- [Ernie] In this Native Report, we meet a Chicago-based Jemez Pueblo artist who also does important work at the Field Museum's Native American Exhibit Hall.

- I'm always thinking about what are those things that I can do to help my people.

- [Rita] And we talk with an award-winning Ojibwe author about her new book, Gichigami Hearts, Stories and Histories from Misaabekong.

- [Ernie] Plus, a historic book release, the Mille Lacs Band and the Minnesota Historical Society, with a team of elders, scholars, and artists have released five books in the Ojibwe language.

- We also learn what we can do to lead healthier lives, and hear from our elders.

- [Announcer] Production for Native Report is made possible by grants from the Blandin Foundation, Anishinabe Fund, and Alexandra Smith Fund, in support of Native American treaty rights, administered through the Duluth Superior Area Community Foundation.

(lively Native American music) - Welcome to Native Report, and thanks for tuning in.

I'm Ernie Stevens.

- Thanks, Ernie.

I'm Rita Karppinen.

In this episode, we hear from tribal authors and artists who share traditional stories of the past that live on today, as well as carrying on the Ojibwe language and their cultural roots in writings, artwork, and exhibits.

- We'll start with a Chicago-based artist who works with the Field Museum's Native American Exhibit Hall, which is currently undergoing a renovation project that will ultimately better represent Native stories.

Through her work and art, she's committed to changing inaccurate representations of Native people.

(light music) - I know some people will say that, you know, Native people are invisible.

We're not invisible.

It's just that people don't know how to see us, or people choose not to see us.

They don't know who we are today.

My name is Deborah Yepa-Pappan.

I'm Jemez Pueblo and Korean.

I'm a mother, wife, daughter, visual artist, Chicagoan, and currently I'm the community engagement coordinator here at the Field Museum.

I've been here for about three years, working on a project to renovate the Native American Hall.

I grew up here in Chicago, coming here on field trips or coming here with my father during the summer.

I remember seeing the display cases that had our Pueblo culture on display.

I remember my father saying, "Well, that doesn't look like, you know, where they're saying it's from."

It could have said it was from Cochiti Pueblo," and I remember my father saying, "That really looks like it's from Jemez."

That was something that always resonated with me.

The narrative was definitely not from Native people.

It's really important to have somebody to care for Native people when they come into this institution, whether as a visitor, or one of our collaborators that we're working with on our renovation.

You know, Native people have not had that before, and I think, you know, relationships between the museum and Native people have been strained for decades.

It can be an intimidating or uncomfortable place, particularly when the display cases were unchanged.

When we had anthropologists creating stories for us, misrepresenting us in the display cases, you know, that creates a hostile environment for even the one Native person that may walk through that exhibit.

The Native American Hall renovation project started in 2018.

The first year was, you know, just really deep in conversation.

I would have conversations with our Native guests, and we would talk about the issues we had with the hall, with the cases that were on display.

Being a Native person myself, and already having that lived experience, I think really helps.

They can trust me, and they can share their experience or their thoughts with me, and not have me make excuses for the museum.

You know, I'm right there with them.

I feel exactly what they're feeling.

Although I work here, I like to say that I don't work for the museum.

I work at the museum for Native people, and so that's who I feel I am accountable to.

We also talked about those things that we wanted to see.

We talked about what we would rather see on display.

I was also able to bring that back to our renovation project team, and share, this is what Native people want to see in here.

This is how we want the narrative to change.

Predominantly, it's going to be story.

We're going to be listening to stories, and I think that's a much better way to learn, not just about Native culture and about Native people, but to learn from Native people.

I think a lot about how museums can decolonize.

I've always thought that that should be like, a 12-step program of some sort, and you know, what's the first step?

The first step is always admitting.

They need to be the ones to say, "Yes, the Field Museum is guilty," because of those early practices of how they used to go out to our communities, and to our ancestral burial sites, and just dig up our ancestors, or trick Native people to sell things to them.

I'm also recently a co-founder of the newly-formed native arts organization called Center for Native Futures.

Places like the Field Museum have kept us in the past so much that when people come through, they literally think Native people are all gone.

That we're all dead.

That's what we're thinking with Center for Native Futures is that we're informed by the past, but we're thinking about the future, and we're doing it through artwork.

Art is just something that's so embedded in Native culture.

It's just so much a part of all of us.

I think that if we're a Native person, and we're creating something, that is Native art, because it's made through the lens that we have as a Native person.

Through my own artwork, I really try to delve into identity, my own identity in particular.

Everything that I do has always been grounded in who I am.

I'm always thinking about what are those things that I can do to help my people?

- Debra is Korean and Jemez Pueblo.

She's married to fellow artist Chris Pappan, who is call Osage in Cheyenne River Sioux heritage.

(light music) - Young, healthy people for the most part, don't need medications.

As we age, blood pressure goes up, heart disease creeps in, and aches and pains cause us to become less active.

Constipation and urinary problems are not uncommon, along with a host of other issues.

As a result, people tend to get put on more and more medicines.

These can be medicines for diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis pain, heart and kidney problems, and to prevent other problems.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that people not taking their medicines is an issue.

This is especially a problem in elderly patients.

Sometimes they simply forget to take their medications.

Sometimes they don't take them because they don't feel good, and sometimes they stop taking them because they do feel good.

This causes lots of problems at clinic visits.

If someone's blood pressure is up because it's assumed they're taking their blood pressure medicines, and they aren't, they could easily have that dose increased, or another blood pressure medicine added.

The same goes for diabetes medicines, or medicines for any condition.

Talking with your healthcare provider is always best, working together to reduce number of medications, bringing all of your medications to visits, limiting the number of pharmacies you use, and discussing costs is in your best interest.

You're pharmacist is a healthcare professional, and is waiting to help.

For the rest of us, remember to call an elder.

They've been waiting for your call.

I'm Dr. Arne Vainio, and this is Health Matters.

(light music) - We talked with an Ojibwe author about her latest book discussing the great westward migration that carried the Ojibwe people to Duluth, The Point of Rocks.

Her writing craft is an art with a mix of poetry and short stories, some rooted in myth, others in reality.

(light music) - When something is put on paper then, I have come to believe that that is another form of a sacred type of teaching and learning that has gone on for many, many, many generations.

(audience clapping) - (Native American term) everybody.

I'm Linda Legarde Grover, and I'm at a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth Department of American Indian Studies, and I'm a member of the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe, and I've written some books, and my most recent one is called Gichigami Hearts, Stories and Histories from Misaabekong.

It's part memoir, it's part history, there's research in it, there's some fiction in there, some essays, and there's a little bit of poetry too, and what it is, is a portrait of the people of this part of Lake Superior, on this end of Lake Superior.

Misaabekong is one of the words for Duluth, and it's a geographic type of term, but beyond that, it is a spiritual term too, and in English language, it means the place of the giants, and it refers to the big rock formations that are, rise inland just a little ways from the lake, from Lake Superior.

And that rock formation actually goes from southwest of Duluth over by Carlton, Minnesota, all the way up the shore, all the way up and into Canada.

And in some places, and Duluth is one of them, there's a large outcropping, and here in Duluth, it's called, colloquially, the Point of Rocks.

And so the book, it talks the history of my family, and the history of settlers coming in of the fur trade, and Duluth kind of growing into what it is today, but also into the foundation, which is geographic and spiritual, and based on religious beliefs too, of the coming of the Ojibwe people here during the great migration from the eastern part of this continent, and then afterwards then, the coming in of immigrant populations.

I write in here of the journey that my great, great grandparents took, a young married couple took from the Madeline Island community over to Fond du Lac here, to the old Fond du Lac community on the far western end of Duluth.

Carol and I were the only people sitting at the fire, and she began to talk.

"Can you see, there's a house down there about a block to the other side of the bridge, that house?

Did you know that house was your great, great grandmother's house?

You didn't?

Well, she was a Laberge, and she was born at Fond du Lac, the old Fond du Lac, not where the reservation is now, where the people got moved, and her mother and dad came there from the Point, that big village in Madeline island in Wisconsin.

Do you know about that?

Well, that was a long time ago.

You ought to know some of these things."

So I write about that journey that these, that this young couple took.

They came, I think to the fur post there, the American fur post, which was pretty close to, it was not prospering by the time they got there, and I think they went there to work.

And I know that he too, in finding work, went all the way up the north shore, up to the fur post up at Grand Portage, and worked there, and fished for them for sustenance for the Native and non-Native people on the fur post.

I write in here, the great impact of federal Indian policies on families, on children, well, everybody, all the, all the generations in a family.

And so in my family, the boarding school era had tremendous effects.

From like the, I'd suppose around 1890, and all the way through, probably close to the end of the, close to the beginning of the second world war, people in my family were removed from home, and sent away to go to school, and they were going to be assimilated into larger American society.

There were people in my family who died while they were at boarding school, very, very difficult, sad part of our history.

Printed form, when it's on paper, on the page, that's how it is at that time.

It actually continues to live and reform itself.

It's just that on the page it's static, it's what we see.

A lot of the stuff, in fact, almost everything is handwritten to start.

When I'm writing poetry, I usually have something, you know, written on a piece of paper somewhere that I am turning in my hands, and looking at, and thinking what I'll do with it.

The end of it, to me, often the way the poem looks on the page is an important part of what the poem is, and so it's almost like sculpting, you know, taking something and scraping, and I think all writing is this way, scraping away and chipping away.

So this one is Nijo Dane, the Wolf and the Rabbit, Nanabuju, and his brother sort of.

Life began for Myingan and his older twin Nanabuju in a sudden storm with skies and clouds that darkened to purple and near black, and an icy wind that blew down from the north on a mild day during early harvest season.

This is how it happened, and it still happens this way sometimes.

And I told Wendy that I wanted to wear this when I, when my book would come out, hoping, hoping it would, and so- (audience clapping) How often does a person get to wear a crown?

And how often does a person get to wear a crown of sweetgrass?

I can smell it as it's on my head here.

- Linda is an award-winning author, and we just heard about her latest book sharing stories of the real and fictional characters with a deep and tenacious bond to the land, one another, and the Ojibwe culture.

- A collaborative effort between the Tribal Nation and the Historical Society has resulted in the release of five books in the Ojibwe language.

It's all part of the Ojibwe (Native American term) Project, where 16 first-language speakers teamed with linguists, teachers, and Ojibwa language experts to create the books.

(light music) - I'm really excited today.

We had a really unique opportunity.

Mille Lacs has, for a long time, been running a program called Aanjibinaadizing, which means changing lives.

The tribe identified language and culture as an essential component of long, healthy, happy living in indigenous communities.

And they had some money that came in through grants, and we were looking at the best way to allocate resources, and decided that rather than running the elders ragged just trying to teach everything they know with a really time-sensitive effort, we identified 25 fluent speakers left in the community of Mille Lacs at the time that this work started.

We said, "Let's set them up to teach people for hundreds of years to come."

The tribe got behind it, and got all of it in motion.

- I wrote a story about how I got on the Department of Transportation, working with the men.

I was the first woman, and the first Native to be hired in the state of Minnesota in Brainerd for then that, so I wrote about that.

- We've actually published five books now.

Through this effort, almost all of the work has happened at the, just before COVID hit, and through the entire COVID pandemic.

During this time, several of the elders passed away, probably 20% of the fluent speakers in Mille Lacs passed away through COVID.

So it has been a trying time, but coming through this far with the pandemic, and all of the work, to see the fruits of their efforts, to see their voices preserved in perpetuity, and being used now to teach and advance our language is really heartening and exciting.

The whole community's really thrilled to see these works come.

- I'm here for the signing of our books that we all were authors on.

I think is pretty exciting.

I don't think I'm an author.

(chuckling) - The Minnesota Historical Society has a lot of faith in the elders of Mille Lacs.

They published these five books in a language that no one on the staff there can read, which is pretty remarkable, and through their support, we will actually be able to keep the books in print in perpetuity, and have the marketing and distribution mechanism for that organization behind this work, so it's not just a mom and pop print operation, or the needle lost in a stack of needles somewhere on Amazon, but it it'll really have longevity, and access across the Ojibwe world.

- Most of the books, the stories that we wrote was stuff that happened to us when we were young, or things that we did, like racing, and how to make maple syrup, and to go fish, and clean their own fish that they catch, different things like that what to do, make sure that you do your, your ceremonial stuff when you have to.

- So the five books cover a spectrum of, you know, themes, and, you know, kind of age, target age levels, and so forth, but the full Ojibwe language is on display.

In all of the communities on the United States, there are just some hundreds of speakers left, and you know, they're all elders.

These are very endangered dialects of Ojibwe.

- Because there isn't hardly anybody that talks Ojibwe anymore.

I know some of them can understand it, but they can't talk it, no, but it's coming back.

I see it, it's coming back.

Feels good to hear people talk, and you understand them.

- It might look easy from the outside, but it is hard work.

For most indigenous languages, their fluent speakers are not literate.

They don't read and write in the indigenous language that they speak so well.

So, you know, and the people who are developing writing systems and tools, like linguists, or maybe students at a university, they're usually not fluent speakers.

So you gotta build a really unique set of skills around literacy in both the elders, and the people who are doing the transcription work, and it all has to be right, you know, and to have high academic standards.

- Well, we didn't have so much problems.

We just told our stories, and they were, everything was funny, we had a lot of laughs.

They were very comfortable with what we were doing.

(light music) - [Anton] The future vitality of Ojibwe is not certain, but it is certainly possible because of what these elders have done.

- Along with the books, the Aanjibinaabe Project is developing a Rosetta Stone Ojibwe language learning program.

(light music) (speaking Native American language) - My English name is Gordon, and my French last name is Jourdain.

- Maajii, do you have any stories you would like to share with us?

- I was born into a large family in the community where I grew up, Lac La Croix First Nation in Ontario, Canada.

Another component of that family life was the influence of grandparents, an the selection of which one of those children, grandchildren is going to be the one that would go and live with the grandparents, and in return, the grandparents would teach this one all the teachings that they were given by their grandparents that way.

So my grandmother, I like to think that she chose me, but I probably, because of my behavior, I had to go live with grandmother, and from the time I was small, I lived with her.

I was her principal interpreter from the time I was a little boy.

So what happened is I speak a version of the language that's very old.

Some people who study the language, linguists, liken some of the words that I use to being archaic, and are not used anymore, but I still use them whenever I get a chance to find somebody that can still remember what those words are.

(light music) - If you missed a show, or want to catch up online, find a set nativereport.org, and follow us on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram for behind-the-scenes updates, and drop a comment on social media if you enjoyed the show.

- Thanks for spending time with your friends and neighbors across Indian country.

I'm Rita Karppinen.

- And I'm Ernie Stevens.

We'll see you next time on Native Report.

(lively Native American music) - [Announcer] Partial funding of this episode of Native Report is provided by the citizens of Minnesota through the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.