2018 MATC Scholars Program: Ms. Judi gaiashkibos

Mid-America Transportation Center Author

05/22/2019 Added

23 Plays

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Ms. Judi gaiashkibos, the Executive Director for the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs, speaks to the group of Scholars Program participants.

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[00:00:06.712]Well thank you for all for inviting me to come back.
[00:00:12.810]To the Massey.
[00:00:14.620]I spoke two years ago to this group, this is the third time.
[00:00:19.544]And the program's really growing.
[00:00:21.594]And I'm so excited.
[00:00:23.313]We've had, I worked with Massey, with Dave and Larry,
[00:00:27.760]over the last two years, and it's really been great
[00:00:31.856]to build relationships with them.
[00:00:39.134]Okay, so.
[00:00:40.285]I'll just go on without that.
[00:00:42.962]I didn't really need it anyway.
[00:00:45.270]Listening to all of you tonight give your introductions,
[00:00:48.690]wow, you could be up here doing the talk.
[00:00:51.780]So, I want to tell you just a little bit about myself.
[00:00:55.070]And thinking about Massey and transportation
[00:00:59.490]made me think about a theme of roads, traveling, journeys.
[00:01:05.710]So I'm kind of going to speak about life in that way,
[00:01:09.950]a broader way of what my journey is, what your journeys are.
[00:01:16.250]So I want to tell you a little bit about where I come from.
[00:01:20.620]And how it relates to you, and then share with you
[00:01:24.331]some of the different things that we're doing
[00:01:25.164]at the Indian Commission to, I believe, help our people,
[00:01:30.140]and share some of the great young people that I've been
[00:01:33.458]blessed to work with and mentor over the years.
[00:01:36.460]And I'll tell you a little bit about their journeys,
[00:01:38.720]which are very similar to your journeys.
[00:01:42.090]So myself, I grew up in Norfolk, Nebraska,
[00:01:47.120]first generation off-reservation.
[00:01:50.210]And I descend from Chief Smokebaker.
[00:01:53.170]My grandfather was the last chief
[00:01:55.340]of the second-rank Ponca tribe,
[00:01:58.528]He was born in 1878.
[00:02:00.170]And his allotment was right down the river
[00:02:03.730]from Ponca Chief Standing Bear,
[00:02:06.420]so Smokebaker wasn't chief
[00:02:08.610]at the same time as Standing Bear.
[00:02:11.330]When Standing Bear died in 1908,
[00:02:13.750]my grandfather was 30 years old,
[00:02:16.260]to kind of put it into context.
[00:02:19.970]My mother went to the Genoa Indian School,
[00:02:23.150]which was one of the schools,
[00:02:28.120]there's a picture of Genoa Indian School down in (mumbles).
[00:02:31.871]The Genoa Indian School was
[00:02:33.158]one of the military schools in the United States
[00:02:35.467]and the purpose was to kill the Indian and save the man.
[00:02:39.685]So my mother and two of her sisters went to this school,
[00:02:43.409]and after my mother was at school she went back home,
[00:02:47.810]and she became on the tribal council for the Pawnee Tribe,
[00:02:51.510]when non-Indian women weren't doing such things.
[00:02:54.817]But her mother was Dakotan, Santee.
[00:02:58.720]And her, my grandmother was born in 1890
[00:03:03.050]on the Santee reservation.
[00:03:05.020]My great-grandmother was born in 1858
[00:03:08.770]up in Morton, Minnesota,
[00:03:11.040]just prior to the hanging at Mankato,
[00:03:14.128]the largest mass hanging of Native people.
[00:03:16.940]So my mother's mother, my grandmother,
[00:03:20.620]went to school at Santee,
[00:03:22.880]at the Santee Normal Training School,
[00:03:25.290]where they didn't have to give up their language
[00:03:28.010]in the beginning years,
[00:03:28.843]and so my grandmother was very blessed
[00:03:31.010]because her language was the Dakota language
[00:03:34.460]and she spoke that all of her life.
[00:03:36.730]And she lived to be 88 years old
[00:03:39.090]and lived in our home when I was a child
[00:03:43.760]growing up until I was 10 years old
[00:03:45.620]I slept in a twin rollaway bed
[00:03:48.320]in the kitchen with my grandmother and little sister.
[00:03:51.180]And there were 13 of us in a three-room house
[00:03:53.930]with an outhouse, until I was 10 years old.
[00:03:56.870]So I was really blessed to have such great role models
[00:04:01.960]as my mother and my grandmother and my grandfather,
[00:04:07.030]and those are who my heroes are.
[00:04:09.520]And I grew up in poverty, and lived in a school
[00:04:15.300]where it was mostly all non-native students.
[00:04:18.850]That's kind of a real hard thing to do and a real struggle
[00:04:23.080]but nonetheless at school I realized that
[00:04:30.310]I felt now for the first time that I was poor.
[00:04:33.020]I went home with a friend at school
[00:04:35.879]that her father was a dentist,
[00:04:37.950]and she had two beds in her bedroom, a pink room,
[00:04:42.830]and she only used one bed, and the other bed was like,
[00:04:46.104]well, Janet, who sleeps in this bed?
[00:04:48.500]And she said nobody slept in the bed, it was her extra bed.
[00:04:52.105]I just couldn't comprehend that because
[00:04:54.460]I was sleeping in that little fold-up rollaway bed,
[00:04:57.497]and then I started to realize that how I lived
[00:05:01.420]was so different from what her life was like.
[00:05:05.360]But I was as good a student as she was,
[00:05:07.890]I loved school and I was really good at school.
[00:05:10.810]Where I lived was a salvage junkyard.
[00:05:14.240]When my mother moved to Norfolk
[00:05:15.650]with my grandmother and my eldest three siblings,
[00:05:19.010]no one would rent to Indian people.
[00:05:22.363]So there was a black African American man
[00:05:25.550]that had a salvage junkyard.
[00:05:27.670]His name was Henry Jones and his mother was Harriet Jones
[00:05:32.050]and she was a Baptist minister.
[00:05:34.700]And so, as they say, there was no room at the inn,
[00:05:37.920]and Henry Jones was a slum landlord
[00:05:41.390]so my mother was able to find some housing.
[00:05:45.018]But we were at the bottom of the barrel
[00:05:46.780]as far as black people were above us.
[00:05:49.620]And so, a lot of times people don't know when they meet me
[00:05:54.360]that I am a junkyard dog
[00:05:56.840]and I'm a lot tougher cookie than people think.
[00:05:59.820]I am not a rez Indian, but I am an urban Indian
[00:06:02.030]and I grew up in a rough place
[00:06:04.540]where I had to always be looking out for scary boys,
[00:06:12.699]that would taunt us and throw rocks at us.
[00:06:16.508]Every day I had to walk through that junkyard
[00:06:18.940]and plan to think out so I could make it,
[00:06:22.750]and sometimes coming home the same way.
[00:06:25.431]So, not to go too far into my life
[00:06:30.160]with 10 brothers and sisters,
[00:06:32.260]but I just want you all to know that I can relate to,
[00:06:36.130]you know, some of the challenges that you have,
[00:06:39.106]but that that hasn't defined who we are.
[00:06:42.140]And because I liked school, when I started in college,
[00:06:46.553]I went to a small college like many of you are going to,
[00:06:49.748]in Norfolk, Northeast Nebraska Community College.
[00:06:52.900]And then, as the road goes and the term goes,
[00:06:57.430]you take these different turns in the road,
[00:07:00.850]I got married and had two children,
[00:07:03.620]and that didn't go so well,
[00:07:07.117]and I know you all said your ages here,
[00:07:11.310]and I just want to tell you that it's never too late
[00:07:14.790]to get back to school
[00:07:15.623]because as a single mother with two daughters
[00:07:18.210]I decided, I could see that my only salvation
[00:07:21.580]was going to be through education,
[00:07:24.280]and that I was going to have to figure out a way
[00:07:26.941]to take care of my daughters
[00:07:28.146]because I couldn't depend on anybody.
[00:07:30.893]So I was very fortunate that when I was 40 years old,
[00:07:35.410]I went back to college and I got my bachelor's degree.
[00:07:39.470]And I did that while I worked full time
[00:07:41.420]as the director of the Indian Commission.
[00:07:43.819]When I started I worked for the Ponca Tribe,
[00:07:46.080]and our tribe was terminated in 1962 and restored in 1990
[00:07:50.450]and I opened up the little office here in Lincoln, Nebraska
[00:07:53.550]and I was the secretary there.
[00:07:57.110]But I had a lot of vision and desire
[00:08:00.669]to do more for our people.
[00:08:04.220]And I met so many wonderful people
[00:08:06.140]when I worked at the tribe
[00:08:07.200]and I was constantly building relationships,
[00:08:10.340]and that's something that I really encourage all of you
[00:08:12.790]as you're going through this stream,
[00:08:15.130]to be always building new relationships.
[00:08:18.500]So I started out working for the tribe
[00:08:21.610]and then the opportunity came
[00:08:23.510]to be the director of the Indian Commission.
[00:08:25.360]And that was really wonderful.
[00:08:29.030]And today I don't think that they would higher somebody,
[00:08:31.970]I know they wouldn't, that didn't have a bachelor's degree.
[00:08:35.550]So I was hired with my associate's degree,
[00:08:39.570]but I worked all day, went to work 9-5
[00:08:44.074]and then I went to school at night from 6-10.
[00:08:46.740]And sometimes I would have to drive to Niobrara
[00:08:50.450]which is four hours away, come back and go to school,
[00:08:53.510]and my two daughters get them to school
[00:08:57.644]to make sure everything was going like that.
[00:08:59.200]But somehow it all worked out.
[00:09:00.870]So you're never too old to go back to college.
[00:09:04.200]And then, while I was director of the Indian Commission,
[00:09:06.940]I continued to go to school and get my master's degree
[00:09:11.230]and now today I am on the board of trustees
[00:09:14.320]at Doane University, the first native person to be a trustee
[00:09:18.010]so that's kind of my educational trajectory
[00:09:20.440]that has brought me here tonight.
[00:09:22.750]My two daughters, they both graduated
[00:09:25.110]from the University of Nebraska.
[00:09:27.290]My youngest daughter got a teaching degree
[00:09:29.047]and my oldest daughter
[00:09:31.250]received her bachelor's degree in sociology,
[00:09:34.090]and she was a McNair Scholar to start with
[00:09:36.250]because at the time I didn't have a degree.
[00:09:38.630]She was going to get her PhD,
[00:09:40.210]but she decided after taking a sociology class
[00:09:44.603]with Dr. Michael Combs that going to law school
[00:09:49.800]would be a way to help our people more than getting her PhD.
[00:09:53.670]So for her, that was the path that she took.
[00:09:56.660]She had a full scholarship to the University of Nebraska.
[00:09:59.960]That law school scholarship that is still through
[00:10:02.711](audience member sneezing)
[00:10:04.160]if any of you want to go to law school,
[00:10:06.100]full ride scholarship.
[00:10:07.740]We've had three young ladies go through that program so far.
[00:10:11.940]So my daughter was going to go there to school.
[00:10:14.940]She had her own car, she had rented an apartment,
[00:10:17.900]but summer before she went to law school,
[00:10:20.600]she took a different path
[00:10:22.490]and she went to the pre-summer law institute
[00:10:24.540]at Downham Elpert, and they had about 40 students there.
[00:10:29.670]She was the top student of all those students,
[00:10:32.610]and she was offered opportunities
[00:10:36.110]at four or five different colleges.
[00:10:39.724]She was offered a scholarship at St. Louis, Atlanta.
[00:10:43.800]In the end she went to New York City,
[00:10:45.033]to Columbia Law School.
[00:10:47.530]So she had to sell her car,
[00:10:49.423]give up her lovely apartment with a fireplace,
[00:10:52.490]and move to a huge city.
[00:10:54.550]You talk about going from Walthill to Lincoln.
[00:10:57.300]Well, imagine going from Lincoln to New York City
[00:11:00.870]with not very much money in her pocket.
[00:11:04.170]And when she went there,
[00:11:06.840]there was a student that was going to be a 3L law student,
[00:11:10.390]and she told me when she got there,
[00:11:13.387]she didn't have a room yet when she accepted this,
[00:11:15.760]cause it was kind of a fast thing,
[00:11:17.250]she had to give up that scholarship and go.
[00:11:19.590]So she said she was gonna stay at this person Jossie's place
[00:11:24.750]and that made me feel good that there was somebody there,
[00:11:29.421]another native person that she could stay with
[00:11:31.270]until they got her in the dorm.
[00:11:33.300]Well, sometime later I found out
[00:11:35.573]that Jossie wasn't a girl, but Jossie was Jossie Ross,
[00:11:41.060]a six foot four Blackfeet Indian man,
[00:11:45.974]and that was quite shocking.
[00:11:47.737]But anyway, he was very nice
[00:11:49.656]and he's still a dear friend of our family's.
[00:11:51.791]So there was Jossie and another girl, Vanessa Hodgins,
[00:11:57.210]that she was a year ahead of my daughter in law school.
[00:12:00.150]So, Katie, my daughter,
[00:12:02.943]was able to graduate from law school there,
[00:12:04.597]and she practices Indian policy law in Washington, D.C.
[00:12:08.540]at a law firm, with a special license in water law.
[00:12:12.895]And she did the Crow settlement, for the Crow,
[00:12:16.827]that's 465 million dollars, and they succeeded with that
[00:12:21.489]so the Crow had clean water for the first time.
[00:12:24.257]And she also worked on the Osage settlement,
[00:12:27.150]which was I think about 365 million dollars,
[00:12:29.950]and those Osage that had had rights with people,
[00:12:33.998]I think each got two thousand.
[00:12:35.597]And I brought this book along,
[00:12:37.090]I don't know if any of you have heard about this book,
[00:12:39.560]Killers of the Flower Moon,
[00:12:41.270]it's a book about the Osage, it's a true story
[00:12:43.867]and it's a fabulous story.
[00:12:45.707]The Osage murders and the birth of the FBI.
[00:12:48.690]So if you're looking for a good book to read,
[00:12:50.880]I highly, highly recommend that book.
[00:12:54.380]Okay, so anyway, that's just a little bit about my family.
[00:12:58.520]Katie lives in Alexandria.
[00:13:00.659]She's married to a Navajo
[00:13:01.492]and he's head of the Navajo D.C. office.
[00:13:03.670]She has two little boys, a five-year-old and a one-year-old.
[00:13:08.310]My other daughter lives in Greenville, North Carolina,
[00:13:10.960]and she is a stay at home mother with three children,
[00:13:13.740]so I have five grandchildren,
[00:13:16.100]and her husband is a professor
[00:13:17.600]at Eastern Carolina University.
[00:13:19.530]And I am still here in Nebraska, working away,
[00:13:23.850]and we're doing a lot of things at the Indian Commission
[00:13:25.820]that I want to talk to you about.
[00:13:27.530]And I do also want to mention that
[00:13:29.710]over the years I've been so blessed
[00:13:31.240]to meet young people like Gabe.
[00:13:34.391]And I met Gabe about three years ago or four years ago.
[00:13:37.630]He came to--
[00:13:39.124]Five.
[00:13:40.419]Five?
[00:13:41.587]Yep, five.
[00:13:42.433]Wow, time flies when you're having fun.
[00:13:43.900]Gabe was a counselor at one of our
[00:13:45.770]youth leadership academies.
[00:13:47.770]For the last eight years, I've been hosting
[00:13:49.891]leadership academy with a lot of support
[00:13:52.253]from Dr. Ann Hubbard and the university.
[00:13:55.690]We were working with other colleges,
[00:13:57.650]but two years ago we partnered with University Massey
[00:14:01.160]and that's pretty much who are partner is going forward.
[00:14:04.970]And so, Gabe, it's that path you take in life,
[00:14:09.600]he met me and I said, "Gabe," I had met Larry
[00:14:14.910]and "Larry's needing somebody to work for him."
[00:14:18.560]And so Gabe's working on his PhD.
[00:14:21.744]Look at where he is,
[00:14:24.810]and he will be getting his PhD this spring,
[00:14:27.980]and so we're really proud of Gabe
[00:14:30.090]and all of these different students that
[00:14:33.518]I've been blessed to work with.
[00:14:34.518]And you've met Rebecca Schlichting, I believe.
[00:14:37.183]Rebecca's the assistant director of Vision Maker Media
[00:14:40.370]Well, I can't remember how many years ago it was,
[00:14:43.730]but I met her through her cousin, her aunt Rita,
[00:14:47.580]and she said to me, you've gotta meet my cousin Rebecca,
[00:14:50.310]she's really an awesome girl.
[00:14:51.800]So she brought her to lunch one day at the Blue Orchid,
[00:14:55.360]this Thai restaurant, and I was like,
[00:14:57.720]wow, I'm so amazed by Rebecca.
[00:15:00.180]And I do a lot with journalists in college.
[00:15:02.720]I was an adjunct professor there
[00:15:04.530]on two projects called Native Daughters.
[00:15:06.750]I brought a couple magazines if anybody would like these.
[00:15:10.280]We had Native Daughters One,
[00:15:11.870]and then Native Daughters Oklahoma.
[00:15:14.080]So I was able to recruit Rebecca
[00:15:16.490]to come to the journalism college
[00:15:19.000]and she got full scholarship
[00:15:21.629]and she received her masters degree,
[00:15:23.461]so if any of you would like to go to journalism school,
[00:15:25.580]I can help you with that.
[00:15:26.990]So now look at what Rebecca's doing.
[00:15:28.650]She is so amazing.
[00:15:30.650]I think today she's going over to Denver
[00:15:33.450]for the national congress that she's just been selected
[00:15:36.950]as one of the top 40 under 40 people in Native America.
[00:15:44.220]So she's pretty amazing.
[00:15:47.380]At my table tonight, I was visiting with the ladies,
[00:15:50.250]I think it was all ladies over there,
[00:15:52.000]and we got to chatting about things that I think
[00:15:55.160]are really relevant for so long in America.
[00:16:00.220]Things that happened to native people.
[00:16:01.992]We didn't have a voice, we didn't have a presence,
[00:16:04.860]we were invisible.
[00:16:07.566]A year ago we worked on Whiteclay, closing down Whiteclay.
[00:16:14.488]Do you all know about Whiteclay?
[00:16:16.135]It's a little place out in western Nebraska.
[00:16:17.670]So I worked with Senator Tom Brewer,
[00:16:20.149]the first state senator who used to be on my board,
[00:16:23.270]who I've known for like ten years,
[00:16:25.900]he was vice chair of my board,
[00:16:27.119]and with Senator Patty Pansing Brooks.
[00:16:29.082]So I'm on the task force for Whiteclay.
[00:16:31.050]A couple weeks ago we were having lunch,
[00:16:33.800]the three of us, downtown at the Dish,
[00:16:36.620]and we were gonna talk about our task force goals.
[00:16:39.500]And I said to them,
[00:16:42.920]I had already been doing a lot of research,
[00:16:45.263]I said, I think we need to have a bill this year
[00:16:49.150]to deal with missing and murdered native women.
[00:16:52.180]That's under the umbrella
[00:16:53.390]of what we had to deal with out there at Whiteclay.
[00:16:57.160]And at first they were kind of hesitant,
[00:16:59.810]they thought, you know, that really isn't what we set out,
[00:17:01.990]there were four specific things.
[00:17:03.427]But I said, if you read the papers it's everywhere,
[00:17:06.810]it's a national movement,
[00:17:08.277]so we have a responsibility to do something here.
[00:17:11.100]And in my lifetime, I want to do something about this
[00:17:14.099]because I'm tired of our women and our children
[00:17:19.850]being murdered and trafficked.
[00:17:21.910]So, with a little twisting of their arms,
[00:17:26.190]they said, okay, I guess we can do this.
[00:17:28.610]So I already had a bill, I had done my research.
[00:17:31.820]And that's another thing for the students here,
[00:17:33.790]do your homework, come prepared, be armed.
[00:17:38.122]Nowadays we use technology, we go around.
[00:17:42.070]That's our weapon, those are our guns today.
[00:17:45.148]So I had done my research
[00:17:46.307]and I found a bill from Washington State
[00:17:48.670]where they'd already introduced successfully
[00:17:50.590]last year a bill to protect native women
[00:17:53.700]and missing women and murdered women.
[00:17:56.170]So I passed that out to them and it's pretty simple,
[00:17:59.370]and they looked at it, like,
[00:18:00.490]hey, this doesn't look too bad, I think we could do this.
[00:18:03.760]So we quickly drafted this outline.
[00:18:07.650]It was working frantically,
[00:18:10.070]and within less than a week we had a press release
[00:18:12.860]and we went out to the public.
[00:18:14.420]So going forward now, we are going to do that.
[00:18:17.550]And one of the things that I wanted to do
[00:18:19.210]after visiting with the ladies tonight,
[00:18:21.090]is they had so much valuable information.
[00:18:25.481]I'm here in Lincoln and I don't always know what's going on
[00:18:28.517]and you do, so I want to go out and make it work.
[00:18:32.200]Davis, he goes out on the road to try to gather information
[00:18:36.525]from the communities and any ideas and suggestions
[00:18:39.481]and things that we can do to make that bill better.
[00:18:42.480]We don't just want to pass something that's window dressing
[00:18:46.040]but doesn't really have impact.
[00:18:48.344]So that's one of the going forward things
[00:18:51.280]that I'm working on
[00:18:52.450]that I think you all would find meaningful
[00:18:54.410]and any way you can help us, I'd appreciate it.
[00:18:57.160]Up on that screen, there's also the Genoa Indian School
[00:19:01.530]and the Doctor Susan Hospital.
[00:19:03.460]Those are two other projects that I'm working on.
[00:19:06.300]The Genoa Indian School, what we're doing there
[00:19:08.440]is University of Nebraska received a 300,000 dollar grant
[00:19:12.320]to digitize all the records from the school.
[00:19:15.000]So we have a team working on that
[00:19:17.727]and we work with four tribes,
[00:19:20.490]each of the chairmen are co-chairs
[00:19:22.250]and Dr. James Riking and I are the primary co-chairs
[00:19:25.980]along with Dr. Barbara Jacobs, who received the grant.
[00:19:29.000]So we've had two meetings so far,
[00:19:31.020]and they've gone to Kansas City,
[00:19:33.820]where some of the records are.
[00:19:35.137]So the school closed in 1934 and it became a penal colony.
[00:19:39.578]And they sent the records to the Smithsonian, all over.
[00:19:43.160]So we will soon, in a year, have those records up.
[00:19:47.167]We do have a website that you could go look at.
[00:19:50.330]And so right now we're working on best practices
[00:19:53.210]of how to share that information
[00:19:55.060]for descendants and people across the country
[00:19:58.750]so they can learn about
[00:20:00.784]what happened at the boarding schools,
[00:20:02.302]because it's time for America to know the truth
[00:20:05.290]about what happened here.
[00:20:06.810]This didn't just fall out of the sky.
[00:20:08.810]We didn't get like this by accident.
[00:20:11.770]There was a real plan to kill us, right?
[00:20:14.200]But you're all here, and I'm so proud of all of you
[00:20:16.760]that you came here and you took a risk
[00:20:19.060]and you decided to take advantage of this opportunity.
[00:20:23.720]I've passed out some brochures
[00:20:25.760]but I'm sorry, I should have brought more.
[00:20:27.070]The other project, among many projects,
[00:20:29.367]I have a staff of three and we're in the state capitol
[00:20:32.166]on the sixth floor with a budget of 230,000 dollars.
[00:20:34.810]So I think we do some pretty amazing work
[00:20:38.060]with some dedicated people.
[00:20:40.308]And I have 14 Indian commissioners
[00:20:41.260]that work with me to support,
[00:20:43.280]and Gabe is one of those for the city of Lincoln.
[00:20:45.930]We have taken on a project,
[00:20:48.858]about two years ago
[00:20:50.513]I was working on the Standing Bear Trail,
[00:20:52.520]down in the southern part of the state,
[00:20:55.114]with a gentleman who raised
[00:20:56.478]a million dollars for that project,
[00:20:57.311]and I said, well, Ross, when we get done with this,
[00:20:59.530]I have this other idea for you.
[00:21:00.760]You like it, call me.
[00:21:02.370]Restore and repurpose
[00:21:04.260]the Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte Hospital.
[00:21:07.050]As you all probably know,
[00:21:08.590]she's the first native doctor in all of America,
[00:21:11.560]so for the Omaha people, she is your wonderful hero
[00:21:15.540]and a positive role model for all of us,
[00:21:18.180]and is someone that I admire greatly.
[00:21:20.800]So Ross said, okay, when I get that done.
[00:21:23.676]So we got the trail done, and I said, okay, it's time,
[00:21:26.430]so a year ago we convened out here in Lincoln,
[00:21:28.923]I convened a little work group.
[00:21:31.230]And we had a bunch of volunteers
[00:21:33.510]and we have now gone forward,
[00:21:35.510]we've received a 100,000 dollar USDA grant
[00:21:38.210]to do a strategic plan, needs assessment,
[00:21:40.600]architectural and engineering of that,
[00:21:43.300]and so getting permission for that
[00:21:45.650]and we're executing that this year.
[00:21:47.890]We've raised 60,000 other private dollars.
[00:21:50.490]We have to raise about two and a half million dollars
[00:21:53.172]to actually get this place totally redone.
[00:21:56.970]I mean, it's going to be so awesome.
[00:22:00.140]And we are going to hire a director,
[00:22:03.430]I mean, Ms. Silver over here,
[00:22:05.130]somebody to run the place and have a staff,
[00:22:08.157]and we will also raise the money for an endowment
[00:22:10.610]because we don't want it to end up like it did now
[00:22:13.330]back in the '90s they had, it was really going strong,
[00:22:16.890]and then for lack of money and stability
[00:22:19.720]it fizzed out.
[00:22:20.670]So we're looking at long-term stability.
[00:22:24.870]So that's what I've been spending a lot of my time on,
[00:22:27.393]meeting with people, going around the states.
[00:22:31.530]The other night I was at a sort of a work dinner,
[00:22:34.553]and sometimes you see people doing things,
[00:22:35.860]and you think, wow, they got an easy job,
[00:22:37.830]they're not doing anything, must be kind of fun.
[00:22:40.060]Typically, when I go to dinners, I hardly eat
[00:22:42.560]because I'm talking and I'm working.
[00:22:44.370]Well, sitting next to me was this gentleman,
[00:22:46.650]and these guys, you know how I am.
[00:22:48.860]I'm always looking for resources to help.
[00:22:51.340]So there's this doctor sitting next to me
[00:22:53.610]from Omaha, and he tells me he's retired.
[00:22:55.840]I just happened to have one of those brochures with me
[00:22:58.562]and my business card so I gave it to him,
[00:22:59.847]and I said, I need your help.
[00:23:02.230]And he said, well, tell me, what do you do in your job?
[00:23:05.910]And he was saying all kinds of interesting things
[00:23:07.920]like, well most Indian people I know aren't as tall as you.
[00:23:11.060]Like, seriously, you know, stereotypes.
[00:23:15.210]We're all short, short little Indians.
[00:23:17.140]Well, he had been in Alaska and that's what he saw there.
[00:23:20.780]Nonetheless, he was really interested and intrigued
[00:23:24.620]and he had read this Killer of the Flower Moon.
[00:23:27.638]So I'm hoping that he's going to be somebody
[00:23:29.883]that is going to donate money for that.
[00:23:31.477]And so some of you that are going to school now,
[00:23:35.640]you could possibly help us,
[00:23:37.690]you could get jobs at the Dr. Susan Hospital.
[00:23:42.230]It won't be a hospital, it will be more a museum.
[00:23:46.364]We'll have a curator, we hope to have a language lab.
[00:23:49.950]We have commitments from legal aid
[00:23:52.540]so we'll have a survivors outreach coordinator.
[00:23:55.900]As we have said, many of our women
[00:23:58.270]experience domestic violence and so
[00:24:02.880]we have already a person that works in that for legal aid
[00:24:08.317]and so that could be an outreach.
[00:24:10.400]I'm meeting next week with UNMC,
[00:24:13.260]people over there, Dr. Bold and Bob Bartee
[00:24:17.300]to talk about some distance mental health
[00:24:19.830]that could be provided there at the Dr. Susan down the road.
[00:24:23.500]So let's say you have PTSD, you could come in there
[00:24:26.133]and you could get online
[00:24:28.000]and have a counselor talking to you from Omaha.
[00:24:32.480]So distance learning.
[00:24:34.180]We're also talking about having a maker space.
[00:24:37.354]We want to have like a van,
[00:24:39.798]and on the outside we're going to have,
[00:24:42.000]I don't know what they call these things,
[00:24:43.087]but they cover the van with some stretchy thing
[00:24:45.984]and it's gonna have a, this is my dream idea,
[00:24:49.766]but Dr. Susan with her buggy and her two horses,
[00:24:52.740]a picture of her, and a maker space will go around,
[00:24:56.400]like she did with her doctoring.
[00:24:58.470]We'll take it up to Santee, we'll take it over to Winnebago,
[00:25:01.758]to Macy, to Wallfield, wherever we need it to go.
[00:25:05.180]So I met with the University of Nebraska maker space people,
[00:25:08.860]they're very interested.
[00:25:10.958]So that's some of the ideas of what,
[00:25:14.260]it's all going to flow from that strategic plan.
[00:25:17.610]Can't be my ideas, it has to be ideas of the community
[00:25:21.081]and what they want and what they view as of value.
[00:25:24.130]But we're really excited about that.
[00:25:26.550]And I said I was gonna be short, and I could go on.
[00:25:30.697]I have a long list
[00:25:31.760]of all these young people that I've worked with.
[00:25:34.180]Angel Galler, she's a student over at Wesleyan.
[00:25:37.950]Rachel Wycoff used to be my secretary.
[00:25:40.380]She went to university here and then she was a Fulbright
[00:25:43.930]and she went to ASU law school
[00:25:45.467]and now she's a clerk for a federal judge
[00:25:48.070]and she's gonna be in a law firm.
[00:25:50.550]Alexander Mallory is in his second year,
[00:25:55.870]third year of law school
[00:25:56.850]and his grandfather is on the Winnebago Council.
[00:26:00.550]He was at our summer camp and somebody I've mentored.
[00:26:03.890]Priscilla Parker, Priscilla Parker's another person
[00:26:07.140]I recruited to go to journalism college.
[00:26:09.800]She worked on Native Daughter.
[00:26:11.080]She got a masters degree there.
[00:26:14.170]Let's see, Chloe is an Omaha girl
[00:26:16.557]who now is a mother and lives in Colorado
[00:26:19.340]and works for TV stations.
[00:26:22.050]Jennifer Fair Eagle is on my board of directors.
[00:26:25.110]I mentored Jennifer through law school
[00:26:27.540]and she does legal work for the (mumbles) nation.
[00:26:33.494]Let's see now.
[00:26:34.582]Angela Miller was the first Danninger Scholar
[00:26:36.830]that I mentored.
[00:26:38.150]She now stepped off my board
[00:26:40.869]because she's the first
[00:26:41.857]Native American judge in western Nebraska.
[00:26:46.290]She is the mother of five children,
[00:26:48.400]she had three while she went to law school,
[00:26:51.140]so it's okay to have kids if you go to school.
[00:26:54.330]I'm so proud of Andrea,
[00:26:56.010]and Andrea is just quite an amazing young girl.
[00:27:00.314]Let's see, Katie I've mentioned, Rebecca.
[00:27:03.360](mumbles) was another young man
[00:27:05.490]that I had the honor to work with
[00:27:07.430]and he is an editor in New Douglas Omaha
[00:27:10.510]and he is chair of the board.
[00:27:12.140]So, with that, I'd just like to close
[00:27:14.860]and say that you all have the potential
[00:27:18.337]to do all those things and for your journeys,
[00:27:22.970]your life can be whatever you want it to be.
[00:27:25.007]You have to take risks and not be afraid
[00:27:26.900]and we're all here to support you.
[00:27:28.950]And I'm not going to read this
[00:27:30.097]but I did print off one of my favorite poems
[00:27:32.756]by Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken.
[00:27:37.217]And as Indian people, I would just like to say,
[00:27:39.740]sometimes I think there's a big burden
[00:27:41.730]put on all of you and all of us,
[00:27:43.930]that the dominant society doesn't have to save their people
[00:27:47.890]but we all are kind of burdened with, you go to college,
[00:27:51.090]what are you going to do to help your people?
[00:27:53.090]I just say that if you go to college,
[00:27:55.080]you become a better person, a better global citizen,
[00:27:58.610]and you might work for your tribe, you might do something,
[00:28:01.140]but you don't have to,
[00:28:02.600]but by going to college you just are really helping
[00:28:05.880]the whole world be a better place.
[00:28:08.147]And looking at the whole world, I always like to say,
[00:28:12.249]don't quit being who you are as an Indian person.
[00:28:16.010]Learn your back history, learn your old family stories,
[00:28:20.370]like Dr. Susan and my proudest person,
[00:28:24.740]or one of the people I'm proudest of, my grandfather.
[00:28:27.895]Standing Bear, I really didn't know about Standing Bear
[00:28:30.192]but my own family, those are my peoples.
[00:28:33.282]And then at school, it's okay to learn.
[00:28:35.440]It's okay, education isn't just for white people.
[00:28:38.580]So learn all these wonderful things.
[00:28:41.650]Enjoy the opera, enjoy good food.
[00:28:43.911]That doesn't diminish your Indianness.
[00:28:46.120]And then lastly, by knowing our history
[00:28:49.265]and knowing other people's history,
[00:28:51.430]then you're really fully embraced as a person,
[00:28:54.410]and I think that's what is important.
[00:28:58.033]And we just have to find a way to work together
[00:29:00.360]and get along and I think that's what life is all about.
[00:29:03.400]So if anybody has any questions, I'd be happy to answer.
[00:29:07.797]Otherwise, I hope you have a great day tomorrow
[00:29:09.603]and I think this is just a really great program
[00:29:13.420]and I think Dr. Roulette for inviting me back
[00:29:15.830]and really demonstrating a commitment to this
[00:29:19.300]and I think we're gonna try to find a time
[00:29:21.510]to talk about daycare, somebody come down to college
[00:29:25.396]we gotta help and that's always a challenge for
[00:29:28.200]parents who are going to school.

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2018 MATC Scholars Program: Ms. Judi gaiashkibos

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