Details

Storyteller: Madge
Tribe: Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe
Created: 2019
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Transcript: My parents are both from the same reservation and both sides of my family grew up together. My mom has 10 brothers and sisters, and my dad has 7 brothers and sisters. So I come from a big family where everyone knows everyone else. My mom and dad had me and my younger brother Cameron before they got divorced. We were very young, I was probably 3 or 4 and don't remember my parents ever being together. My mom had another son when I was 10, his name is Michael. That same year, my dad had a son named Clinton, Jr, but we all call him Duke. A few years later, my mom had another son named Shamus and not long after that my sister named Hannah. So I am the oldest with 4 brothers and 1 sister. My dad re-married, but is no longer with my step-mom Lisa, however we are still close with her. My mom is now married to my Uncle! She married my dad's younger brother, several years after all my siblings were born. We knew my uncle growing up, but he wasn't around that often, so it's nice to have a better relationship with him now. I lived with my mother and saw my dad in the summers and on some holidays. My brother Cameron did live with my dad for a few years and then came back to live with us. I'm close to all my siblings and have good relationships with them, even if we disagree on some things. As their older sister, I grew up taking care of them. I feel like I fulfill that role.  I am also a mother to two teenage daughters, Sita age 17 and Grace age 15. We are very close and I am glad that I haven't had too much trouble with them (haha), they are pretty good girls. I have been with my husband for 19 years and married for 9 of those years.

I was born in Eagle Butte, SD. I lived there until I was around 4 years old. My mother then moved to Spearfish, SD for college. We lived there until 6th grade and then moved to Rapid City, SD where I lived until I graduated high school. Living in Rapid City was filled with a lot of racism and separation. It was generally the Indians vs Whites scenario there. It was also the rez Indians vs the city Indians.  I was involved in everything Native in school and outside of school. My mom was the director of the Youth Leadership Program, which was an after school cultural program ran out of the Mother Butler Center. The center is connected to St Isaac Jogues Church, which is a catholic church that has a close Lakota connection. We lived very close to there in the "ABC apartments", which were low income housing on the North side of Rapid, the so-called bad side of town. I think due to where I lived, the schools I attended, and the program my mom ran, all I knew and hung out with were Native youth like myself. Most members of my extended family had graduated high school and college, so I felt the need and had the motivation to live up to that expectation.  Therefore, I was a very good student, meaning I also dealt with being teased for acting white or being an apple, although I was a fancy shawl and hoop dancer and represented Native youth in all different kinds of groups. Just one of those examples of that lateral hate that is still in existence. When I moved to Minneapolis for school in the fall of 97, it was quite a shock. Not only because the city was huge compared to Rapid, but I never knew how many different Native's there were. I was used to Lakota's and that's it. We had our own tribal rivalries in SD, like Pine Ridgers, Rosebudders, that kind of thing. But here at the University, I of course immediately connected with the American Indian Learning Resource Center, I saw and met so many other tribes. Also the narrative of Indians are poor that I always grew up with was flipped here. I didn't really know what percap was. I had one friend was who was Sac&Fox that got money in high school, but I didn't know what it meant or how she got it. When I got here, everyone thought Natives were cashy! Turns out the casino's provided pretty high per cap to those tribal members, so everyone assumed that all natives got that money too. That was crazy to me. I lived in the dorms my first 2 years in college and that really was a great experience, it kept me involved in all the cultural activities that were part of the LRC and also made me closer to all my new Native friends. It also allowed me to make new friends from all different cultures and backgrounds and that was really cool, from their spiritual belief systems to their foods. I moved here full time in 1999 and lived with friends, until I met my husband.  I was still in school and still participated in cultural events around the city.  After living in the cities longer than just for school, I realized how many Natives lived in this community and just became a part of it. It made me proud of my culture having so many of us here and being able to be a community in such a huge place due to that connection of just being us. I created my own little family of friends here in the cities and then of course my own family with my daughters and husband.

All of my grandparents went to some form of boarding school, except for my maternal Grandpa who is Mexican. I had a particular interest in my maternal grandma's boarding school experience and did my senior paper in college on her time there. She was sent to a Catholic mission boarding school, rather than a government school. Her dad had gone to Carlisle which also sparked interest. Because of her boarding school upbringing, my grandma was Catholic and raised her children as such. Although there are many negative stories regarding the boarding school era, my grandma had a different perspective. Not to say that nothing negative happened there. Her younger sister died of tuberculosis there. She would tell us stories about the nuns and her other friends that we were there, including my relatives from my dad's side of the family. Escape stories, funny stories, sports stories and sad stories too.  Culturally, being Lakota just was how it was.   My family all lived on the reservation but there wasn't a lot of the Lakota culture being practiced per say. Especially because at the time it was not legal.  My grandpa was Mexican and Catholic as well, so they attended church weekly. As I was growing up, I feel like both sides of our culture started to emerge more and more. We got back into the basics and now, many of us have learned a lot and participate in and live our lives that way. I feel that my story is similar to a lot of people in my generation, having had our parents grow up in a "activist" era, trying to get our ways back, and then our grandparents being forced out of their culture and our great-grandparents being the first generation that was part of that "Kill the Indian, Save the man" narrative. It makes sense to me that I grew up the way I did.  Now-a-days being Native is a prideful thing for many. We've all been in that scenario where there's a large group of people and you seek out the other natives. "Where you from? oh yeah, I know a guy from there. He's my cousin or yep, I know that guy too" The fact that we have that connection is really cool to me. It's actually kind of comforting at times. Like in a space where we know no one, we can immediately make a connection and just feel better.

My grandmother had a set of twin brothers. They were called Pinky and Bluie because of the blankets they were wrapped in when they were born. Their real names were Albert and Arthur respectively. My uncle Bluie went MIA in Korea during the war. So my grandma lost a baby brother. When my mom was in high school, her younger brother died. It was determined a suicide, but there are circumstances that make our family doubt that. So my mom lost a baby brother. My little brother Shamus was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when he was 5 years old. He dealt with it, until he couldn't anymore and he passed away when he was 21 years old. So I also lost a baby brother. It has been really hard for all us to deal with these experiences but we are very strong as a family and have always come together to support one another when these things happen. It's not just a loss of a baby brother, it's a loss of a son, an uncle, a cousin, a nephew, whatever the connection is, it's family. So that to me has probably been one of the most significant shared experiences for my family. Something really amazing is that my Uncle Bluie's remains were found and returned home 59 years after the war. He is now buried next to my Uncle Pinky in Whitehorse SD where the rest of my maternal family is buried. It was a very emotional time and a very healing time for many.  I am proud to be from my family and am thankful to be a part of a such a close one when I know that there are so many others who don’t have that.