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| Bill
Iron Moccasin, Lakota |
Question
Bill, would you talk a little about how traditional culture
cared for children?
Bill Iron Moccasin
Traditionally our whole society was designed to survive. Anything
that could guarantee survival was a priority. All the adults
took care of the children to see that they learned what they
needed to learn in order to be productive. They also nurtured
the talents that the children exhibited, whether they were
hunters or trackers, arrow makers or bow makers. They all
learned something. Everybody had a place in the society that
was valuable to the society. The society was structured primarily
about developing healthy children. Today they say it takes
a whole village to raise a child. That was always a part of
traditional life. Everybody was concerned about the children.
If they were found doing something that was not proper it
was corrected. There was a great deal of positive reinforcement.
If you did something good they praised you for it. Today they
have fancy names for that like "stroking" or positive
reinforcement.
 All
the adults took care of the children to see that they
learned what they needed to learn in order to be productive.
They also nurtured the talents that the children exhibited,
whether they were hunters or trackers, arrow makers or
bow makers. They all learned something. The society was
structured primarily about developing healthy children. |
I experienced all of this in my youth. My mother's
parents died in an epidemic and another family raised her
and her brother. So that family became relatives to the rest
of us. I don't know anything about my mother's parents, but
my father's parents were living up until I was 15. And they
lived the old culture. Our reservation wasn't established
formally until 1890. It wasn't too long after the Battle of
Little Big Horn. So my grandparents lived in the old culture
and by the values they had to live by.
Question
What would be some examples of how adults related to children?
Bill Iron Moccasin
If I did something I wasn't supposed to do I was corrected.
I was told what was proper and what wasn't. My grandfather
died when I was six so I had some good experiences with him.
In those old ways the responsibility for adults was to every
child in the community. The idea today that no child should
be left behind was part of the old culture. No child was ever
left behind. We want to revive that. We don't have too much
information out to communities today about what the responsibilities
were in the old culture.
For example, there was a lot of mentoring going on. If I saw
some youngster who was interested in what I was doing, or
in what my skills were, I would try to teach him everything
that I knew. When we grow up we have something that we want
to be. Today it's finding a vocation. That same thing existed
in the past in our culture. We had certain needs that required
certain skills. We had arrow making, and what kind of wood
to pick for bows. This system was there right from early childhood.
You learned the things that you needed to know as you grew
up from the older men.
| Traditional
men's societies offered a kind of sponsorship to boys.
If they wanted to join a society they had to go through
certain kinds of rites of passage. They were accepted
into the society. The boys learned everything they needed
to know in order to be a good husband or a good provider.
As they grew up the boys went over to the men folks and
the girls went over to the women. |
Traditional men's societies offered a kind of
sponsorship to boys. If they wanted to join a society they
had to go through certain kinds of rites of passage. They
were accepted into the society. This began about the age of
puberty. Both boys and girls were usually with their mothers
until the age of puberty. Then they split up and the girls
learned from the older women. The girls learned what they
needed to know in order to be a good mother or wife. The boys
learned everything they needed to know in order to be a good
husband or a good provider. As they grew up the boys went
over to the men folks and the girls went over to the women.
Adults had a continued responsibility to the
youth. At my age now, and I'm 85, I still pass on the positive
things I know to the younger people. Some of these are the
principles of behavior, honesty, respect, generosity, kindness--all
those things. Our traditional culture was a "one for
all and all for one" culture. "Principles before
personalities" was a way of life.
Question
We understand that you teach Dakota and Lakota language. What
role does traditional language play in healing?
Bill Iron Moccasin
Today I help people speak our traditional language. We have
a problem today because some of the fluent speakers make fun
of those that can't speak the language. We have to try to
change that attitude. A lot of our songs and the things we
do are of the language. We have to make it be a thing of pride
to even be a partial speaker. I work with the Head Start kids
to teach them the language. Every language is learned right
at the early ages. Experts will tell you that between infancy
and 9 or 10 years of age are the years where you can learn
the language a lot easier. I help them to pronounce the words
correctly at that age, where their parents can't do this.
We teach both youngsters and their parents. I teach at Head
Start as well as help at Sisseton-Wahpeton Tribal College
where some of the parents of the youngsters are in the classes.
We are trying to get a continuum between the classes and the
home. I help teach Dakota language 1 & 2. We also teach
culture and the history.
Question
What is one of the traditional ways of the old culture that
could help bring together Native men and children?
Bill Iron Moccasin
If we look at something that all Indian communities have in
common all across Indian country, that would be the substance
abuse problem. It's the root cause of just about all of our
problems because it makes us forget our culture, reasoning
and our judgment. Yet we have a resource in our communities
that was a very viable part of the old culture, and that was
the warrior societies. They had primary commitments. One was
to help the widows. Another was to help the orphans. A third
one was to help those who were handicapped--whether physically,
old age, or if they just couldn't support themselves so they
could live in comfort. A fourth one was to bring honor to
the society. Those are the four things that are desperately
needed in our society. Anyone who accepts the identity of
a warrior, today we call them veterans, should accept these
responsibilities along with the identity.
The single largest undeveloped, underutilized
resource we have across Indian country are our veterans. We
should be willing to give of our time and sponsor youngsters.
We can take them fishing or hunting or camping. These were
the roles of the men folk, way back in the old culture. This
would be a good place for the men and children to come together.
We have a lot of single parent women who for all practical
purposes could be considered widows because the male is not
in the household and the children have no male father image.
| Our
culture was a children-oriented society in order to develop
a society that would survive. That had to come with developing
your resources. The resources were the children. This
coming Hoop Journey can help both men and children to
find each other. We can accomplish this by revitalizing
the great social systems our ancestors developed and lived
by. |
Even if many Indian cultures have lost their
connections to their own warrior societies, we all have the
veterans we can be proud of. As Native Americans we have the
highest participation of any ethnic group in the United States
on a per capita basis as far as defending the country. It's
a matter of record. That's something we can bring out in any
Indian community. In order to be proud of that, we need to
go another step because we are still fighting for survival.
In order to survive and get back our cultural identity we
need to look at these things our ancestors developed that
are still just as important today. Cultural preservation has
to be our primary goal so that our descendents will have an
identity culture and history that they can be proud of and
which in turn will foster self-esteem.
Question
Would you speak a little about child abuse?
Bill Iron Moccasin
Child abuse was not a part of our culture. We never physically
punished a child. It was all done by shaming. That's something
we've gotten away from. For example, in alcohol abuse we hear
the excuse ,"If I wasn't drinking I wouldn't have done
that." I've been an alcohol counselor for more years
than I care to remember and that is always one of the excuses
I heard. "I wouldn't have done that if I wasn't drinking."
So the traditional culture used a kind of positive shaming
that started from infancy. One of the biggest no no's was
you don't bring shame to the family. We were all conscious
of that and were made to understand that from the time we
were small. That was one of the things we didn't do. We have
a word in Lakota that means "shameful." It's almost
like being a thief. Shaming was the deterrent we used to keep
people from doing negative things. You didn't bring shame
to the family so you didn't do anything that was going to
be shameful, or we considered shameful. That would reflect
on your family right away. Our traditional cultures were honor-based
cultures.
Question
You said that substance abuse is a common problem all Indian
communities have. What do you think causes this?
Bill Iron Moccasin
I've thought for many years trying to figure out why some
of our alcoholic behavior happened. When they put our people
on reservations and took away the opportunity for men to gain
respect, honor and bravery for deeds, some of this behavior
began. My father's generation was the first generation on
a reservation. My grandfather lived by the old culture and
had a chance to win honors and things like that. But in my
dad's generation it was against the law for Indians to drink
or for anybody to even give it to them or buy it for them.
I think a lot of people drank just to defy the
law. My dad used to say, "You've got to drink to be a
man." We defied the white man. It became a kind of status
symbol to drink and to be able to defy the law of the white
man. It was considered honorable as far as our society is
concerned. It showed bravery. You risked jail. If you got
caught drinking you'd go to jail. I've thought about why Indians
drank over the years. There was a reason why we drank. We've
never really presented this kind of an idea a bout our early
drinking. So it wasn't just despair that caused us to start
drinking. There was some element in it that brought recognition
or prestige, or something like this to the guy that drank.
But then it developed into a problem.
We have a lot of problems which we can't address.
In treatment terms, we "stuff them." Eventually
we get to a point where we start climbing the walls. Alcohol
reduces our inhibitions. So when we drink, all of what is
stuffed comes out. It's kind of a mental catharsis. A mental
house cleaning. Psychologically, anyway. To get it out of
our system we'll even fight each other.
When I was working in the Veteran's administration,
many of our people tested out as being passive-aggressive
on those inventory tests. Passive when we are sober and aggressive
when we are drinking. All that anger came out and we had to
strike out at something. It wasn't that way in the old culture.
It was something that happened when the reservation system
came in due to the suppression and control. My grandmother
used to tell me that they had to have permission to leave
the reservation. They had to have a card, almost like a passport.
| If
we could ever get the veterans in our society to bring
back the rule of the warrior societies we would use an
untapped resource. We'll always have a lot of our people
going into the service. I'm trying to revive an organization
we tried to get started 25 years ago. That's the Native
American Veteran's Association. |
Question
Would you talk a little about some of the solutions you see
for the challenges faced by Native communities in the future?
Bill Iron Moccasin
If we look into our culture we have a lot of the answers.
The Red Road to Wellbriety book brings this out. I think we
have to go to the leadership and talk about this. The only
thing that has changed for us is the environment. The need
to survive is still here. We need to learn how to survive
in today's environment. We need to educate our youngsters,
we need to deal with our substance abuse problems because
they create domestic violence, child abuse, fetal alcohol
children, and all these things.
But if we could ever get the veterans in our
society to bring back the rule of the warrior societies we
would use an untapped resource. We'll always have a lot of
our people going into the service. I'm trying to revive an
organization we tried to get started 25 years ago. That's
the Native American Veteran's Association. We have a lot of
peacetime veterans who were not in the service in a combat
era. We want to develop an organization for all veterans with
an honorable discharge, whether they were in peacetime or
a combat era. We have veteran's organizations in just about
every tribe across the country, but we're fragmented. We don't
have a national organization. We need to organize nationally
as a Native American Veteran's Association for men and women.
It would be for anybody with an honorable discharge.
In the old society there were two categories
of warrior society members. If you went into combat you were
called a "combat man." In the other category you
could be a member of the society and never go on the warpath.
In that case you helped the orphans and widows and whoever
else needed help. The old warrior societies were made up of
men. But there were also women who would go fight if their
brother or other man in their life got killed.
Our culture was a children-oriented society
in order to develop a society that would survive. That had
to come with developing your resources. The resources were
the children. This coming Hoop Journey can help both men and
children to find each other. We can accomplish this by revitalizing
the great social systems our ancestors developed and lived
by.
|
