arestaunch in their beliefs,
like she, she went on record tosee what she said.

My stakes are getting staunch. When somebody
says staunch anyway, staunchAnyway, go ahead. I'm sorry, cut
you off anyway.

I just, I just think it's cool that she was
willing to come out. I can sayall that stuff. Yeah, you show
the video, send the link to tosay Alicia, because, okay, I
think respect for people whohave. Stance,

sure, even if it's cuckoo,

right? Yeah, for sure, yeah, yeah,

my feet are getting staunch.

Well, that's assuming. I think there's a lot
of people that think I'm cuckoo,so, yeah, okay, and I don't.
Let's get Aaron,

yeah, let's get some cuckoo people. And it's
more, yeah, that's what I want.
You want to get you agree with,okay, yeah, I got a cuckoo for
Coco. I got some cuckoo guests.
Then, oh

my God. All right, okay,

let's do it. Yeah, let's get the cuckoo. Let's get
crazy going fix it up. Allright, you want to go there,
let's do it. You want to gothere, let's do it. Guys

might you guys might have to have some
introductions and landacknowledgements. You

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#60 - Deossifying Myths at the Crossroad of Modern Tribal Boundaries

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#60 - Deossifying Myths at the Crossroad of Modern Tribal Boundaries