Details

Storyteller: Genevieve
Tribe: Lakota & Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe
Created: 2018
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Transcript: My grandmother raised us the first years of our life, near the Pueblo peoples’ geography, where she worked. We went home to the Plains a couple of times, and more often our relatives from up north would come to visit us in the southwest. It wasn’t until I was in college, engaged in anti-mascot activism, that identity as a Native person was brought back to the forefront. Before school, being Native was just who I was, but after spending so much time on campus explaining what that meant and why “Indian” mascots were harmful, I wanted to go home where we could just be Native without having to defend that identity.

Anyhow, there’s this funny story about that...

So, I’m camping out at ceremony as a supporter, feeling good, feeling home, feeling connected. These are my people, everything is all “mitakuye oyasin,” haha. On the first day, we were told to look out for seeing special things at this time, and encouraged to share our experiences. In my eagerness I must’ve turned this into an expectation, and I got all pumped to be on the watch for my “moment,” haha. I woke up on the second morning and here, I saw some coyote scat exactly outside of my tent. Right there, right in front of my door! So then, I thought I remembered hearing the coyotes at night, and here I see he’d been so close while I was sleeping. This, for sure, was my “experience.” Oooo, what does this mean? I was so excited I sought out my grandfather, one of the medicine people assisting with the doings. It was barely sunrise, I had my coffee ready to tell the experience, get a take on it. And I begin telling all gestures and dramatic pauses: “Oh, the noise at night was like this, the sun as it’s coming this morning was this way. I woke with this good feeling, and I see, right here, the coyote has left this sign, right outside of my door! What can it mean?” My grandfather looks out at the horizon for a minute, and then he says, thoughtfully, “Well, I think it means a coyote shit outside of your tent.” Hahaha! After that, I personally repeated the story around camp, it was so funny. We laugh to this day when we talk of it. And, I know the significance of the story now. In finding the humor in my enthusiasm for “authenticity” I was, at that moment, most “in community.”