We Make Stories Out of Totem Poles

I never ever thought of sharing cultural work or my own history. It comforts my heart knowing that I'm allowed to do this without getting a strap whipped or thrown in a closet. Anywhere I speak for me, really big for me, because we sure took a lot of punishment. They took a lot of punishment for being a native person too, and this is just one of our ways of showing that we're alive and well every second.

Got permission from elders and my Chiefs to be allowed to use all these, all these different meanings, all the different designs. I almost cried when they said, "Use whatever you want." The reason why almost it's because remembering how much we waited to not allowed to draw a curve or talk our language. It's tough.

Did your mom always speak? I was really lucky. When my grandparents were at home, that's all I heard. Yeah, and then went to school to take my grandparents to the bus when they had private house services. Yeah, I used to walk my brownies there and listen to your granny and him sing songs, and what used to make me real laughing was leaving music.

We'd have a house full of elders, all sitting on it, and as they're walking in, so I grab a Bible or book that, you know, that people's reading or the hymns that, yeah, and not one of them know how to read. But I guess it's just a thing to do, is grab a Bible and sit down. I don't know, but when I sit there with my granny, I sat there and lost and checking it earlier, yes, see what they do in there.

I watch that God, and I seen them, every one of them would grab a Bible, or not one of them would open up the book. They could just sit there and start singing hymns in corpore. Yeah, that's why I thought it was cool as ever to do it in the park ball.

When you become a prisoner, it's not an easy life, and that's the reason why my son Boone decided to do this, because that's the only way he could heal. And when you start healing, the changes of your life starts again. That's when you become who you really are.

Because we've carried so much pain, so much hurt. No grannies, no grandpas allowed to be close to us, not allowed to speak our language. Many things, songs taken away from us, our dances, and we were not even allowed to embrace our families anymore.

We all leave this world, and when it's time for us to leave this world, you'll have half the story. You'll have something to tell your children of what happened to us, and our great-grandchildren that we were not just drunks. We're not just alcoholics and drug addicts. We picked up things that wasn't ours because we wanted to hide the pain, and now today we're gonna bless it so that we don't pull the pain out anymore.

Okay, ah wait, what can paint?