Page 43 - 1st Anthology 2011

The Navajo said if you go up, you will know that we have relatives up that way. Yet they
don’t really want to come, because they don’t want those predictions to come true. That
the world as we know it will come to an end. So they hesitate.

Lately we’ve been asked to give lectures to the children. The children sitting right there in
front of me, and they are Tsuut’ina, my grandchildren. They feel so small, what I mean by
their heritage, they know nothing because nobody every taught them anything. I tell
them way up north just at the tip of Northern America, in Alaska, all that way, that’s our
people. You turn on the television and they have movies about the Blackfoot and the
Sioux and the Cheyenne. I say that’s just a pinch. If you talk about Tsuut’ina we are all
those two continents. That’s how big a group we are I tell them. That makes me feel even
more prouder.

World War II, one child got up and asked what about it. If it wasn’t for our language we
wouldn’t have won World War II. So my dad didn’t go, and it’s not about that. Navajo
knew how to speak Dene. That’s our language, that’s they’re language. That’s how come
we beat the Japenese. They were sworn to secrecy and just over the last five years they got
recognized for what they have done. Now you tell me who’s greater the one’s you see on
television or us Tsuut’ina. All the children said, us! Us! We are greater! You can walk out
that door and tell them if it weren’t for us you wouldn’t be walking free.

I explained to them what happened. That child that was sitting there, he didn’t say
anything he just got up once I finished talking. He grabbed me around the waist and said
grandpa, thank you. I never realized. I said it’s not your fault because your mom and dad
don’t know the stories, themselves. They are babies too. If no one told them then it’s not
your fault. Now I’m telling you, so you turn it around and go tell your mom and dad what
you learned from me. That’s your payment, you pay me back and go tell the story I’ve told
you. So he did, and the next day he came back and told me, grandpa I told them what you
told me to do. My mom and dad feel more proud of who they are now.

So it just takes a little push, and it doesn’t take much. Children especially, because their
magnets, anything you do they’ll copy you. Anything you’ll say they’ll repeat it from five
or six years from now. Their memories are good, if you were to repeat something to me
right now I’ll forget it. That’s the way I like to do things.

My goal in life is to see one or two of my people, young people, fully immersed in
Tsuut’ina, history, culture, beading wise, and at least we got that way to start somebody.
It’s out there, it’s just that certain things that we have to do. Going back to that we have
to do it together. The only way we’re going to get it done is by a group. Nobody is a hero;
we have to do it as one.

Earliest memories growing up on Tsuut’ina, from the time I started school, I started
school at the Tsuut’ina Day School. From where my house is to get to the school we had
to walk, there was Brian and I. Some say they had kindergarten but I’m not too sure. I

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