She Fears Her Tribe's Story Will Be Forgotten | Short Film Showcase

[Music] What keeps you up at night? For me, it's many things, but I probably share the same worries as you do about the future— the uncertainty of the path before me. But I'll never forget what told me: that there's always a story behind everything, behind someone's actions. If someone's words were intended to hurt, it's how we understand if they are hurting inside. And there's a story behind the world; how many are fighting and fought and shed blood over a history of power, inequality, war, corruption? But we must understand it to move [Music] forward.

This is him: Pray Band Patami, a descendant of Chief Abram Bernett and Whis Amuk. Our family is documented by the US Missourian Institute and Library of Congress. In the tribe, there are less than 10 fluent speakers left. He is an educator and performer of authentic traditional Native song and dance, but above all else, he's my [Music] dad.

I'm 18. This is me and a worry like any other person, but I feel a bit scared because what happens when a story is [Music] [Music] [Music] forgotten? Make say ke say Mish SC [Music] m [Music] oh [Music] oh. We're Anishi Chipa. I'm enrolled with the Prairie Band Pamiés of MAA Kansas. Originally, we're a Great Lakes tribe; we occupied about 28 million acres historically. Eventually, through complicated warfare and sensitive history, our people relocated during the removal act to Missouri, Iowa, and then Kansas.

During that time, our people had to learn to change. Our great-grandfather, Chief Whiskey Amuk, is the biological grandson of Chief Sinogan, better known as Chief Saguan, who was the principal chief of the Prairie Band. This here is a photograph of him, taken in 1921 by an anthropologist named Jesse Nbam, who actually took this photograph for one silver dollar. My great-grandfather's brother, his name is Wab Cuk.

This is a photograph of my grandfather in 1906, along with his father, Whis Amuku, sitting at center. This is documented in the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, and this is my grandfather's mother, Rosanne Lassley KO K. Here is a photograph of my grandfather here in 1963, your great-grandfather; that's him there in Kansas, documented as a ritual leader and elder at the time, taken by James Clifton.

Now on our family and our Citizen Band Nation, this is Chief Nishma, better known as Chief Abram Bernett. In his right hand, he's holding a cane. This is the actual cane here that still also remains with us in the family, and, of course, it's not American Indian; it's made in Paris, France. Your grandfather, my father, here, taken around 1967 with some other tribal members: George Allen, Bernard Kus, Gary Whiskey Amu, Curtis Pano, and James Kmea, taken by James Howard, an anthropologist around 1950. That's your family.

I remember learning how to dance when I was really little—four or five years old—and I loved it just because it was so fun. That was before I learned that many languages are fading away, before I started questioning the history in textbooks, and before learning about the complicated world of politics.

Maybe we made a mistake; maybe we should not have humored him in that wanting to stay in that kind of primitive lifestyle. Maybe we should have said, "No, come join us, be citizens." There's a weight that lingers now, and I think it's the fear of losing a part of our identity forever. But everyone worries and wonders about how we'll be remembered after we pass away, and maybe it's that fear of being forgotten that makes us want to tell more stories. Because if you don't tell your story, who will? Or will someone else write it instead? Or will it just be lost in time forever? I don't know, but I still try to keep that spirit of when I was a kid—just not to worry so much; just do things out of love—and I miss that. I miss a lot of things.

[Music] [Music] For myself, growing up almost like a wanderer, like many of my friends from other enrolled tribal nations, a lot of us trying to find ourselves in the world again. We ask: what does it really mean to be a native person? We are people that are from a tribal society, a nation, but are we really a tribe? We are descendants of something that once was.

I always tell people that I'd be lying to you if I tried to pretend that I was really living a lifestyle fully like my relatives and descendants did long ago. Today, as an American Indian, we struggle with keeping language alive, keeping true culture and customs alive. There are so many influences in the world of materialistic things around our people that have basically destroyed the world of native societies.

Most people believe that all natives are receiving some form of money from the federal government because they're natives that had to deal with complicated and sensitive history. But the truth is that our people do not receive money from the federal government in the manner that most Americans think. They believe we don't pay taxes, which is not true. They believe that all natives go to school and colleges anywhere and anytime they want for free—that's not true—and that all Native Americans have some form of casino upon their Indian Reservation, which is extremely not true.

Most tribes live in a reality of poverty. Most tribes live in a reality of high rates of suicide, alcoholism, depression. These are all things that have broken down over the generations to strategically destroy the tribe and the nation. The reservation was a concentration camp; it was a place to imprison the native society away from their ways of thinking, from their way of living, from the way that they center themselves in their own world.

So how do you become native? What does it mean? Does it mean having long hair? Does it mean how many feathers I can put in my head? Today, most society and Americans believe that that's what it means to be native, but that's really not the truth. The truth goes back to you as a human being and how our people long ago looked at the world and how they centered themselves.

Being native was being one with Earth, being one with water, being one with the spirit world, being one with the world of consciousness, being one with the world of someone who is alive and awake. When one's body is sick and damaged, and one passes on to the spirit world, our people look at the realm of sky and space, the universe, the realm of water, and the realm of land, the realm of the dream world. These are places that our people looked upon.

We are descendants of something that once was, but there are many trying to hold on to those old ways. [Music] Always. [Music] [Music] h [Music]