Tribal Perspective:
Transcripts

Darrell Kipp (Pikuni-Blackfeet)
Debate Between The Written And Oral Word
I believe the official debate in America is the debate between the written word, the recorded word, and the oral tradition of native Americans, and as academically, anyone who has gone through a formal education system for any length of time we put this heavy emphasis on the written word, in other word it has to be on paper, it has to be in a book or it isn't true, and consequently if its in a book and its written we will believe utter nonsense, we will believe a total lie, we will accept anything under the guise that its written it must be true, and consequently when we come to oral traditions of tribes the normal academic formal educated American is always suspicious, oh these are myths, these are legends, these are fairly tales, and i think native Americans are put off by how these stories attributed to them, i call them their origin stories, to be called a myth, or a legend or a fairytale, or put in a category of a made up story, and consequently without finding in the last five years this terrific parallel as archeology finally begins to embrace the oral tradition of tribes … And once they begin to see that this world, this campsite, is connected to this large landscape of human life out there for thousands of years, then they start putting some meaning into these small artifacts. They say, “Oh I see, this is part of the oral tradition.’ And you can go into tribal oral tradition and you can extract stories and other factual material that coincide precisely with the archaeological record, and yet we have no problem accepting the archaeological record but we do have a problem with the oral tradition, that is changing today, and i believe that within twenty years we will see a great deal of information revealed because of this close connection between science and oral tradition of natives, native Americans.

Lewis Malatare (Umatilla)
Let Us Tell Our Own Story
Allow us to give the history of our people the way we want it to be told. Not the way that it was written in the books. Not the way it’s portrayed in newspapers of the past, magazines and other media. We needed to be able to show the people who we really were, are, what we are going to be tomorrow.

Cecilia Bearchum (Walla Walla-Umatilla)
How Oral History Is Really Done
You know how oral history is really done, years ago, what they would do is if there were several of them that experienced the same thing, whatever happened, a fight, or whatever, they would all sit down and each person would tell their version of what happened. And then the next person would do the same thing, and they'd go clear around, and then all of them would put it together the way they thought it actually happened. And that was oral history.

Allen Pinkham (Nez Perce)
Indian People Have Never Had Voices
There are a lot of myths, there are misunderstandings, misconceptions about Indian people. We need to clarify what we are and who we are in our terms. Indian people have never had voices in interpretation of the expansion of the Northwest, simply because we were never considered experts.

Julie Cajune (Salish)
A Different Look at American History
And to a lot of people in America it's really disconcerting to �look at American history in a very different way. And I know that it's unsettling because we like to believe that people are good, we want to believe that our leaders are good, we want to believe that their intensions are good, and we want to feel good about that, but we can't always look at history and feel good. But I think it's really important for America to become honest about that, �we need to rethink how we relate to other people and how we treat other people, and being honest and being honest about that in telling our story. I think that's important for America to come of age, in that way. So, I think that this is one way that we can start to do that, by telling the truth about how this country evolved, about how this country came to be, and who paid the cost.