My Odawa name is Ginebig which means snake.

My English name is Eric Hemingwa I am from Cross Village.

It's first and foremost Anishina And then we started to be put into these categories when people came across the ocean and encountered us.

We became more defined in these as we had more contact with Europeans and Americans.

From my understanding, we don't the word for tribe in our langua That's a very Western concept.

It's Anishinaabe the people the real people, the good people We you start to be labeled as tr when Europeans came here.

So that's that's where we start.

We are at a place called Bay Sho The Odawa name for this place is meaning across the bay.

This is an old Indian path going from Harbor Springs and Petoskey to Charlevoix.

So this is the old path, and I am in one of the most historic areas for little t And these are legitimate crooked that the odawa bent hundreds of These are some of the las standing examples of our crooked So in terms of histori cultural relevance, it doesn't get any bigger than right in thi These trees are trail markers.

They signify a cultural area, a spiritual area.

And the Odawa purposely manipula There was a science to this, of bending these trees with weights, counterweights, r certain sizes as the tree got bi There's several types of crooked These crooked trees are trail marker trees, but they're also signifying cultural areas.

Their messaging, they're telling this is a special place, a sacre This is a direction to go to oth There's a lot of meaning with th They are telling messages to the Anishinaabe These trees are a definin characteristic of the people her It's possible that these trees were her during the French and Indian War Sadly, though, we had a massive ice sto this year.

It completely devastated the are the trees.

Nobody's ever seen anything like Trees were cracking, they were b It was pretty horrifying.

So that wa that's a hard one to to look at.

You know, this tree had been the for hundreds of years.

In my mind, they're witness tre they witnessed a change that the went through over the last coup of hundred years with the treati becoming minorities in our homel the wars, all of this.

So as we talk about these thing that, you know, the Odawa were i you know, our environment is, you know, tied with us and these trees witnessed that.

One of the few standing cultural landmarks for the tribe is these Yeah, this is home.

Yeah, this is.

You know I came here as a really young ki with elders and my mom saying, this is a special spot.

Remember it.

Now I'm getting to that age.

I'm trying to find youth, and, this is a special spot, remember So you pass it on.

And this isn't somethin you're going to read in a lot of You have to be in the spot to hear the story.

And they're -they're still here, which is really remarkable, which I think reflects the Odaw still being in this area as well