cc  [APPLAUSE]  >> Thank you Carrie.  I'm also in the American Indian  Studies program.  I have a joint appointment in  Anthropology and American Indian  Studies.  That doesn't really qualify me  to be here in Patty Loew's  stead, but she put me  on the short list of people  like this, so I guess  I wound up with it.  I'm honored to be here,  of course, and to hear this  and to facilitate this.  So I thank you very much  for being with us tonight  for Voices and Visions.  And these are her comments  that she composed to read.  A special story-telling event  held in conjunction with the  unprecedented five-part  documentary series We Shall  Remain which began last night.  I hope many of you had a chance  to see the first episode  entitled After the Mayflower.  It will be, as Carrie said, on  every Monday night for the next  four weeks, a 90-minute  documentary that explores native  people and their history. 

 Next week the story, the series  explores Tecumseh.  It will continue with the Trail  of Tears, Geronimo and the 1973  take-over at Wounded Knee.  Last night's episode was the  story of Massasoit.  It was multi-layered exploration  of the man and his Wampanoag  Nation.  Here was a leader whose  community has been devastated by  disease and was vulnerable to  rival tribes at the same time.  So Massasoit plotted, formed  alliances, engaged in diplomacy  and acted strategically.  And history remembers him as an  extraordinary statesman.  But the lives of ordinary people  are perhaps the richest part of  our history.  And that's what we explore  tonight.  The family histories lived by  people around us who matter to  us the most. 

 Who in their triumphs and  sorrows find strength and wisdom  and pass their stories down to  us.  And in doing so they share their  histories in ways that make the  ordinary extraordinary.  For native people stories are  the essence of who they are.  And I would add I think that's  true for a lot of people in the  world.  It's the way we remember the  past in vivid personal ways.  This is the way we teach and  learn.  Our narratives, individually and  collectively, convey our values  and connect us to each other.  We're going to hear from  four storytellers tonight  and hopefully some of you.  We encourage you so share your  own family stories with us.  First is Roberta Hill. 

 We begin with a life story from  Roberta who is professor in  English in American Indian  Studies here at UW Madison.  Roberta Hill grew up near Green  Bay and Oneida, Wisconsin.  She attended the University of  Wisconsin and the University of  Montana where she completed her  MFA degree in 1973.  She's taught on the Oneida and  Rosebuds reservations and at the  University Wisconsin Eau Claire,  as well as here.  Dr. Hill is a member of the  Oneida Nation and carries the  strength of some remarkable  ancestors.  So I would invite you to speak  to us first Roberta.  [APPLAUSE]  >> Thank you.  I'll just add to that I have  a doctorate in American Studies  from the University of  Minnesota.  So strangely enough I'm going to  be sharing the lives of my  grandmother and grandfather, and  this selection I'm going to read  from, at least the first part of  it, comes from a biography I did  of my grandmother whose name was  Dr. Lillie Rosa Minoka-Hill.  I'm going to start by just  showing you a couple of  photographs and just passing  them around. 

 The first one is of my  grandfather who I thought I  would share some of what he had  said and what his experience  was.  And this is a picture of him  when he worked and lived in  Trenton, New Jersey.  And he was a very great and  well-known pitcher for the  Roebling Magnetic Company in  Trenton.  So I'll just pass that around.  And this is a picture of my  grandmother when she was a young  woman and she had just met my  grandfather.  She was a medical doctor at the  age of 21.  So this is a picture of her  about that same period.  She had graduated from the  Women's Medical College of  Philadelphia and was reared in  Philadelphia.  So here she is.  My grandparents Charles Abram  Hill and Dr. Lillie Rosa  Minoka-Hill met in Philadelphia  in the Autumn of 1902. 

 He had escaped from being a  student at Carlisle and worked  at various farms and factories.  She was a medical doctor, an  intern at the women's hospital.  They had a secret courtship for  several years until finally she  agreed to marry him.  He then returned to Oneida to  build a house because they  simply could not settle out  east.  I'm going to read from the  biography of her life that I've  written, focusing in the passage  or chapters where he returns to  Oneida to build the house.  And it has a lot of the context  of his return.  He had been taken away at 13 to  New York to stay in New York for  a while and then from New York  at 13 he and all of the Oneida  children who had about gathered  up on the train, they had been  put on a train and sent out  east, they all ended up at  Carlisle.  And it took him many years to  get out of Carlisle, to get out  from under the control of  Colonel Pratt, who was very much  the controlling agent for many  of the native children  who were at Carlisle.  After years of being gone, he  was once more at home listening  to his grandmother, cousin Roger  Silas and uncle Thomas speak of  their grief for his uncle's two  sons and his brother John.  They had died from tuberculosis. 

 18-year-old Chauncey, his  youngest brother also suffered  from tuberculosis.  Charles sent Rosa an early  picture of his mother and his  brother and himself and his  uncle and his two brothers, his  two sons, his uncle's two sons.  His brother sometimes struggled  to breathe.  When hard rain fell the road  turned to gumbo.  Charles wanted to take Chauncey  to the hospital as soon as the  roads dried and he grieved.  This is a quote from a letter.  It is true my other brother died  last spring, same case.  Oh, my heart aches because no  one has told me he did die until  the day before I left for the  west and the house we live in  now is small.  His mother had died 11 years  earlier of the same disease.  John's widow, Elizabeth Doxtater  and John and Elizabeth's  daughter Eliza also mourned him. 

 Following -- that's the name for  the creek on the reservation,  Oneida's took the trail that cut  through deep woods and round  through the forest where  medicines grew.  Near Freedom or --.  On the southwest boundary where  a large pool formed on the slope  of a central ridge was a  sawmill.  Charles brought a black stallion  and hauled timber from his  30-acres near -- to the mill.  He was repairing the log house  and barn on his father's  allotment at the other end of  the reservation.  A fire in 1893 burned acres of  timber so Charles was lucky to  own timber land.  On the other end of the  reservation he cleared more land  and planted, then focused on the  house.  Taken away by force in 1886,  years before allotment, the boy  of 13 had become the man who  never had enough money to come  home, even to attend his  father's funeral.  Pratt, at Carlisle, controlled  all of his income.  But uncle Thomas explained the  changes that took place over  those 18 years. 

 Thomas Elm thought oxen were  better than horses for pulling  out stumps.  Oneida's who bought horses were  taking up white ways.  Thomas pointed out the wonder of  the house his father built.  An old-time roof made from two  layers of basswood, split and  carved out for a trough and then  a second set was placed on top.  A floor, rough hewn bark  upside down.  All of it built    without a single nail.  Charles figure it was about as  big as his room in Trenton.  Thomas explained that when  Charles was young, Oneida men  didn't work all the time like  white men.  They didn't where pants either.  A man wore a long shirt and a  G-string. 

 Wore that and moccasins.  An Oneida man went visiting and  was invited to sit in on an old  homemade chair with a split  seat.  It was broken in the center.  The visitor talked and laughed a  lot, all the while his G-string  bounced with his laughter.  The family's good mouser crawled  sneakily toward the man.  When the man laughed something  shook under his chair.  The cat made a jump and caught  that thing.  What a jump.  Uncle Thomas enjoyed telling  stories.  Most of our family enjoys  stories. 

 Houses, clothes, oxen were not  the only things that had  changed.  Thomas explained their worship  had changed too.  Before they moved to Wisconsin,  Oneida's danced and sang in  worship.  They helped each other.  Once they turned Christian they  stopped.  The minister told them that  reading was worship.  They read and didn't help each  other.  Oneida's gave up some of their  New York land for land in  Kansas.  But over there some got sick in  the warm climate so they came to  Wisconsin or returned to New  York or Canada.  They had claimed money from the  lands lost in New York. 

 Charles signed up for his Kansas  claim hoping the $300 arrived  before he married so he'd have  money of his own to share.  He wanted to share with Rosa the  slow pace there.  The people's faith.  Even those with nothing helped  each other.  That's what Charles remembered  and what he wanted to believe.  Changing the ways of worship  changed politics.  In the old days clan mothers  installed the chiefs and watched  over the kettle of the nation.  They no longer did.  Oneidas often got arrested but  the chiefs didn't speak up for  them.  A poor white woman left her  family to live with --. 

 Her husband went to court and  had him arrested.  He got five years in Waupun.  The chiefs lost power because  they didn't interfere to stop  that injustice.  Oneida people wouldn't support  them but that wasn't the worst  of it.  In 1900, Joseph C.  Hart, former superintendent at  the Rosebud Agency in South  Dakota, took the same position  at Oneida.  Oneidas found him reprehensible.  Thomas Elm claimed he was  diabolical.  His arrival the worst thing that  ever happened.  He sold thousands of acres of  Oneida land. 

 200 to 300 acres in the end of  1903 alone.  In November 1905 the Brown  County Democrat reported that  the Seymour Press listed lands  for sale on the Oneida  reservation.  1,712 acres in Outagamie County  and 364-acres in Brown County.  Joseph Hart accepted sealed bids  through the coldest months of  the year, December, January and  February, approving bids for  less than one-fourth the land's  assessed value.  The Dawes Act protected Indian  trust patents for 25 years.  But after 19 years the land grab  for Indian allotments had become  official.  The 1887 law conferred  citizenship on Indians upon  receipt of their allotments.  Strangely, the Burke Act of 1906  corrected the Dawes Act,  conferral of citizenship, by  taking away citizenship until  final validation of the 25 year  period.  This means that if an Indian  thought he was a citizen by  taking an allotment, he was not  really a citizen by this  mystifying logic.  After 19 years the means for  transferring allotments into  white ownership were for the  allotee to be declare competent  and his land was given fee  patent status, that means it  could be sold. 

 Indians were once again not  citizens unless they proved they  were competent and accepted land  in fee simple, sellable land.  As soon as the ink was blotted,  the allotee's land went up for  sale.  The Burke Act empowered  superintendents like Joseph Hart  to claim an allotee was  competent, file his land under  fee simple patent and never  notify him of the change.  As the taxes on the land  increased, it was $14 or less,  that was the tax, $14.  The land was subject to  foreclosure.  When the sheriff came and forced  the Oneidas out of their houses  and off their land they might  not have known what they had  done to lose it.  They had done nothing.  But according to Congress they  were being taught by what the  Congress called the forced fee  patent process established by  the Burke Act and they were  learning the valuable lessons of  citizenship.  Still, some Oneidas hung on to  their allotments, but eventually  the town taxed livestock and  pets, anything other than  children that moved, in order to  cause foreclosures.  Thomas Elm characterized the  time by saying Oneidas lived  between the devil and the deep  blue sea. 

 Under the government's rules  Oneidas were citizens for 19  years, then their rights were  rescinded because they weren't  prepared to be citizens.  At the time Charles returned the  townships were becoming  established on the reservation  so his uncle was warning him  that his land could be lost very  easily.  Federal employees in powerful  positions like Joseph Hart  controlled Indian children at  the boarding school, all  available jobs, the access to  court including probate.  Hart could send children to  schools at Oneida, Tomah and  Carlisle for years at a time.  He controlled the police force  and all the records.  He legitimated theft under the  ideology of education and  shrink-wrapped the reservation.  He disrespected Oneida marriage  customs and adoptions.  If he wanted to sell land about  to probated, he held up probate  until the heirs were  impoverished.  If he claimed some heirs  illegitimate to prevent land  from being transferred to the  next generation, the heirs lost  their land.  Thomas Elm knew Joseph Hart was  an evil man. 

 Did Charles tell Rosa about  these changes?  He was building her a house and  wanted them to live together  there.  He sent a photo of -- and I  think this is her but I'm not  sure.  She was their young friend, a  young woman who had been engaged  to Albert Silas before he had   died from tuberculosis.  So tuberculosis took many native  people away, many people away,  many loved ones away at Oneida.  Rosa wanted to learn about  Charles' family.  His sister Lucinda was Eli  Cornelius' wife but Charles  hadn't seen her much.  Wanting woman friends, Rosa  urged Charles to visit Lucinda  who was probably busy with her  children.  Rosa wanted to meet his uncle  Noah.  Charles didn't mention his older  half-brother Israel Hill who  also held an interest in his  father's land.  Still in Philadelphia,  Annie asked Charles  to take charge of her land. 

 Their father left the patents  for their family's allotments at  the Episcopal mission.  Charles was to make use of the  land in any way he wished.  Since Mrs. Cox, at the school  where Annie was at school,  wouldn't pay for her to travel  to Oneida for the summer she  asked Charles for the fare  and spending money.  And Charles didn't send it  because he knew about her secret  engagement and he didn't want it  to keep her from finishing high  school.  He consulted with Rosa and Annie  stayed in Philadelphia  and received her diploma.  He had no money to spare.  And this is a picture of Israel  Hill who was at Hampton which  was another school, another  boarding school in Virginia.  In March 1905 Charles began  fixing the old homestead.  It was two stories tall, 18 feet  wide and 20 feet long.  Without a cellar or attic. 

 Just to give you some  perspective that's 360 or 320  square feet.  We're used to a small house  is 750 square feet.  This is 300-something square  feet.  It's very small.  He's writing her to say these  things.  That she needed to know that  reservation houses were not  fancy like those in  Philadelphia.  Their place was a ten-minute  walk though from the BIA  hospital, a small four roomed  building where his father died.  In order to make her new home  sound welcoming and not lie  about it he sent the details  through the letters very little  at a time.  I'm working on the house it's  like this and it's like that.  So finally he says houses at  Oneida may look funny, but she'd  enjoy having the relatives  around because everyone speaks  kindly at Oneida most of the  time. 

 So she writes back to say from  the things you have told me at  different times I can see it in  my imagine.  A little log hut, two stories  high, with the roof leaky  perhaps fallen in, and the  floors rotten, perhaps  containing those awful germs  which are ready to grab you in  the lungs and make you a victim  like your poor brother and leave  me lonely and sorrowful for the  rest of my life.  What a gloomy picture.  Was it worth saving she wanted  to know.  He drew a picture then of a  small two story bungalow with  smoke curling from the chimney  and fences along the road to  Green Bay.  He wanted to add a kitchen and  build a big barn but that took  too much money.  In three feet of snow he was  working on getting a team and  implements for planting.  On March 25, this is like 1905,  she sent $500 to help him with  his plans.  He tore the old house and barn  and began a new one.  He dug a cellar and a drain but  April delayed him. 

 The road had no bottom, so it  was gumbo, mud all the way down,  so he couldn't transport lumber.  He moved in with his grandfather  and his cousin Eliza.  He wrote Rosa about the two  horses.  He loved horses, he bought all  these horses.  But just notice the  implications, they're sort of  funny.  He wrote where about two horses,  Jim and Kate, a puppy and  chickens, and he sang, he was a  musician, so he sang how much he  loved her as he built a dining  room and a kitchen.  After she sent $350 more he  bought a circular saw on credit.  They'd grow apples, plums and  berries but not peaches.  He was going to be very busy all  summer and he wanted to be  married at Oneida, as he said,  for our own goodness.  Kinship ties grew stronger after  a wedding in the Episcopal  church. 

 Carpenters were building the  house and barn.  He was plowing, although Jim  hurt his leg and Kate had a sore  neck and needed to rest and heel  for a while, the horse doctor  had given each of them medicine.  So he bought a third horse, Miss  Nelly, high spirited, who hauled  lumber.  In early May he told her the  house would be finished by June  1, and then changed the date to  mid-June.  Charles immersed himself in  building the house and  reestablishing kinship ties.  They needed relatives and  friends at Oneida.  With few relatives, he  maintained his ties.  With the house completed he'd be  back in Philadelphia by June 3,  1905.  He gave $100 to uncle Thomas who  had cared for the allotments  while he'd been gone and felt it  was a justifiable expense.  Rosa reminded him the money was  to be used to help him make a  living by farming. 

 His picture of the house  thrilled her but she was angry  that he gave money to his uncle.  She didn't understand that  Oneidas helped each other out.  As a couple, she conserved while  he shared.  When he was coming back?  She was so lonely for him she  could cry.  So that's the excerpt that I  wanted to share.  And then I thought I would talk  about my parents and then my  experience.  Before 1930 and the  establishment of the Federal  Housing Authority, a buyer for a  house had to pay 50% of the  price and then pay the rest up  within five years.  That was quite a challenge.  You could see a lot of people  lived in tenements, they did not  live in houses.   So my parents, Charles Allen  Hill and my mother Eleanor  Smith. 

 Here's my parents and I'll pass  this around.  They were married in Fort Bragg,  North Carolina, during World War  II.  They had met in Fort Bragg.  She was an army nurse from  Louisiana, from Flatwoods,  Louisiana, a Choctaw French  woman who grew up in  segregation.  My father was a musician, a  trumpet player in the Army band.  And he was sent over there  to invade Normandy Beach.  Because the Army was segregated,  my father was an officer  who administered,  he worked with a black company.  So he didn't work with white  soldiers.  He worked with black soldiers  because he was an Indian man,  he wasn't a white man.  The men fixed up blown up  vehicles in France. 

 So he was in France, but they  worked on the vehicles there.  He also, because he was Indian,  they thought he would be good  at surveillance, the Indian  can go out and find out  what's going on.  So he was put in the back of  what was called a gooney bird,  a big flyer, a glider, and  photographed enemy lines and  then when the glider went down,  he and the pilot were left  to get back and sneak back  onto their own lines, somehow.  At one point he was the only man  left alive in a trench  filled with dead bodies.  He stayed there seven days  with very little water.  And the experience gave him  gum disease, or pyria, and  a form of psychosis, or  battle fatigue they called it.  So he was sent to Fort Bragg  to recover, and he lost all his  teeth which meant he could no  longer play trumpet.  And his mind was being restored  by the care there.  He met my mother there  and married.  And then he was sent back  to France, to fight or control  the company for two more years. 

 When they returned then, there  was hundreds of thousands of GIs  that returned.  The government set up  quonset huts, you know these  long quonset huts,  with apartments on each end  for the returning soldiers  to live in.  My parents moved into the  quonset huts at Baraboo right  across from the Ammunition dump.  And that's where I was born,  in Baraboo.  And my earliest memories  in very vague terms are of all  the lights and images  over at the Ammunition.  I go there and I get  eerie feelings.  I can remember some things  about this place.  And I can remember very dimly  being in the quonset huts.  So they moved there, but many  soldiers had nowhere to live  or rear their families,  so the FHA established new rules  for house buying.  You could pay 10% to 20% down  and the government would finance  80% over the next 30 years. 

 So veterans  were urged to buy houses.  But what most people might not  understand is the FHA structured  segregation into the process  of house buying.  The policy guidelines rated,  as most desirable and stable,  those areas that were white,  suburban and far from  a minority communities.  And those were colored green.  Okay?  The areas were people of color  lived were identified at red,  and received the lowest rating  and, hence, that's the term  red line, they were red lined.  Underwriters who were using  this policy to support loans  warned that one or two  non-white families undermined  a housing market in a green area  and brought it down.  I was not quite seven  when my parents bought a house.  The real estate agent was happy  to meet my mother and wanted  to sell it to her, but when  my father showed up  the deal was off.  So they found another house.  It wasn't the kind of house  they wanted. 

 They had to remodel it  and change it around.  It was on the west side  of Green Bay.  It has taken me probably  40 years to admit I grew up  in Green Bay,  because Green Bay is 17 years  younger than Plymouth Rock.  So it's a very racist town.  And it was racist when I grew up  there in terms of the kinds of  the ways they thought about  Indians, and the ways they  thought about people of color.  But I didn't understand  when I was growing up what this  change meant for my parents, if  I think of where they came from.  My father loved the reservation,  but he could not live there.  He could not find land there.  He was subjected to that policy  of relocation, of encouragement  of moving into the cities.  He had been over in France. 

 He'd come back, so he was  seeing this different  sort of opportunity.  My mother loved  Flatwoods, Louisiana, and  she loved the south.  She just could not ever  understand the complex  subtleties of northern racism.  Why don't they just go out and  tell you not to go there.  But they were always nice, and  what happened was she couldn't  understand it, so she often  ended up getting very angry  about northern racism and not  getting back home enough,  because money was tight.  She died at the age of 33  from impoverishment, basically,  from being so poor in her life.  My father never lived  to experience retirement.  So he worked many years, several  jobs at a time to raise us  but he never really,  he kept saying when I retire  I'll do this.  He played music all his life.  He taught, he did a lot of  things, but he never got a  moment really to enjoy his life  in the way that he had  when he was a younger man. 

 In 1968, he died.  That was the same year that  President Johnson established  the Fair Housing Act,  which removed racial language  from FHA policies.  The language may be gone,  but market assessment using race  as a factor I believe  still continues today.  I've had experiences thinking  that it still continues.  My father's equity in his home  didn't pass down to us.  Wealth passed down generation  after generation prevents people  whose land and homes  were taken away or devalued  by the government policies  to not be able to acquire  enough land to own a home.  People don't often understand  that the lack of equity being  passed down for many communities  of color is one of the single  factors for the difficulties  people have, as well as  the red lining, and the lack  of investment in those areas.  I have lived in many places  under many different conditions.  And I know people come and  want to know your inner skinny,  what really was it like.  Well, I've lived in a big  Army tent on the upper community  at Rosebud and it was wonderful. 

 I was homeless.  It was wonderful.  The tent was a huge rectangle  held up by four big posts,  cross beams.  And when the sun set  there was a creamy glow inside.  And there was just enough room,  really, for a few things.  A bed, and food,  and things like that.  We were living, my son's father,  his name is Tony, and I  were living in this tent  near his grandmother's house.  And so it was a wonderful  place to live.  I felt close to the earth,  I could step outside in the  morning and hear the creek  and see the creek, and see  the willow tree growing there.  I lived at Oneida,  in some of the housing there. 

 And one of memories I have  of a place, there was basement  apartment that I could afford  right after I'd gotten my  master's degree,  and was working for the tribe.  But I was in this apartment  with my cousin Pat, who we have  a birthday almost on the same  day, and we were toasting  our birthdays  when the ceiling fell in.  The whole ceiling fell down.  All of the fake ceiling with the  little cables and wires,  and the little dead mice bodies  floating down in the dust.  [LAUGHTER]  Okay, all right.  So now, I'm really looking  for a house to buy.  And I understand how Oneidas  who help build the reservation  economy really invested  in housing.  But there still aren't enough  houses there, and  the reservation boundary lines  are so firm  that they cannot grow.  A reservation cannot grow  like a city can grow.  So we're stuck  within those boundaries. 

 I'd like to own a house,  but if it's not possible given  the ruptures and displacement  of my history, I really have  enjoyed all of the places  that I've lived.  And I've really enjoyed  living at Madison,  living here in Madison as well.  Well, I don't know  if I'm over time or not.  A little bit?  I can stop or I can read a poem.  Read a poem.  Okay, this is a kind a long poem  but it's about my parents.  And it was written really  at the suggestion and discussion  with a blues poet from Chicago.  He's a wonderful man  named Sterling Plumpp.  And what he said to me one time  is he said, what is the  geography of your imagination?  It's something to think about.  What it is the geography  of my imagination?  What does it look like there?  So this is called  Getting Through  for Sterling Plumpp. 

 With your cognac  and your pace of playing  with everyday invention  reconciling melodies  notes, riffs  arrivals and departures  you offered the gift  of listening to blue cadences.  So I want to tell you  I'm getting through another day  by not imposing my will  on anyone.  I let life be  feeling the land.  Those portals of dreams  under fields  in creek beds  some moment  when shifting a breath  song comes  pearling through them.  Dreams create us  warning that  we're bound to get lost  plowing through snow  if we let ourselves be squished  under a lover's thumb.  Two  this morning ice formed  pickup stick patterns  on the black pond  beneath the soft as butter sun.  For no reason at all  my mother's scent hung over me.  Her warm bayou country  of grits and yellow perch  caught on silver hooks  frying for breakfast.  Her papaw farmed  but when cash got tight  he joined a highway crew  to work with men  whose names  hushed a muggy morning.  Rufus, Royce, Carnell. 

 She dreamed herself a man  but he was not my father.  Three.  I work and dream hollers  where their resentment  of each other  jumbles our steaming supper  until I refuse to eat.  No woman ever loved.  Back then, I paraded  my stuffed animal family  Bow-Wow and Kitty  Floppy and Pearl.  I married the dog and cat,  toad and giraffe.  Three-year-olds don't laugh  when their parent's marriage  heats up.  Makes holes in the road  earthquakes of spirit.  No woman ever loved a man.  Are you washed in the blood. 

 We've fallen from night  to dip and drink  from memory's river.  The dipper's bent  banged up  but swigging the cold water  cool metal on my cheek.  I hear sweet, low voices ringing  in damp twilight.  Warm, low voices singing  from a porch.  Then we move north  where snow  dumped hollows of heartache.  No woman ever loved a man,  she said  then shifted her story  flopping her hand  so her girls could see  Guinea hens landing in the dust  of a lost farm yard.  Was Granny saying  we were just getting through  another day  without expecting love  to come sauntering like --  over top yonder hill.  Are you washed  in the blood of the lamb?  Four.  Ah, Sterling you helped me  feel this ride  into the geography  of my imagination.  My heart pulsing,  fingers snapping  pituitary locking up night  ancestors coming through  this geography on long roads  heading north then south  then north to the farm  where brown grasses freeze  skunk cabbage  glitters with diamonds  sun rises  without a butter glaze. 

 Five.  My Oneida father  goose-stepped in stride  through the door  called civilized.  His music  a geography of blues  and boarding schools.  His rhythm, off the cuff.  Laughing, laughing, laughing  himself silly  after mother died.  Laughing, singing  playing music on the front porch  in front of God  and sweet Jesus.  Laughing his grief  into his grave  on wet, shiny streets.  It's always raining.  When the bayou comes back  and tightens in my throat.  Moving my heart  with its sultry rhythms. 

 Take your damn time  mother says.  No woman ever loved a man  as much.  I hear him on the porch  again tonight  but I never knew until now  just what he was doing.  Playing music,  seeking troubled notes  to reach his own father  another musician.  So on the porch two men played  one a spirit  their horns  muting the stares of neighbors  with their precious sweet pain.  Take that, you civilized train  and that, you thieving evil  you and I on a long road home.  Six.  In my geography  I listened to musicians  black, Indian, blue  shrinking Europe down  to its real size  shriveling its minute breath.  No woman ever loved a man  she said on her death bed  as much as I loved you.  She played a solo  on the self she left  in the black-eyed sea  Wailing  over the lonely grim ways  she got washed  in the blood of the lamb. 

 Your poem Sterling  traced neon through rainy nights  to make me admit --  my fantasy father  was always coming, going  playing songs.  My mother's hand  kept flopping  and failed to rise.  Your poems  a poltice for broken spirits  for us torn apart  north and south  of the Mason-Dixon line  an invisible wire I could feel  cutting my voice off  whenever we drove south  of Hannibal, Missouri.  Seven.  The giraffe and tree toad  lugged me  in the mesh of their love.  Through forests  where the rising moon  stroked leaves in its light.  Go away night.  But night kept seeping up  from fragrant earth  bog soft, pungent.  Taking tree toad into ecstasy  of loss and redemption  until she closed her eyes.  The giraffe held his head high  his little finger  vibrating the strings  until rhythms covered everything  and he couldn't feel  that she was gone. 

 Those rhythms, steady  beat my blood  and charmed this geography  where we dream  ourselves whole  just getting through  another day.  Thank you.  [APPLAUSE]  >> Thank you, Roberta.  Our next speaker  is Aaron Bird Bear.  He's a graduate student at the  moment, but he's our former  American Indian Student Academic  Service Coordinator for the  College of Letters and Sciences.  Aaron's father was a member of  the Mandan and Hidatsa Nations.  His mother is a member of the  Navajo Nation, and he himself  hails from New Hampshire.  I think he's going to tell us  the story of this eventuality.  He's also lived in 11 states,  which is probably more than  almost anybody else in the room.  He was born when his parents  were completing their  undergraduate degrees. 

 His childhood spans the  completion of both of their  law degrees, and the beginning  of their legal careers.  He literally grew up  in higher education.  So help me welcome Aaron.  [APPLAUSE]  [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]  >> Hello, my name  is Aaron Bird Bear,  and I am a member of the Mandan  and Hidatsa Nations.  My mother is a member  of the Navajo Nation.  For our non-Indian members today  that is like being Finnish,  Swedish, and Greek.  That's just the western  hemisphere version  of an American.  Today, I wanted to speak  a little bit about Tecumseh.  I was really excited to see  in the We Shall Remain Series,  Tecumseh is one of  the featured episodes.  I went to the Naval Academy,  a military college in Annapolis,  Maryland, from 1989 to 1993. 

 And the main public space  of the institution, where  all the historical gatherings  and the formations that  everybody comes to watch,  and take pictures of, is in a  place called Tecumseh Court,  T-Court is what we call it.  And in T-Court is a very large  bronze statue of this very  imposing figure.  But notably, it is not Tecumseh.  It is Tamanend, the civic leader  of the Delaware Nation.  And the Naval Academy attends  to this, and they put the little  footnotes in all the books:  that's not really Tecumseh,  it's Tamanend.  But we call it Tecumseh Court  today.  That's what we call it today.  It's part of the tradition.  So it's really interesting that  this federal institution  of education that's developing  a lot of our leaders today has  this huge Indian right in the  midst of its center piece  of social space,  and it's misidentified.  And people embrace that  misidentification, and they say  that's what it is, and that's  what we're naming it and  that's what it's going to be. 

 The statue is a head-casting  from the USS Delaware,  it is the third USS Delaware,  the ship of the line in 1817.  And that boat notably carried  Andrew Jackson at one point  in time.  And so it has a long,  rich tradition  in the United States Navy.  But it's really interesting for  me that I have to go by Tecumseh  every day on my way to classes,  and on festive days like game  days and visiting dignitaries,  the Naval Academy paints up  Tecumseh in all these different  outlandish figures.  Spiderman,  Wolverine from the X-Men.  On graduation day, they paint  him up like he's  in a military uniform.  So when I was going to school  there, I didn't think much it.  The Navy has a lot of strange  traditions that date back  to the age of wind and sail.  One hand for the ship,  one hand for the man.  And other statues around campus  would equally be kind of defaced  in some way, shape or form. 

 Rubbing the nose  of Admiral Rickover before  your exams, for good luck.  So when I see Tecumseh  get all adorned with paint  and splendor, I just thought  another interesting tradition  in the military.  But that's that story.  Let's go back to my parents.  That's who I wanted to talk  about because Tecumseh was all  about independence,  an Indian state of sovereignty.  And my parents met at the  Poor People's March  back in the day  in the civil rights era.  They were both part of something  called the United Scholarship  Service.  It was taking promising  young American Indians, who were  doing well on those standardized  tests, and placing them into  prestigious prep schools.  So my father went to  Phillips Exeter Boys Academy,  which is where the former  43, as they call him,  W. Bush went to  his secondary education.  My mother went to  Santa Fe Prep School, which is  also a pretty good school  in the southwest. 

 So they'd convene the scholars  during the summer, who were part  of this United Scholarship  Service, and that's where we  come in.  As Ada Deer would so humorously  say, one gland meets another  and the rest is history.  So we have us.  My brother is born when my  parents are sophomores, and  I'm born when they are seniors.  And it is really exciting time  for them in education, as  American Indians are going back  in the American Indian  renaissance to higher education  institutions.  In this case, my father  went to Dartmouth.  At the time they were  the Dartmouth Indians.  And it wasn't going over well  with this new cohorts of  American Indian students  coming back to the institution.  And so there they occupied  the administration buildings and  challenged the locals to say,  hey, what's really going on  here?  What is this really about, and  how are you using this imaginary  to ford any sort of positive  understanding of cultural  awareness of American Indian  people today?  It just wasn't flying.  And so in their occupation  of the central administration  building, which I was part of,  a little guy crawling around,  a very exciting time to see  as they try to regain a little  control of Indian identity. 

 To try asserting--  If this is an educational  institution, shouldn't  we be teaching more substantive  information about American  Indians, and not this decorative  and very superficial  representation.  When I think of Tecumseh and his  need for independence, and  desire for independence, and his  searching rights, I think of my  parents' educational journeys  and their need to also remind  people here's who we are,  here's what's acceptable  and here's what unacceptable.  My parents continued that step  a little further as they went on  for their law degrees.  My father went to University  of Colorado Boulder.  My mother went  to the University of Denver.  My father then at the time while  they were going to law school  there's the Bureau of Indian  Affairs office  in Littleton, Colorado,  and a clerk, who is an American  Indian clerk and the only  American Indian employee  in the office, kept getting  passed over and over again.  And they said  this can't be right.  Has this person not met  the responsibilities  of her position?  Why is she not allowed  to progress in this central  institution that is representing  our community?  And so they protested.  And there's a great sign of them  all outside with their placards.  And my father sitting there,  it was this snowy day,  and he has this huge sign  that says the BIA is racist. 

 And he's just reminding Indian  preference should be a policy  in the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  And through that struggle  they got this policy preference  enacted.  And finally, the Environmental  Protection Agency,  which was a really hot bed  of Indian activity in the day,  came calling for my father.  He goes this is what we've begun  fighting for all along, I cannot  turn my back on this offer.  And he joined the Environmental  Protection Agency  as a federal employee.  As he completed his law degree,  he moved up a little  into a different role.  He became a superintendent  on various reservations  in the mountain west.  Crow Agency, Lame Deer,  Rocky Boy.  As he tried to help tribes  move toward their levels  of self-determination  as communities and societies.  So independence, once again  a very important component  of what my father  is trying to actualize for  a lot of the American Indians. 

 And helping them understand,  what is it about civic  governance?  What are the policies  and procedures that we need  to consider as communities  that are going to allow us  to be successful and thrive?  And so when I think of Tecumseh  and his agency of trying  to think, okay here we are  as a community, we have these  two very different political  bodies vying for this area  that we are part of ourselves,  who are we going  to ally ourselves with?  How are we going to negotiate  with the terms that we need  to thrive and prosper  as a community?  And it was nice to see Tecumseh  in recognizing the agency  of his own community,  and the political ally-ships  he was forming along the way.  Notably, the British were  going to recognize Indian  sovereign title to land  west of the Appalachian range.  When the northwest territory  gets ceded to the Americans  after the war of 1812, we know  that the Americans aren't going  to recognize American Indian  sovereignty, and the great  challenges that kind of come out  after that in the legal battles  of the Marshall Trilogy  and other legal precedents  that are set along the way.  So when I think Tecumseh,  I think of my father,  I think of my parents,  I think of growing up  along side of freeways  and living in apartments.  My parents being education  types, if you're in the clergy,  the military or an academic,  you are a transient person.  And that kind of got into  the life of my father.  He enjoyed moving around  and seeing different parts  of the world.  In the spirit of Tecumseh,  he told me I can never,  I will always  have to live on Indian land.  And that is what he did  in his lifetime.  He lived on Indian land,  and he tried to help as many  Indian people as he could  negotiate the issues they  had to negotiate along the way. 

 And my final comment on Tecumseh  is that he was the site  of one of my greatest  adolescent rebellions.  Is that at the Naval Academy  we had to form for all of these  parades, whenever all these  visiting dignitaries, diplomats,  esteemed naval leaders  and military officers  visited our campus.  We'd have to stage a parade  for them.  Get all dressed up.  March with our 14-pound  decommissioned M-1s.  And I had just seen the photo  of this young Russian soldier  leaving Afghanistan and he had  this beautiful pink flower  in the end of his rifle.  And having a difficulty  conforming to the military  regiment, being a free spirit,  I thought can be 50% military,  50% Aaron.  I decided to put the flower  in my rifle.  And here I come marching out in  Tecumseh Court with my flower.  It didn't go over nearly as well  as I had hoped. 

 [LAUGHTER]  I ended up losing a couple  holidays along the way for that.  And so knowing that conduct  cases of the Naval Academy,  and knowing that John McCain  was one of them,  I know the criminal element  of the Naval Academy from some  of my more free-spirited times  in the military.  I really thank you very much  for hearing us today.  I also like to thank  the Ho-Chunk Nation,  always proud to be here,  and Dejope.  The four lakes area here is so  beautiful, and the rich cultural  heritage around campus  is astounding.  It's what I hope to pursue  as a graduate student here  in educational leadership  and policy analysis.  We look at the a cultural  landscape of our own institution  and how can that attend  to open us to diversity.  We now consider that  a cognitive skill.  How can we use that kind of  rich landscape to teach  ourselves about the colonial  lens we often look at  our own society  and extend the narrative of,  instead of 1848 Wisconsin on,  to 12,000 year human history  of which we are  just another chapter.  So thank you, very much. 

 [APPLAUSE]  >> Thank you, Aaron.  Our next speaker is our host  for this evening and that's  Janice Rice,  the Outreach Coordinator  for the College Library.  She's a member of the Ho-Chunk  Nation, and the immediate past  president of the  American Library Association,  American Indian  Library Association.  Janice has been a tireless  advocate for diversity and  a champion of Native American  initiatives on campus.  We were all delighted when  she became the university's  recipient of the 14th annual  UW System Outstanding  Woman of Color in Education  Award earlier this month.  We all celebrated that  last night, she being one of  the five outstanding women  of color on campus.  So help me welcome Janice.  [APPLAUSE]  >> Thank you, very much.  As he mentioned, I am a member  of the Ho-Chunk Nation.  Some of you may or may not know  that I'm a member of the  Bear Clan, and my name is --. 

 It's a Bear Clan name, which  means changing of the seasons.  So sometimes, if you want  to translate it into English,  you could call me  changing seasons woman.  So in that role, I have to  remember a lot of things about  what I've been taught  as being a Bear Clan member.  And so I try to carry those  things with me on a daily basis.  Some of the things I'm going  to share with you tonight  have more to do with things  that my parents and grandparents  have passed down to me.  And one of the values  that is very important to me  that was passed down to me  is from my grandmother  and my mother, looking at  the importance of water  and the value that it brings  into our lives.  The importance of water,  I think, is very essential  to life for each one of us.  And that's how it was  in our native communities.  And one of the things I want  to touch on is the springs  that are in this  Four Lakes area, Dejope.  You'll notice if you walk around  the counties and earlier today  there was a program  on the Dane County parks. 

 There are so many things that  are shared in the environment  that we can each enjoy,  and water is one of them.  And I will talk just a little  bit about the spiritual part  of it, because I believe  that it brings us to a center.  Water is very important.  And even parts of our body,  most of us are from water.  And water is used in many ways.  I'm thinking mainly at this  moment about the medicine man   and medicine woman, and how they  have used that for healing.  So as Aaron touched on Tecumseh  and all of the other leaders,  you may have seen in the program  last night, there's a lot of  healing that has had to happen  because of all the warfare,  atrocities, all the things  that happened to our ancestors.  So I think about  that spiritual side of it,  because we need that water.  The relatives that were here  in many days past  use this territory  as their hunting grounds.  The rice beds were here,  the fishing spots. 

 Natural gardens  and all the vegetation.  And our grandparents spoke to us  about what was important and the  main thing was to respect  Mother Earth and treat her  with the utmost respect.  And with those teachings,  a lot of the elders spoke to us  about what we should do  and how we should be.  And that's something that  I really value, the teachings  and beliefs that have been  passed down from my parents  and grandparents.  So I think about the elders,  the ancestors  that were here before me  and before us.  Many generations living in this  community, walking these shores,  traveling these waters.  And the Dejope area covers  a lot of territory in here.  I'm going to mention just a few  things that I think are really  important as far as  working with that.  The organizations that are here  in town, the environmentalists,  I really appreciate them  because each time I step out  into their area of conversation  it's hitting the notes with me  that I really enjoy, because  they look at preservation  and the waterways  that are so important to us.  The Yahara weaves its way  down from Token Creek springs  and comes down this way. 

 They feed into the Yahara.  And the Yahara comes into  Lake Mendota  and weaves its way into Monona.  And then Monona  down to Lake Waubesa,  and on down to Lake Kegonsa.  So these are just some areas  that are really important to us.  I won't go into detail  of all the history  of the whole area.  But I wanted to give you  some names of the people  that were here during the time  when this territory  was ceded.  The relatives that were there  back then, when Tecumseh  was trying to gather the people  together in this region.  So the many of the relatives,  ancestors that I have  are the people that came back.  And so the theme of this whole  series that PBS is putting on  is called We Shall Remain,  and you'll see in the next  episode on Monday night  when Tecumseh shares his vision.  And we had some Winnebago people  that were involved  during that time. 

 And I'll just mention the names  of some of the leaders that  were involved as the time  that this area was ceded  all the way from this region  of just north of Madison area  all the way down  to the Rock River in Illinois.  So I just want to say their  names, and the previous times  that I've done this, I've  always said a special prayer  in the morning  before I mention their names.  And think about them.  The challenges they faced.  Their spirit.  Their good energy.  All the things that they thought  about for future generations.  The things that they shared.  The words and wishes  that they had  and the women that helped them.  The water that was drawn  from the communities,  from the springs,  to feed the people  and to use it in healing  and in medicine, and in teas,  and all the things  that were used in order  for our people to survive. 

 So I'll just mention  their names.  I won't pronounce them  in Ho-Chunk, because I probably  will mispronounce them, so  I'll just give you their names.  White Crow's Village  was right near Monona.  Four Legs Village  was near Middleton.  Whirling Thunder  and Little Priest  were on Lake Koshkonong.  Spotted Arm was near Exeter.  And Spotted Arm  is one of the men  who traveled to join Tecumseh.  -- Village was near Beloit.  And for those of you who are  from Baraboo, Devil's Lake  and Parfrey's Glenn,  that's where -- was also from,  he had another village there.  And Iron Walker  was near Watertown. 

 So those are some of the people  that helped the relatives  through the times that we were  being removed from this area.  So I just wanted to mention  their names.  And that I really truly value  the Four Lakes area  which we call Dejope.  So I'll leave time here now,  because I know there are  so many other people  who have things to share.  But I wanted you to know that  it's valuable to me and my  grandparents and all of the  ancestors before me.  Thank you, very much.  [APPLAUSE]