Sharon Cloud

Can you tell us a little about yourself, and what nation you are from?                                                                           I am a member of the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin, which is over in Oneida by Green Bay.  I grew up there, left there when I was about 17 to go to college, I never really moved back because in the process of going to college I ended up getting married soon after I graduated.  But, I grew up in the Oneida area.  The interesting thing about the Oneida area is that coming off of boarding schools and World War II, a lot of the Oneida people were trying to convince themselves and their children that being Indian wasn’t the way to be.  So, a lot of our parents and grandparents were trying to tell us that we should go to school and learn how to be like the white people, so that you advance and don’t hang onto culture and don’t worry about your history.  So, growing up, I didn’t know very much about my own history and culture. A lot of what I now know, and a lot of the ceremonies and the things that I have been involved with have been as an adult.  I’ve had to make myself go back and learn things that I didn’t know when I was younger.  My husband is Ho-Chunk, and he grew up just the opposite of that, speaking    his language, being involved in ceremonies, and dancing at pow-wows.

So, now as an adult, I’m learning still, and now I have eight grandchildren from three daughters that are all Ho-Chunk.My children are all enrolled Ho-Chunk, and my grandchildren are all Ho-Chunk, so I’m forced, well not forced, but an interest on my part has been to learn Ho-Chunk, so that I can help my daughters identify their culture. I never learned my language.  I know a few words here and there and it’s been exciting for me to even say “thank you” in Oneida. I just learned that word in the last couple of years.  I regularly talk to young people about culture, my culture, and about American Indian culture generically, to young people in classes and I always happen to say to them that I didn’t grow up learning this stuff, but I learned it as an adult. We have an oral tradition, so a lot of our stories are passed on from grandparents to their kids and to their grandchildren. There was almost a wall between my culture and I, with my parents saying, “Oh, don’t worry about that, just go to school and be a good student, get involved in band, be a good athlete” all these kinds of things, so there was always this wall there.  The stories weren’t told to me, so a lot of the stories that I have learned have been me asking, “Well, what about this? or If I dance at pow-wows, what do Oneidas wear, what do the outfits look like?”  I’ve had to research that, so now I have an Oneida outfit and I dance at pow-wows, and as a young person, I never did that.  My daughters, on the other hand, started dancing when they were about 12 or 13, so now we have eight grandkids that dance!  As you can see, I’m kind of caught in the middle of three cultures as opposed to a lot of people being with one, so you do need to know about your culture and about the other culture, so you need to know both worlds.  With me, I was caught in the majority culture, but later on in life, I needed to get to know my own culture with the Oneida people, and now marrying my husband, I am in the middle of that culture as well, which is entirely different than the Oneida one. 

Besides oral traditions, we have ceremonies, ceremonies for everything, and I didn’t know that, and my parents didn’t even know that, and now as an adult I’ve been through those ceremonies and so have they.  I actually have a Ho-Chunk culture now, myself.  I am a part of that culture.  A long time ago, with all of the Indian nations, when you are born, you are given a name, and my name is Sharon.  I was given that name, but those are English words, and my husband always says that his name is Alan, and it’s borrowed from a different culture.  His real name is Ma-heet, it’s the Ho-Chunk word for Cloud.  You don’t always get your last name as your Indian name, but his last name is Cloud and that is his Indian name as well.  So when I was born, my name was Sharon, and I never received an Oneida name, until three years ago, and probably ten years ago, I started inquiring, “What is the process, and how do people get an Oneida name?”  Now a lot of the young people in Oneida, are actually going by their Oneida name, and they don’t even have English names, so I was kind of jealous!  But, then I was pushed a little harder to have an Oneida name because my husband was explaining to me that the Ho-Chunk people, the married couples, that are from different nations and different tribes, and since my husband, being Ho-Chunk, if I were to die before him, he would physically give me back to the Oneida people because that’s where my spirit is supposed to be, with them.  Then, I told my husband, “You know, I always heard that married couples get buried next to each other, how can I change that?”  So, my husband told me that there is a process for that; you’ll have to hope that someone will contact your family when you are deceased, and that they bring you home, physically.  Also, somebody over there from your side of the family needs to know that you want to be buried by me, and then when we do that, the Ho-Chunk will have to take care of you and your funeral services.  So, I had to go and tell my parents, my brothers and sisters, tell my aunts and uncles, that, “If I die, before or after Allen, and they start sending me back over here, just tell them to keep me, because I want to be buried by Allen, so then the Ho-Chunk will take care of me.”  So, in their ceremony, and I believe in ours as well, part of the ceremony is our creator has to know that you died, and someone has to tell them, and that is similar in probably in everybody’s culture.  In your culture, your creator is Hmong, and in my culture, the creator is Oneida, and the Ho-Chunk creator is Ho-Chunk, and that’s the way it is, even though everybody believes that there is a creator, every culture has their own.  During the ceremony of dying and birth, and all the religious ceremonies that you can go to, you can see the creator in some way, some fashion.  My husband was explaining to me that in Ho-Chunk, during your burial ceremony, some of the people speak to the creator, and they do it in Ho-Chunk, so they have to say your name, so that the creator knows that you are coming so that they make a place for you, and you know that you are walking into a place that is familiar, but they have to know your name.  So, my husband says to me, “I don’t know what they would do with you, because you’re Oneida and you don’t even have a name!” Therefore, the Ho-Chunk creator isn’t going to recognize a Sharon, because it isn’t a Ho-Chunk word.  So, first I thought that I had to get a name, and the Ho-Chunk can’t give me a name because I’m with them.  So, another lesson I learned is the process of getting a name. 

The ceremony, the Oneida people have what is called the Long House ceremony, and it’s also a dwelling, so a long house is a type of dwelling.  A husband and a wife would have a family, and they would build a house if a child came along.  Normally, women brought men into their home, the men did not take the women away, so the women always stayed home, and the men would go.  There would also be a smoke stack for the husband and wife, and for the daughter, if she married, and her husband came and lived with them, it would be a separate smoke stack, but it would all be in one long house, and so the house just got bigger and bigger.  For the religion, a lot of the ceremonies also went on in the long house.  I had to first get a gift, gift giving is good, part of diverse cultures involves gift-giving, so thank you for your gift.  Shaking hands is another one, so when you leave, I will shake your hand.  I was told that I had to approach a female elder, and that’s because the Oneida people are matriarchal, so our leaders are the women.  But, they are not public speakers, the men are, but the women groom them, and tell them what to say!  I was told to approach an elder Oneida female, and take her something, whatever I wanted to give her, so I chose to give her some wild rice, and I also brought my mother with me.  My mother is 82 and had an Oneida name that I can’t quite remember, but she was called that name ever since she was a little child.  So, we both went together to go and visit that lady, and that lady wanted to make it official with my mother’s name, so that was already my mother’s name, but the ceremony just made it more official.  You know how they say sometimes, “People know you, without even having met you?”  When we went to this woman’s home, and she has a little room, and she takes people in there and she has a conversation with them, and in all of that conversation, she comes up with a name that fits you and your personality.  So, she had talked to my mother, and told my mother that the name that had stuck with my mother would be her name.  Then I went in and talked to her and she said, “Aren’t you that Oneida woman who lives with the Ho-Chunk people,” and I said “Yes,” and she said, “I heard you have a really good life.”  So, apparently people have talked to her about me, not just because she was making it up or anything, but people had already talked to her about me, she knew about me and said, “Are your children Ho-Chunk?” I said “Yes,” and she asked if I had any grandchildren and I said, “Yes, they are Ho-Chunk too.”  “That’s what I have heard, but I have heard that you have a good life among the Ho-Chunk, and that they treat you well.”  I told her that was true and that we had been married for over 30 years and she said, “My Oneida name would be Hu-ing-gi-o,” and I couldn’t spell that for you because our language is real different and is not like English language at all. Then I asked her what my name meant, and she said that it meant “she has a good life,” and she said because it especially addresses the fact that I have a good life away from the Oneida people, and that if I told people my name, they would know that I have a good life where I am.  Then I thought, “Oh, my husband is going to like that.”  He did, so that was our conversation, and she told me what my name would be.  Then I asked her what the next step was, and she said that I had to go to the Long House ceremonies, and that she wanted me to come to the Winter ceremony, because that is when all the people who are going to be receiving names are there.

The whole ceremony took about two hours, so you have to bring food with you.  Everything about our culture involves eating a lot.  She told me that I needed to bring a little dish, like a potluck to pass around, and that there were going to be about 200 people there, but that the point wasn’t that I had to feed them all, just bring a small bowl of something and then during the ceremony, one of your relatives needs to be there to pass it out, just a little bit of it, and pass it out to see how far it goes.  All of those little bowls that people bring, get sent out in different directions, and I brought a bowl of blueberries and strawberries mixed together, and one of my daughters passed it out, and she went one way, and another person would go another way, so you would end up having a whole plate full of stuff that you probably couldn’t finish.  Also, the whole ceremony is done in the Oneida languag.  So I was going to go up to people not speaking Oneida, and my husband came, only speaking Ho-Chunk, and three of my daughters, who speak English, and they never learned either language, and one of my son-in-laws who is also Ho-Chunk, also does not speak the language, and there is also me, who only speaks English.  So we are sitting there and this ceremony is going on, and they are explaining about names and the culture and what goes on in the winter, and all of those kind of things.  There is also singing going on.  I had a friend who spoke the language, and she knew that I was coming for the ceremony, and she grew up with an Oneida name and speaking the language, so she sat directly behind us, and she kind of leaned over, and she explained what they were saying.  She explained the whole thing to us and it was just nice, it made a big difference on how we all felt, and about how my family felt about the ceremony.  So it was good, and I now have an Oneida name.  Then, I go back to my husband and tell my husband that when I die, his family has to know my name, then he tells me that the Ho-Chunk creator, even though I now have an Oneida name, he won’t know that better than anybody.  So, I decided to turn it over to my husband.  I explained my name, and I told him that he had to come up with a Ho-Chunk name that means the same thing, and whoever buries me is going to have to know what that is.  But, he still hasn’t come up with the yet, but he said he will.  So that is one ceremony, that I do that is specifically for Oneida.  But I know they have ceremonies for weddings, for when children are born, similar ceremonies that everybody has.

Beyond that, we have quarterly and seasonal ones.  I have a man, who works here with me at University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, and he is into spirituality and his nation understands their culture, and he does things, and talks about cutting down trees, and how we have to ask the creator, because the creator, created that life, which is essentially the tree.  The creator also needs to give us approval to cut that tree down.  Out of respect, before we go out and cut that tree down, we put some tobacco and put it on the base of that tree and sprinkle it on the ground and we stand there and say a few words to the creator explaining what is going to happen and why the tree is coming down.  We are just going to cut it down and use the wood to keep our house warm and we just want to let you know that we are not just killing this tree and we are not disrespecting it.  We just need part of the wood to build a house or whatever.  So, we do talk to our creator, and do get permission before we do anything.  Also, before we go fishing, we take some tobacco down by the water and tell the creator that we are going to take some fish out of the water, so we can get something to eat.  During the ceremony with my naming, a girl was talking about all the different kinds of foods, and all the meat involved, the fruits, vegetables and the bread and all that kind of stuff, so that was probably a good half hour of talking, just talking about food, so ceremonies take a long time. 

 I remember, I once said to a young boy one time, he must have been only in second or third grade, and he asked me if I went to school.  I told him yes I did, and he asked if it looked like his school, and I told him no, and how I went to a one room classroom, and that it looked like a house, but teachers came there and there was only one room and we were all in that room, and I said, “You know what, there were schools before there were buildings. Like churches sometimes were held just on the hillsides, before they were buildings.”  I tried to get him to understand what I was talking about, in his perspective, and it just happened that I had a picture of an old man sitting behind a young boy on a bank and they were fishing, and I said, “Does this look like a school to you?” I showed him that picture and he said, “That’s not a school.” I said, “That old man is teaching that young boy something and it looks like he is probably talking to him,” and that is a school. That’s how our people used to live on. In our schools, our old people help the young people, and the young people could be involved in playing, or they could be involved in building a project with their hands. But old people were always around and they were talking to them in most of our schools.  The fact that you’re sitting at home, or you’re sitting in your schools here, if your parents are talking to you about something, don’t they teach you something at home? That’s kind of like school, isn’t it?” And he said, “Yes.” I think he understood that, the whole picture of the old man and the young boy where he said “That’s not school!” And after we talked for a little while, that is school you know? That’s kind of like our culture.

Not speaking my language has been a real social conflict, in that I’m kind of jealous of my husband at times, because when he can fluently speak to his elders and his relatives. When we were first together I felt uncomfortable, because I always thought they were talking about me, but they never were and he would always explain things to me. One of the things I learned and it’s probably true with Oneida culture that the men are in control.  When they had ceremonies the men would be serving the food to the women; the women prepared the food, but the men would serve it. They had a thing for the first married; I was the women’s nook, and I was the new woman on the block.  When we were first married, he was real good at explaining to me the expectations of his family, as if I were a Ho-Chunk woman, because I didn’t know those things.  I was so grateful because his family accepted me really easy because they thought I just knew that stuff. He was just good at explaining it to me. When we went to his parents’ house he told me, “My mother is going to sit there before dinner time and expect you to do the cooking,” And I asked, “Can you help me?” and she said, “You’re on your own, everything is there you need,” and I know she liked whatever it was for dinner, because she had told him that it was.  She just sat there patiently waiting for me to get dinner ready.  Or, if it was not meal time and there were people over, that were married for awhile, and because I was the new woman, it was my responsibility to get up and make coffee and make sure everyone had coffee while they were there.  I was feeling like a waitress for awhile and I felt like, “How come I’m being taken advantage of?” It was just nice when a younger brother got married and there was a new woman to take over. But anyways, my daughters learned all of this so, when we went to, I don’t know if it was my grandfathers or one of my uncles, somebody died in my family, that was 10 years ago.  My daughters, growing up in this Ho-Chunk background, the women have to get up and be ready to do stuff, because of the elders.  They need to make sure that the elders were taken care of, and being at this funeral, and there was a reception part. I have about 10 or 12 aunts and uncles, some are still alive, and they were all there waiting for the food to be served, because it was someone’s job the get up and serve.  So, my daughters get up right away, and they went up and they started fixing plates and bringing them back for my parents, and fixing some more plates and bringing them back for my aunt and uncle, and then more plates until all the people were served.  My husband was sitting there, knowing that that was something to be expected of them, and my nieces were sitting there waiting for their mothers to come, they were just waiting, just sitting there, and he told me, “Why don’t they go up? Look at all these elders here not getting served,” and I said, “Well, we weren’t taught to do that here.”  So, while the girls were doing that, my aunts and uncles appreciated that, that they didn’t have to get told to do that that they chose to do it, because that’s just how they were raised. My aunts and uncles really enjoyed that, to be served like that, because otherwise they would have to stand up in the long lines. 

We have a clan system, my daughters bought this Turtle necklace for me for Christmas, and if you look up there and see and those turtles, I don’t buy those, students, when they found out I’m Turtle clan, they would just bring those to me as gifts.  I don’t have a lot of shelves at home to be just putting everything on top, but there are some expensive turtles up there, like the one on top, the white one.  It’s one of those ceramics, I got that one from a graduating student, the other one up there is a Hmong turtle, it was made by a Hmong lady.  That one I purchesed because i thought it was pretty and different looking.  That is just one of the things I like, arts and crafts, it’s an investment. 

I guess since we’re talking about the Turtle Clan, would you know anything about the mission of the Oneida Tribal school?                                                                                                                                                                            The Tribal School? It’s an alternative school.  It’s a public school now, but it’s an alternative to the public schools, for kids who are having problems.  The school has been there for a long time, though. A lot of the problems are just about getting along, racism exists in Wisconsin, discrimination and other problems in the schools, and the tribe decided to make a grant program to build an alternative school. And most cities have one; is there an alternative school in Wausau? We have an alternative school in Stevens Point.  It’s a high school, and it’s for kids that don’t get along very well at the high school, so they go to the alternative school, and they get special assistance, until they go back to the high school, either SPASH or Pacelli, whichever they want.  Tribes welcome them into their schools, that’s why they are called tribal schools, funded in part by the government, and funded a lot by the casino, or some of the other main departments. The whole idea was to provide an alternative to the public schools.  It started out as an elementary school, and they got into junior high and now a high school, so it goes K through 12. They teach part of the curriculum in their language, so the kids are learning their language, right from kindergarten.  It also teaches part of the ceremonies, for the Oneida nation, so it brings ceremonies right into the school, they can talk to their creator and not have to worry about staying long. So they say prayers, I was talking to the administrator that was there, probably 5 years ago, and he said, “It’s the only school in the world, where it starts out teaching government and legal issues in kindergarten.” So they start out talking about the Constitution, in kindergarten, and I don’t even know how they do that.  They start out introducing policies, tribal policies and jurisdiction, and legal names and things like that in kindergarten, or how ever they may approach that, they bring it down to that level.  They start in kindergarten, so by the time they finish high school they are speaking the language, they know the history, they know the Long House.  They know everything, by the time they finish high school. If they start in kindergarten, and go up, because it’s an alternative, they have a choice, they can either go there or the public schools. So I guess the numbers at the Tribal schools are getting bigger. The mission is basically like the public schools education, but also having the Oneida education. So their days are longer. They start earlier, and they stay longer. My parents have changed from “Don’t be Indian” to “Be an Oneida”.  They’re learning the language and they’re learning about our history and culture as elders.  I am learning as an adult.  I’m moving into my elder years, I’m not there yet, but I’ve had to learn as much as I can about Oneida, and much more than that, just to help with my daughters, and their kids.

What is your occupation?                                                                                                                                                             I am the director of the Native American Center here at the University, which gets me out into tribal communities a lot. I like that, I wear a lot of hats.  I develop tribal programs on reservations as well as advise students, Andy B. and I together work with students, on their activities. We both teach part-time and get out in public schools a lot and talk to kids. I’ve been here since 1979, so I’ve been here a long time.

How much do you value education, and how much is education valued by your family?                                     Well, like I said my parents really valued education a lot.  They were pushing it on us, and I had several brothers and sisters, and we all have high school diplomas, and we all have a least a two year associate degree, many of us have a bachelor’s degrees, and two or us our master’s degrees.  Me and my younger brother have our masters degrees. I would have gone on for my PhD but I decided that that was far enough. If I was much younger I would have gone for my PhD, maybe one of my kids will. At this point, I have three daughters and they all graduated from SPASH, two have their bachelor’s degrees from here, and they’re working on master’s degrees, and one has an associate degree from Mid-State and is working on a bachelor’s degree. My husband has a bachelor’s degree, because the girls and I pulled him in, and said, “You’re going to get a degree whether you like it or not.”  He had graduated from high school but never thought about a college degree, too. I have grandkids, the oldest one is 11 and she’s already talking about college. So, our value for college is way up there. A lot of elders and people my age don’t really have a vision for their younger kids to go to school, so if you finish high school it’s wonderful, let’s have a ceremony and then that’s it, they have a job.  High school is kind of the end off for a lot of people and with a lot of them not even that, they still drop out before they finish high school, which is sad, I’d like to see them pulled back in somehow.

Before when you said when your parents wanted you to back away from your culture, was it because they wanted you to have a better life and education?                                                                                                                   Both my parents came through WWII, My dad was in the Navy, Coastguard, and my mother had to work real hard, I think she had two kids before me and that was during the time my dad was gone. She had a real hard life, he had a real hard life, prior to going in as well as after, to make money for the family.  When he got home he had to work all the time, life was really bad back then.  He was lucky that he had five brothers who had all been in the service.  My dad was probably an electrician in the service and then he had a brother that was into plumbing, I don’t know why, and then another guy that was a mechanic, and another guy that was really good in building homes. So they got together and they helped each other build homes.  Dad did all the wiring, another guy did all the plumbing, another guy the roofing and the cement finishing.  It cost a lot less, so we grew up in nice homes, that was the one thing, because my uncles shared the cost.  My husband is a little bit jealous sometimes, he said, “Seeing some of the pictures of the homes you guys lived in..,” My parents we’re always taking pictures, we do that too with our grandkids and our kids.  Back then they were all black and white, we didn’t have colored film, so seeing some of those pictures he said “You guys look like you were rich people.” But we weren’t, we would barely scratching in life.  I can remember when my mother had to, there were like six of us, and she was recycling our toys, my doll disappeared one day, and we looked for it, and my mother helped me look for my doll, knowing she had stolen my doll.  She had taken it, and while I was at school she was cleaning it up and fixing it’s hair different. I don’t remember what the doll had originally had on, but she took some material from some old curtains and she made this girl into a bride, so it was a bride doll, and my younger sister got it for Christmas.  I didn’t even recognize it for awhile, and then I realized that that was my doll we couldn’t find.  She recycles trucks from the older guy to the little guy, and she would clean them up and repaint them, she was just real creative.  She never worked, she was always home, my dad always worked. That was kind of a cultural thing, the husband was supposed to work and the wife was supposed to stay home. That’s just the way they’ve always lived. To this day, she’s 82, and has never had a job, except during the time he was at war. She worked at a factory in Milwaukee.

What do you feel about the difference in calling yourself a Native American or an Indian?                              Because of the position I have here I use a lot of different terms. This is a Native American Center, so that’s a term I use often. American Indians tend to call themselves Indians, or they call themselves their tribal names.  I should really be referring to myself as an Oneida, as opposed to Indian, but I use the words interchangeably. I never really know what’s going to come out of my mouth. There is real American, there’s American Indian, Canadians call us “First Nation’s People,” there are other people who say we are Indigenous Tribes. So it just varies, I don’t have a preference, so I use them all.

Do you know what role the Oneida people played in WWII?                                                                                             Well, the Oneida people came here from New York, then we split up in three different directions.  There’s an Oneida of Canada and the Oneida of Wisconsin.  That was the result of being pushed out of New York. A large group of Oneidas came this way, and we’ve been in count for every major war, and they didn’t even consider us citizens.  My dad wasn’t a citizen where he was born, it wasn’t until about 1926 when the government finally said that we could be citizens. This was interesting, because we were here before they were. So, as far as going to the war, a lot of our men went to war. Later on, I think with Vietnam, a lot of the women started to go to war as well, we may have had women in it.  My grandfather was in WWI, so we were involved way back. He was in WWI and he actually came home, and he was disabled, and that was one of the reasons why my dad had such a hard life.  His father came home from WWI disabled, and died young, so it was up to my dad and his brothers and his sisters to take care of each other. And his mother always had gardens, we always had gardens, too.  It was something to do, we had to survive, everybody had gardens, but my grandparents had massive gardens, and that’s before tractors and before these big machines. So, the grandkids had to be out there, so I spent a lot of time out in these gardens.  But then my grandparents would hire some people from the area to come there and help and they gave them stuff from the garden. A lot of the produce would come to our families, so we could eat, too. But as far as contributing to the military that’s a real eye blinking. Our people went to war before they were citizens.

How hard is it today to keep your culture alive?                                                                                                                   It depends on the family, but it gets tough. Our kids aren’t learning the languages.  Another thing the government didn’t say is that the Indians had freedom of religion. The Freedom of Religion Act wasn’t until the 70s, before our religions were allowed, or practiced in this country.  The people from other countries came here to avoid religious persecution, and they persecuted the Indians for having their own religion. Religion, or at least our ceremonies, are our culture, so a lot of them were lost over the years, before we were allowed to practice them. The government tried really, really hard to just eliminate American Indians, and they tried various ways to do that. One way was to gather up all the young people and send them to boarding schools, and teach them how to not be Indian. They can’t speak their own language, they didn’t practice ceremonies, they didn’t have their parents, and they had to dress all the same in uniforms. My mother went to a boarding school for a little while, but my dad never did, and his dad never did. A lot of the older people talk about the boarding schools, and how awful it was. I’m sure there’s a whole decades of people, I don’t know how many years, when boarding schools existed that a whole group of people that were anti-school or anti-government.  Another way to eliminate being Indian was that the government hired missionaries, whatever religion they were, and they sent them to the Indians, like the Menominee people of Wisconsin, or the Menominee people of Marathon, there was a Catholic missionary.  They dropped a Catholic on Menominee Territory, to teach them all how to be Catholic, and a lot of them are. They have a huge church on the reservation, and a lot of the Menominees are Catholic. The Oneida people, they dropped an Episcopal over there, and they made an Episcopal church. My mother’s family grew up being Episcopal, so that’s how she knew where it was. My father grew up being Methodist, and the Episcopal and the Methodist don’t get along, so when my parents were married their families didn’t get along, because they weren’t supposed to be together. My mother switched over to being Methodist for awhile. But religion, the majority population’s religion played a large part because of government control for a long time. This also went into the ceremonies. So you’re question about, how hard is it to be in the Indian culture, it’s really hard, over the years, but now there’s a real emphasis in most of the communities to bring the ceremonies back. In Wisconsin it was even harder because our ceremonies were originally in New York, so they had to go and learn them there, to send people there and learn the ceremonies, or get people from New York to come here, to teach it to us. So the long house religion I guess is pretty strong in Oneida, you know I’m not involved in it, but still it’s a small improvement for the people that are doing it. The language is coming back, slowly. For awhile there was no language in Oneida, in Wisconsin. So that’s only been here for about 20 years, and that’s my adult life. Before your time. I have a sister, one sister out of eight of us, who can speak Oneida but not fluently, she can converse with other people. So 7 of us don’t know the language. I have a few nieces that went to the Tribal school that can have conversations with people, I don’t know if they’ll ever be fluent, but it’s really nice to be able to do that. The reason my kids didn’t learn a language, is because I didn’t know mine and my husband wasn’t a teacher, and he didn’t know how to teach the whole language and there was no conversation, English was the major language, that’s what they learned. So my oldest daughter was 38 and she was trying to learn the language, so she can, well he husband is too they’re both taking classes, and they converse with their kids as much as they can, and hopefully the kids are going to learn it enough to have a whole conversation. Spanish is another language that is at a lot of the schools, because of the Spanish people here they’re teaching Spanish pretty regular in the schools, and Dora the Explorer, that’s a Spanish thing there, so my grandson a year ago was 7, we were sitting in a Pow Wow and my husband was holding him in his lap, and there was an elder, Ho Chunk people, and I’m glad too because my grandson is learning the language and he said Da-ga, (sp?) which is how you say grandma in Ho Chunk, and he said “Da-ga I can count to 10 in Spanish,” and I said, “I bet you can, how does that go?” So he counted to 10 in Spanish, and my husband sitting there with these Ho Chunk women, and one of them says, “Geeze what’s with these young people they’re all learning how to speak Spanish, and they’re all fluent in English, but to bad they can’t speak Ho Chunk.” So my husband knew that he could also count to 10 in Ho Chunk, and he said, “(name) how do you do that in Ho Chunk?” So he counted out as fast as he could in Ho Chunk. It just made my husband feel like, “my grandson can do that.” That’s one of the things they teach early is how to count, and my daughter has been working with him, so I was very proud. But to hear your kids say anything in your own language is just really impressive, for me because it wasn’t that way. I did a class, I talked to a Hmong class over at SPASH one time, and they were probably 10 or 12, and they had requested speaker to come in from different cultures. It was like a special winter’s group. So I’m in there and I’m talking to this little crew of Hmong students and I brought in some baskets of various kinds, and a lot of hands on this I got to show them. And I said how the interesting thing is how every culture has a different kind of basket weaving, and I said, “Do your families still do basket weaving?” and the young boys were sitting up in front and the girls were sitting in the back, and one of the boys just went, “No we don’t do that anymore, that’s from the old country,” and then one of the girls in the back says, “You lie your mother makes baskets, and I know you help her.” They’re trying to almost hid the fact that they have a culture, they’re trying to be so American, and some of our people are doing that too, it’s another way young people choose to not want to be Indian, and I don’t know how to get around that, there must be something going on that makes them not have the self concept, to not to learn. I don’t know what’s happening, in these other cultures as well.

What do you do for recreation and entertainment?                                                                                                        Play with my grandkids, as often as I can. My husband has a drum group, and he sings at Pow Wows, so we go to Pow Wow’s a lot. And I now have a Ho Chunk outfit and I also have an Oneida outfit, and I’ve worn both of them at Pow Wow’s now, and I’ve been accepted into Ho Chunk enough now that it’s ok for me to be wearing a Ho Chunk outfit, but I also wear the Oneida one when I can. So we go to Pow Wow’s a lot. We gamble, we like to go to the casinos. I read. We go to movies once in awhile. I sold, my daughters and I have developed this business it’s called Central Wisconsin’s BEST, it means Bernice, Ericka, Sharon and Tracy. So I take orders; I sew a lot, and some Pow Wow’s I’ll go as a vender, and some Pow Wow’s I’ll go and be a spectator. We go to art and craft shows, so we’re busy all the time. I was going to show you this picture. It’s my oldest granddaughter in here dance outfit, and this is her little sister, and this is her younger brother, those pictures were taken for a project we were doing. My youngest daughter did all the bead work, that’s the kind of stuff she does. They are all wrestlers, so to give you a different side of them.

How do you handle stereotypes of American Indians?                                                                                                       I handle it pretty well. I don’t let people get up in my face, but I don’t like it and I let people know if they’re being racist, or discriminating. The whole issue with mascots is something that I’ve been involved with over the years. So I talk to people about it, and one of the things I see is with the mascots is that, imagine a homecoming parade, where a school that doesn’t have a Indian mascot is playing against a team that is called the Indians, or something, and cheerleaders and all the different classes get together, and make their floats, and because of the spear fishing issue, the spear fishing is something they know about now, they may have a dead Indian on the float with a spear through him, that says spear the Indians, or kill the Indians, or something like that. And I said, all these young people I’m afraid will, are going to see that and then they’re going to hear about the spear fishing on the news and the controversy that goes on and they’re going to see that and they’re going to think it’s ok, because it’s in public. And that’s how I explain how I don’t like mascots, it creates too much anger in young people that they don’t understand, and it makes it hard. I also say that public schools are guilty of not teaching and that’s about different cultures. I think your book is going to be wonderful. Hopefully people will get them and read them. But the schools aren’t teaching about racism in cultures. I think that a lot of stereotyping and racism comes from misunderstanding and basic lack of knowledge in public schools that should be teaching all of this stuff. I think my daughters trying to call me.

Do you feel there are any conflicts today between the Native Americans and whites?                                                                                                                                                                                            Yes. In Wisconsin, probably mostly northern Wisconsin. Andy was talking to me yesterday and he said some place up by Eau Claire there is still a sign that is on a billboard that he saw just this past winter. It’s somewhere up in Eau Claire and it’s blaze orange and it has the letters PARR on there. Which is an organization, called Protect American Rights and Recourses, it’s an anti-Indian group. It was real active years ago with the spear fishing, and they were the people that were out at the boat landings shooting guns over the heads of the Indian people that were out in the canoes and boats and they were throwing rocks and a number of other things. And he said he didn’t know there were any signs out there anymore but there is a sign, somebody had it in Stevens Point that his license plate is PARR, he must be a member, I see it every now and then. Racism still exists, and we may never eliminate it. It just escalates sometimes. I got a call several years ago from the police department saying, because I work here that they know my name, they said, “we have a young man in jail, we were wondering if you could come down and figure out what the problem is, he keeps saying ‘I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it, this isn’t my problem,” and he was rambling and crying, he was a young guy. I said, “No I can’t I don’t know him, but I’ll see what I can do.” So we finally decipher the problem, it was that 20 years ago these two guys were walking into a bar and these two young Indian boys, wait no two Indian men were walking into a bar and two young white kids wanted some cigarettes. So they stopped these to men and said, “We got ten dollars, will you go in and get us a bottle of beer and some cigarettes? ‘Cause we can’t get them,” so they men said, “Sure,” and they took the ten dollars went in the bar and never came out. Kept his ten dollars. Well these guys, 10 years or 20 years later, these two young boys are now adults; they’re walking into a bar, and there’s a young Indian guy sitting there, so they get into this big fight, and the Indian kid ends up beating up this guy, and the problem is the Indian kid is the one who gets turned in. They got these other guys there too, and in talking with this whole situation these two white boys grew up, still thinking about how these Indians took their 10 dollars, and they started and fight and they ended up in jail. Anyway, it’s like 10 years ago this was the same Indian guy, but it’s not, but it was like a mental situation, I didn’t know how to deal with it. It was crazy, and those are the kinds of things that happen.

Do you know any role models or key leaders in your nation’s history?                                                                                                                                                                                            A lot of our buildings are named after people, like one of the centers. There’s a building in Oneida where it has, it used to have the alternate school, Tribal school, used to be there, government offices were in there, and just a lot of things. There used to be an old seminary, priests used to study there, because it’s right smack dab in the middle of Oneida, when the seminary closed they purchased all the grounds around it to make a Tribal building, it’s called a Nortan (sp?) Center. Hill (sp?) died years ago and in people’s faith they still know who he was, he was an important Oneida Chief. We have a casino that is named after a woman, I can’t remember her name right now, but she was a tribal leader. There’s a woman, still living, her name is Loretta Matoxin (sp?) I think she’s an Oneida, she’s probably 80 years old, I think she’s as old as my mother, she’s actually one of my dad’s relatives, well mine too, but three or four generations removed, and she used to be very instrumental and real a good with things, traveling to Washington and arguing with legislators, and bringing money into the community for the Tribal school. I think for me she’s a real female role model. So there are a lot of elders that are still role models as well.

How did gaming affect you?                                                                                                                                               Gaming is part of our culture, gambling, that whole thing is part of our culture, so I think a lot of people don’t understand that, a lot of those ceremonies involved having fun with games and gambling, and they might have been gambling horses or blankets or that kind of stuff, as opposed to money. That’s one of the things people are arguing against illegalizing gaming in Wisconsin with the tribes is, why should we allow them to have gaming it’s not part of their culture when in fact it is. It’s something that we always used to do, as far as it impacted; it was a positive impact on all the tribes, because it’s a fun thing. Gambling isn’t just making everybody rich, I receive from the Oneida eight hundred dollars a year, so that’s as much as I get out of the whole thing. Gaming really funds the Tribal school; it funds the elders programs, it provides homes for some people. Just anything that needs funding they contribute to it, a big part to education, so kids can get scholarships to go to school. Negatively I would say that gaming has created some problems in families, because of the long hours people are working, my sister developed asthma because of the smoke filled building she was working in, and smoking hasn’t been outlawed in most, so she transferred her job to the office, which doesn’t have smoking, like the floor did, she used to work on the floor, so she’s much better. There used to be someone that was called “Latch Key Kids,” I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of that, young children that were home when their parents worked with out a babysitter, they are called Latch Key Children because they weren’t old enough to be staying home alone, there might have been a 9 or 10 year old that was babysitting, I think gaming for a little while created Latch Key Children. People are leaving their kids home, they put them to bed then they’d go to work and then they’d come back home before to wake them up. It was probably ok because there were kids that slept all night, but what if one of them got up and decided to play with matches or something, anything could happen. They could have taken off down the street. Now they’ve got a handle on that, they have day care centers, so it’s getting better. So on the positive side; it’s really helped the communities develop in all the money, and for jobs.

If any do you guys have any major political issues?                                                                                                         Not being involved with political I don’t know.

Is there anything else you would like to say?                                                                                                                      Not that I can think of. I think you guys covered all of it. Well I look forward to seeing this.