Details

Storyteller: Joyce
Tribe: Fond du Lac Band of Ojibwe
Created: 2018
Location: Duluth, MN
Transcript: My grandmother was the greatest influence in my life, she was a shelter and a person who shared with me. Also, my mother, my siblings, and my children. My grandmother was not at our home often while I was growing up. When she was there, she would tell us native legends and stories from her lifetime. She was a tiny woman with waist length hair that she kept in a braid that was wound up at the back of her head. My mother was very busy as there were 11 of us children: six boys and five girls. We had a three-bedroom home with one room for the boys and one room for the girls. We lived off the land except for staples like bread, flour, and lard. We had a big garden, and lived on deer meat, fish, and wild berries. My mother also made us our dresses.

I was born, lived and grew up in white society, with a strong influence of the catholic church. For my remaining days, I will live on my reservation, which is the Fond du Lac reservation in the Sawyer district. I live in elder housing there. I have seven children: three girls and four boys, and 14 grandchildren, 6 great grandchildren. They all have grown up with the native influence in their lives, some have native names, but some don’t. My name is Kiiweden Anong Kwe which means north star woman, given to me by a medicine man from Red Lake. I am a native artist who makes traditional Ojibwe faceless dolls made from buckskin, stuffed with buffalo hair, dressed in deer hide and the hair is horse hair. My dolls are in multiple museums and collections, and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC.

I participate in pow wow's, the language, ricing, gathering syrup, netting, creating native art, and am among natives daily. Netting is when you go out in a canoe with a 300-foot net, and you throw the net in the water, and pick it up for next morning for walleye fish. I have set the net and when you are out there in the early morning pulling the net, I am closer to Maanidoo, who is the great being in the four directions. It is so spiritual. You are at one with our beautiful living space that our ancient ones took care to keep for us. I am thankful daily as I offer my asema, or tobacco. I understand how I and all of us here have a responsibility to the next 7 generations that will come behind us.

I am just a pitiful shinob getting through life in the best way I know how, I value my children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, my brothers and sisters, and my many relatives and life on the rez.