Meet the Elders! #2
The second Q & A at the Elders Panels held during the 2003 Conference

Ozzie Williamson stands proudly with drawings done by the Youth at the conference

Meet the Elders—Part 2
The second question at the Elders Panel on September 19, 2003 (See Wellbriety! Volume 4, Number 26 for Part 1)

Question
It’s been good listening to you three gentlemen and hearing your stories, and I have a question. If we’re so concerned about our kids on the reservations, why don’t we close down the liquor stores and our bars on the reservations? We would have a good chance then of keeping these kids, the young ones, from even starting to drink. I’ve lost six family members in the last ten years from drinking and car accidents. There’s a dry town close to the town in Wisconsin where I’m from. The only liquor you’re going to get there is if you bring it into your home. You can’t drink on the street, and you cannot buy any liquor in that town. Why can’t we get together and get the reservations to make laws like that?

Ozzie Williamson
I think that’s a good question and I think there’s been a lot of controversy about that in the last several years. On my reservation in the little town of Browning, Montana, it was in 1953 that we became full citizens of this United States, the country that we owned, to where we could walk into a bar and drink like a white man. After the Indian prohibition against alcohol was lifted on June 30, 1953, the first bar opened on the Blackfeet reservation in 1955. By 1957 or 1958 I think there were five bars in that town. That saved some of the car wreck fatalities because people were going off the reservation to get drunk, but I also saw that a lot of people who had never drunk in their lives, especially the women, the mothers, started going into the bars and drinking. Their families were totally destroyed when the mothers started drinking.

I really can’t say what would be best, whether you would have a wet reservation or a dry reservation. In Montana we have both. Some of the reservations are dry and some are wet. It doesn’t seem to make any difference one way or another, whether it is a wet or a dry reservation. If they’re going to drink, they are going to drink. It takes a lot of people like us to make sure there is somebody there if they decide to get sober.

Bill and Carol Iron Moccasin check out the vendors at the Conference

Bill Iron Moccasin
On reservations we talk about our sovereignty. A sovereign people can set up their own laws to benefit their own people. Prohibition never solved the liquor problem. The United States had prohibition and a lot of bootleggers got rich. Ozzie mentioned the Indian liquor law. I imagine there are a lot of young people in this room who know nothing about the Indian liquor law. We weren’t allowed to have liquor, we couldn’t buy it, and anybody who bought it for us was subject to a federal criminal offense. A lot of the federal reformatories were full of bootleggers who were selling booze to Native Americans and got caught. General (President) Eisenhower rescinded that law by Executive order because a lot of us Native Americans served in the United States Army in the Second World War.

I’ve watched the ebb and flow of this whole problem for the last 50 years. From my experience, what I’ve observed is that we are sobering up a lot of adults. But your concern is that we are losing our youngsters, and as adults we are not living up to our responsibilities as parent, and as grandparents. We don’t mentor our kids. We have a resource in Native America, which I consider is the greatest undeveloped, underutilized resource that we have. Just about every tribe has a veteran’s association, a veteran’s group. In Sioux culture and in most of the Plains Indian cultures I’m aware of, you have a responsibility if you are an Akicita or warrior—you are responsible for the widows or the orphans, for whatever reason, when they can’t adequately supply a livelihood for themselves. You are responsible for them. We have a lot of single parent families in our society that don’t have a male image in the household.

We veterans have a responsibility to mentor a youngster who has no father image. Our ancestors built this into the system so that no child is ever left behind, so that no child is ever without somebody to care for them. My dad’s brother’s children are the same as my brothers and sisters. I could go into his house as a member of their family and they would take care of me just as he would his own kids. I never was without a mother or father image. That system is needed today. We need foster parents, we need people who are willing to take time to foster youngsters, we need our veterans to step up and take care of activities for kids, to take a kid fishing, to take them somewhere or start a Boy Scout group. I was a Boy Scout and eventually I became a scoutmaster. A lot of the things I did as a Boy Scout helped me later in life. I had somebody who was interested in me enough to guide me and mentor me when I was young.

My mother died when I was five. I had an older sister and two younger brothers. My father was an alcoholic. After mother died he fell apart and left us, so we grew up with our grandparents. Grandpa died when I was six. He was a veteran of the Little Big Horn. He used to talk about “the day we beat Custer.” My grandmother would talk about fighting the soldiers and running. She hated white people so bad she refused to even learn to talk English. I grew up in an environment like that.

My grandmother would say in Lakota, “Grandchild you are a male. Conduct yourself like a male.” She told her granddaughter, my sister, the same kind of thing. “You’re a female. Conduct yourself like a female.”

A person said one time that in order to turn your life around you have to have had high ideals and principles instilled in you early in life. That’s from birth to eight or nine or ten years old. If you have those in your life in your development period, then you have a chance to turn your life around. I think that all of us who have turned our lives around can look back and identify somebody in our early years who distilled this in us.

We have resources in our own community. When we look into our culture we have all the answers there. We have to nudge people. I’ve been trying to get veteran’s organizations, a Native American’s Veteran’s Association, a National Indian’s Veteran’s Organization, to where we could function like the American Legion, or the VFW. Part of our commitment in an organization like that would be to help these kids, help their mothers, for all practical purposes their widows, even if they have a male companion but they are not married to them.

So we look at all these issues that we have: we have the resources to help these youngsters. I teach Dakota to Head Start kids from two years on up to five. Then I go to the college and try to teach their parents how to talk Dakota. I have more success with the kids then I do with the parents. I’m doing something at age 85, even though I have a hard time walking. Right now I’m in a wheel chair. I can’t walk from here to the door without my legs starting to bother me but I take the time to go teach these kids four days a week. Every one of them calls me “grandpa” in Dakota. They say good morning, grandpa. Even my just being there as a grandpa to some kids who don’t have a grandpa in the house fulfills a need for them. We can all do this.

You can evaluate for yourself what you have to offer, what kind of skills you have. If you’ve ever played basketball, if you’ve ever played softball, if you’ve ever played baseball, if you’ve ever thrown a football, you have something to offer these kids. The women folk have something to offer these kids. Teach them how to bake cookies or cakes. We have it in our society and yet we’re talking about, “Hey! How come…?” Take an inventory of yourself and see where you’re at. I didn’t mean to get after anybody, but as an Elder I think I have the right to do this. {{Applause}}

Horace Axtell, center, Andrea Axtell, right, and White Bison volunteer Russell Aragon, left, at the Conference.

Horace Axtell
During my life in the armed forces in World War II I was stationed in two dry states—Alabama and Mississippi. But they still sold beer on the Army base. Most of the soldiers stayed in camp all the time. So it’s an ongoing problem that we are talking about today. One of my neighboring tribes, the Yakama tribe in Washington, voted in their general council and they became dry. They don’t have any taverns, and even in the grocery stores they don’t sell beer or wine, nor do they have any liquor stores. You can see the difference in the behavior of the young people there. They have more of their people going to school. It makes a difference. It also gives a chance for the elder people to speak their piece. They have an influence over their children, whereas before, their children were always migrating into the places where alcohol is being sold. All their programs are directed to their decision to be a dry reservation. So that’s how I would like to answer the question.

On my own behalf I would like to express that I have never gone to a treatment center. There was just one time that I really had a problem with alcohol. When I came back from the War in 1946, my mother had gone to the Happy Land and the house that I had grown up in had burned down. My grandma found a little place in town where she could live. That’s where I was overcome by alcohol. It got to the point where I guess I went a little too far. I ended up in the Big House. I had a lot of time to think about things. When I came out of that place I had my mind made up that I would be like some of the people that I knew. I had a background with my grandmother. Even though she didn’t know how to read or write, she became a Christian woman. I learned a lot from her about spirituality. She became a Presbyterian woman. She used to take me to church. So when I became involved with alcohol I knew I was doing wrong. When I got into the Big House, I had a lot of time to think about it so I had some decisions and plans that I made: When I get out of this place I don’t ever want to come back. I knew what caused me to be there.

When I came out of that place I wanted to find a steady paying job. So I did that. In 1951 I went to the Potlatch Corporation in Lewiston, Idaho and I got a job there. The things that I wanted, I have now. I wanted a home—my own home. I wanted to have my own car and my own furniture. So I worked there for a long time at the Potlatch Mill. I worked there for 36 years. I retired from there. I also wanted a family, and now I have a family. My wife and I together have eight children. My wife is sitting right over there. She comes with me to a lot of these things I do with different people, different organizations. The two that stand out with me are White Bison and AISES (American Indian Science and Engineering Society).

With those experiences I became a hard worker and I wanted to keep my job. I worked there for 36 years and retired in 1986. I earned my home, I earned my vehicles, and everything else. My wife and I were married in 1963. This coming December we will be 40 years together. {{Applause}} So it can be done—but the thing of it is, you’ve got to talk to yourself once in a while.

A lot of things that happened to me in my life have been directed to me. When I first went into the service they took us on busses to a place where we caught the train to another place, but they never told us where we were going. They took us to Fort Douglas, Utah. When we got there I was only 17 years old. It was the first time away from home in my life. That night when we all went to bed, when they turned the lights off, I heard other boys lying in bed crying. I did that too. With life, there’s hardships and there’s good things. But when we experience the hard ways, that’s what makes us better people. So that’s what happened to me.

Now you see me a spiritual man. That came to me because Elders came and talked to me, choosing me because I was fluent in my Nez Perce language. I learned that by growing up with my grandmother. They gave me time to think about it. I talked it over with my wife and this is where we’re at now. So it can be done. Now, I have so many people who are my friends and relatives all over the country and places over in other countries.

This is what I express to a lot of young people, and I even wrote a book about it. You can get down to the bottom of the bucket and you can still come back and be someone. This is what I try to be now. I thank Don for a lot of the help. He helped me, too. We help each other. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. Thank You.

Editor’s Note: Horace’s book is called, A Little Bit of Wisdom, by Horace Axtell and Margo Aragon, Confluence Press, 1997

Don Coyhis
It would be easy to go hour after hour listening to our Elders, once that spirit gets going. A lot of times they will tell you something, and you’ll think about it, and about two weeks later you’ll say, “Oh! Now I know what they meant.” And then something will happen and about a month later you’ll say, “Oh no! This is what they meant.” The way it’s told, it is a seed of wisdom. It is planted and it unfolds, telling you more and more. It doesn’t ever quit.

If we listen to what they are saying when we create our visions and our Nations, it will help. Sometimes, we don’t know what we don’t know. This helps us to know what we don’t know.

There was one time when Horace and Phil Lane, Sr. talked to me about something and I had to really take a look at it, and not just say it. We men, we have to take a look at ourselves and spend that time with ourselves and our sons and our children. You can say it’s too busy but we really have to make time to look at ourselves.

Is it possible to bring back the society or organization where we men are responsible? It is possible. We are getting sober, that’s why it’s possible. The Elders may not tell you everything, but you can go back to them and ask, “When you said it was that way, how was that, again…?” so we get a clear picture in our minds on how that is. That’s how it is. It’s passed down from one person to another.

We asked these Elders and some others what an Elder was. I remember that we were at an encampment and one of the Elders said, “See that old man over there? I think he is about 92 years old.” He said, “I am 74, so that’s my Elder. I’m always watching him.” Then he said, “Here’s a man who is maybe in his late fifties. He’s watching me. To him, I’m his Elder, but that older one is my Elder.” He went all the way down. He said, “See that 20 year-old? He’s watching that fifty year-old. That’s his Elder.” So then we walked a little bit and he said, “See that little 9 year-old boy. Who’s he watching? He’s watching those teenagers—those who are 15 or 16. So what happens?” he said. “Well, the 9 year-old starts slicking his hair back because that’s his Elder.” He went all the way down to some little ones. One child was about 18 months old, playing with a three-year old. He said, “That 3 year-old is an Elder to the 18 month-old.”

So if this is right, it’s not about waiting a long time until we’re Elders. We need to be teaching our sons who are 15 years old that the 9 year-old is watching you. What you do, that one’s going to do because that’s how it was taught, it’s handed down through the cycle of life. When we take a look at health and things, that’s what we have got to do. We’ve got to have more of these talks so that we can listen and learn. We are so fortunate to have these Elders come and teach us.

I want to thank you three for sharing that knowledge. We will ask you to talk to us again tomorrow. It makes us feel good sitting like this. It makes us feel good and to be proud to be Native, and to be human beings. Maybe some day we will expand this to where we have black Elders sitting by yellow Elders, and Elders of other directions sitting together so we can listen to all four directions, to help us grow in a real good way.