 If you enjoy watching Common Ground online, please consider making a tax-deductible donation at lptv.org. Lakeland Public Television presents Common Ground brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota. Welcome to Common Ground. I'm your host, Scott Knudson. In this two-segment episode, author Michael Muir's lends the insight into his book detailing the teachings of the late Red Lake elder, Larry Stillday. Then hereditary chief Darwin Sumner takes an exchange student from Madrid, Spain fishing on an ideal summer day. My name is Michael Muir's and I have written a book about the words and teachings of Larry Stillday, whose Indian name was Gichimayangan, which means big wolf. He was a teacher, a healer, and a spiritual and cultural advisor for the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians from the community of Obashing, or as many people know it better as, Ponima. The title of the book is Road to Ponima, and the subtitle is The Teachings of Larry Stillday. Well, I've been working for Red Lake as a public relations person for just over 20 years. And about six or seven years ago, I met a fellow by the name of Larry Stillday, who was a cultural and spiritual elder leader from the Red Lake Reservation. He'd been gone for many years and then came back and his family were spiritual leaders at Red Lake from Ponima, where most of them come from. And he had a philosophy about him that I found unusual in the sense that he wasn't talking to just Indians. He was talking to whites out of the colors of the medicine wheel, red, yellow, black, and white. And that struck me as unusual. I think, you know, that it probably had something to do with the time that he spent in Vietnam. He was in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. He would be now 72 years old if he was still alive. He also went through a period of, I'm not speaking out of school here. He was also, I went through a period of alcoholism. Spent some time in Louisiana, married to Louisiana Bell, moved back home and started studying under a former spiritual leader, Tommy, Tom Stillday, who was a, I believe, an uncle of his. And it's Tommy who started getting sick. He would ask Larry to take over his cultural spiritual duties. For an example, Pow House is where he first started out. He just had this different way. He was a teacher somehow. He was more than just a person to give advice on cultural and spiritual things. He was a teacher and a healer. The first time that I recall noticing something really different about him and his approach to teaching, he had what he called a well-briety event which is a way of approaching alcohol recovery, addictive recovery. And he had this well-briety event down at the waterfront here in Bemidji, or as you would say, Bemidji Gamag. He also got the mayor at the time to sign a proclamation, making that particular day well-briety day in Bemidji. And he invited everybody to come and it didn't matter what color, white or red or black or brown or yellow, you know, please come to this. And it seemed unusual because I don't recall ever having an Indian event in Bemidji before that. I never recall it anyway. So I was attracted to that and so I started following him around because with my job as a public relations person, it was my job to attend many of these events that he would be the spiritual and cultural advisor for. And then he would say these things that were almost poetic, chief Seattle-like, you know? People are familiar with the words of chief Seattle. And there was a poetry about them. He had a way of forming an argument that built up and also the way he chose his words. Unlike me, who has a tendency to be a little chatty, he would get his point across in just a couple of sentences. It was really impressive. I can think of one time we were out at the Panema Roundhouse and we had been doing youth camps for cultural and language out there and it's way in the back woods of Panema at a very special sacred place. After this thing was over, there's 50, 60 rambunctious kids between the ages of all six and 12 or 13. And at the end of this thing, he started to speak and the kids just quieted. It was just amazing. And he lectured the elders there, the older people, the language people and the elders. And he said, quit teaching these kids that they've lost something. They haven't lost anything. Their culture and their language is contained in the land. I don't know, he just said those kinds of things that we haven't lost anything. Nobody is coming across the sea anymore to hurt your children. We need to rediscover who ourselves in order to heal and you talk about balance in your life, the emotional and mental and spiritual and physical, saying they're integrated, they're all one. And in order to be a successful human being, you have to balance all those aspects of your life. If I claim this property here as my land, if I claim this as my land, it seems to me that I also claim its history. And there's so many people in the city of Bemidji that think that history started in Bemidji in 1895. And the people in Minnesota think that history started in 1858. And the United States thinks that history started in 1976 and the pilgrims before them and Columbus, good Lord, before them, you know, that that's when history began. But there were people here for thousands and thousands of years and they had a culture and they had a language and I might add that the Ojibwe language is probably one of the most complex languages in the world. You can conjugate verbs 64 times, 128 times you can conjugate verbs. It's just incredible the language. I don't expect to ever learn it, but I try. But anyway, if we claim this as our land, then we also claim its history, all of its history. And if we claim that history, I think that we also should respect and maybe even celebrate the culture of the indigenous peoples of this land. They've lived here. They know where the spirit is of this land. If land is related to nature and nature to God, then they've got something to teach us about this place that we live and the sacred spots. And they've got things to teach us about the animals and the plants and they do. I mean, there's medicines, these plants, that a lot of the medicine people don't want to share with us and one of the reasons why they don't want to is they're afraid when Santa's going to come along and put an iron patent on it or something. So, I don't know, I think there's a lot to teach and that's what my approach is with the book, is that he's talking almost like a psychologist, kind of psychology and spirituality kind of mixed in together. I think it's a really good message that he puts out there. It's not only the four aspects of your life that need to be balanced, but he uses the medicine wheel, which is the four quadrants and very deep, many, many layers. He used that to teach. He turned 70 years old on the 14th of May, 2014 and he died on the 20th, six days later and then he had another one of his healing lodges scheduled for the 10th of June. I'm very much looking forward to that, but it never happened. One of the most surprising things that happened when I started gathering all my material that I had on Larry, all his words and teachings, is that I ran across something that doesn't surprise me that I did at all, is I asked him at an earlier day, three or four years before he died, when I first started realizing what a great teacher he was, is I asked him, can I write about this? You know, because for an example, you don't shoot pictures during spiritual ceremonies on reservations with Indian people. So I wanted to ask, can I write about this? Can I write about your teachings, which many of them are very cultured, some of them spiritual, can I write about this? And he wrote me back and he said, well, you know, if you think this will help people, go right ahead. And then I sent him three things that I had written about Ojibwe culture. And he wrote back and he said, wow, I've never read those before. I can't quote him exactly, but he said, words to the effect that he really liked it and he thanked me for being the messenger of the teachings. So when I found that, I thought, well, hey, I can do this. I've got his permission, you know. And I kind of felt like I did. I could almost feel it. And that's in the forward. One of the biggest problems I've had was finding all this information that I had on him. I had emails from him. I had the stories that I'd written about him. I'd just taken notes. Sometimes he'd start talking about the wolf or something. When the wolf unstarted, he'd start talking about the wolf. I was writing and then finally I bought myself a tape recorder because he'd say these far-off things. I asked his wife one time. I said, did he talk like this at home? She said, no. He just seems to flow from him when the time comes, when the time is right. He's just a very impressive person. He touched a lot of people. He touched many more people than I'd ever imagined. But I had to put it together. And one of the other things, probably half the book, is made up of PowerPoint teachings. What he did was he took these teachings, and this includes the teachings of the seven grandfathers, which is seven virtues that he would talk about and each is represented by an animal, and then, of course, balance in all parts of your life. Bringing that all together, and then deciding how it ought to work together, was not tedious because I found myself learning. I was feeling bad because he was gone and I wasn't being taught anymore. But as I went through these PowerPoints and all these stories that I'd written about him and all the stories that I found about him and I even found some film that I transcribed. KTCA did, he was in the language revitalization, revitalization that KTCA did out of the Twin Cities public television. So I transcribed that as well. All putting that all together took me hours and hundreds of hours, I'm sure. I didn't try to document how long, but it took me a year. It was fairly regular working on it. When the book comes out, folks would like to pick it up and read it. It was done by a local publisher called River Feed Press. He's got a Facebook page, he's also got a web page, and if you just put River Feed Press in your search engine, it'll come up. But it'll also be available on Kindle. It'll also be available from Amazon. And there'll be various bookstores that this publisher has got here in the city of Bemidji and actually all across northern Minnesota that handle his books. I see importance in the teachings that he had. And I see it even more now that he's gone, which is what happens oftentimes. You realize, oh wow, this guy was really a great teacher. And you knew he was a good teacher at the time, but when he's gone, you realize, oh wow. And I'm hoping that people will get something out of it and make a better world. Little by little, we all do our little part. During the summer of 2016, my friend Darwin Sumner invited me to film him and a family with a foreign exchange student from Spain fishing at a pristine lake on the Red Lake Nation. So I drove from Bemidji up 89 past the casino to meet Darwin and this family where they were purchasing their licenses. From the courthouse, we were off to a stocked lake deep in the forests of the Red Lake Nation. Darwin prepared his boat and the family for a morning on the water. My name is Darwin Sumner. I'm from Red Lake, Minnesota. My taxpayer name is Darwin Sumner. I'm from Red Lake. I'm a redditary chief. I come into the redditary chief last March when my father, John Sumner, senior passed away and I got to take over for him as eldest son. Last summer, we took a special young man named Joaquin fishing with us. Joaquin is from Spain and we took him up to Red Lake and did some trout fishing. Ready? Ready to go. The plug-in? Huh? The plug-in? The boat? Did you put the plug-in? No, you better reel it back in. We just did it. So my name is Joaquin Gonzales-Divarren. I was born in January 2002. My mom is Ithiari Divarren and my dad are known for Gonzales. Last summer, I went to Minnesota as an Australian student and I went fishing to Red Lake and it was one of the best experiences of my whole life. I highly recommend it. Where are you at? Where am I at? And how are we doing the interview? So I'm in my house in Spain, in Madrid and you are in Minnesota and we're doing this by Skype and we're recording this. So, you know, you can do interviews through all around the world. If you want to come enjoy the great outdoors in Red Lake fishing, they have to be with a tribal member. The tribe has several guides that they hire but the main most important thing is you've got to have a Red Lake member with you who's a registered guide with the tribe in order to go fishing. So, bringing Joaquin up to Red Lake and him being from Spain, we got a little part of the world up in Red Lake and it's our reservation so it's just a little small part we got and we want to share that with people no matter where they're from. Just showing them around Red Lake showing some cultural stuff and where we're at and who we are do a little fishing, have a little fun and share some stories with each other. When they told me we were going to go fishing with Joaquin and with his friends I was told so many stories about them that he's so nice to kids but he teaches very good to kids and that he's our great person. My experience with Joaquin was you know like with any other kid, you know it's just kids are the same no matter where they're from we all want to have fun, learn stuff so I brought my grandson along to help me out a little bit and my grandson's name is Landon and I taught him how to fish and I asked Landon to teach Joaquin and the other guy how to cast so when we're out we wouldn't have hooks flying around and he didn't fit right in with us and he took up the fishing you know no time but I think he got the first one actually so we're going to try to kind of change up some hooks out here We picked a good day we couldn't have picked a better day to go fishing that day it was sunny out and no bugs once you get out on the water there's no bugs the wind picked up a little bit after a while because it was a little hot but fish were biting really good I think we caught like 30-some fish it's clear that water is all the way down to the bottom still guys that's just beautiful do you have water that clear in Spain Joaquin? nope I didn't think so to go fishing with my host family was a great experience all those sites it was a great thing you know that lake with clear waters and with all of those priests around and it was very nice with no buildings it wasn't air polluted and it was very nice now with that experience I got to know what pollution was doing to all the forest near here and in Minnesota and everything because I'm a boy scout and I get to go like one time each month to the morning and I know pollution is doing very bad things to our planet it's great I love the lake it's very very nice and I have a great opportunity to learn how to fish very well he got up there we went in the woods and he was saying wow there's been way out in the woods like this seems like he had a good time with like the nature aspect he was asking a lot of questions about the woods and the people and the land we're at he had a good respect for knowledge of nature it was very nice I went fishing one time in the states but I didn't catch anything Landon what is it like to teach your new friend Joaquin how to fish very fun feel like my teacher now yeah Landon did a good job with Henry and Joaquin Joaquin was asking Landon a lot of questions as we're doing a whole film and Landon was more than happy to share his two cents Landon's been at it since he's been two years old and I didn't teach him that one day I asked Landon who taught you that so he learns a lot from in-fishing stuff like that but he was really proud of himself for helping out Joaquin I was really proud of Landon like a grandpa should right we're going to try some butter worms butter worms take that hook off of there please we had Joaquin fishing for rainbow trout and brook trout and it's a very simple technique it's just a plain tungsten smallest jig you can get with a little butter worm or wax worm on it and maybe some cut up earthworms and we were fishing pretty deep that day because it was kind of warm and we started off shallow but we found one biting there and we moved out to like 30 feet in that day okay real let's go Landon let's land it hold it for a second it's not too fast I'll tell you there you go this is a fish oh my god hey there you go look at this fish put the bail good job I'll give you five we'll get the camera out here we gotta show your first fish when I first like failed that there was a fish in my hook I thought like it can't be real Joaquin come over here come over here over there by Darwin there good work you guys you think it will be like more hard but it's very soft and you get to real real real and I started doing and when I got the first fish I thought it was a very it was going to be a very very small fish but I think it was the biggest one I ever caught so what's it feel like to have caught a fish it feels awesome what were you doing when you caught him fishing I was just getting up and down the fishing rock jigging it's called yeah jigging did a good job you see how they kinda just hit and start reeling and they pretty much hooked themselves coming up good job Joaquin and you're from Spain now what kind of fish do you got in Spain not much really in Madrid we don't have wow that's a pretty famous place okay let's try to get another one shall we Joaquin caught a fish and he was all excited you can see the kids you know they get all excited they start really trying to get that fish up as fast as they can but you know sometimes it doesn't work you know sometimes they fall off but that's all about fishing see how slow that is then the boat moves and then we kinda get to different depths so just leave the line right there Joaquin I remember him saying like wow that's the biggest fish I've ever caught you know that's the first fish I've ever caught so that kinda makes everybody feel good in the boat about helping somebody else learn how to catch a fish most times from my experience once you get a kid fishing he's hooked he's gonna come back out and fish tomorrow with us so I've seen that bite don't mess with that don't mess with it you had a bite while you were messing with it there you go real everyone? yeah okay easy just hold the rod right there hold steady oh that's a nice one oh my god okay lift it up lift it up lift it around it don't take it to the top look at that one don't run open the bail please open the bail yeah okay that was a big one that's a nice one okay that's a rainbow trout that's a big rainbow trout teaching kids or anybody to fish that's the skill they can carry for a lifetime you know teaching kids especially for me is really important so you know they can carry that onto when they have children when they get to be young adults and have children they can teach their kids to fish that's a huge one walking alright good job goodbye yeah good job awesome to me fishing being on the water it's really a spiritual aspect of it to me spending time out there it just feels good I think the better you feel about yourself and life and that water really has that healing effect on you and where kids actually feel a lot better after a time out on the water kinda wears them all a little bit but still that fresh air is good for them and a lot of times they go home they just go right to sleep but they're always talking about wanting to go fishing again the main thing is that they're out there enjoying the outdoors having a good time and the spiritual aspect of it is what gets me out there and just even catching the fish is just a bonus to get out there you know once you learn a few simple techniques presentations whatever you're uncertain like bass walleyes copies you can pretty much go any place and catch them with the same techniques there you go walking good job man these guys on fire and you're from Spain okay I like it just real don't do anything fast act a nice one when I say lift up just lift up slow lift up slow lift up yeah thank you so much for watching join us again next time on common ground if you have an idea for a common ground piece that pertains to north central Minnesota email us at legacy at lptv.org or call us at 218-333-3014 to view any episode of common ground visit us at lptv.org we order episodes or segments of common ground call 218-333-3020 common ground is brought to you by the minnesota arts and cultural heritage fund with money from the vote of the people November 4th if you enjoyed this episode of lakeland public televisions common ground consider making a contribution at lptv.org