 15 years ago, I moved to North Dakota only knowing one incredibly busy PhD candidate who did not have a lot of time for me. I am indebted to the late Alan Allery from Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa for hiring me at the National Resource Center on Native American Aging at UND, our sister university. At this job, I worked with one of the panelists, Francine McDonald. For five years, I received regular gifts of enlightenment and opportunities to meet and speak with people from various Native nations. It is always and will always be a personal mission of mine to pay it forward by advocating and enlightening others about diversity topics. Therefore, let's move to learning about our guests. So Francine McDonald has a Bachelor's of Masters in Public Administration from the University of North Dakota. She has held various positions within and outside of her tribe and reservation. She is currently an instructor and department chair from the business department at United Tribes Technical College. Francine is a Dakota and an enrolled member of the Spirit Lake Tribe. Her family comes from Spirit Lake and Sisseton. Ola Klimchak is a lifelong learner, and this is Ola. She's a lifelong learner and conservationist believing in the equity of species, every day deepening in awareness to the importance of large-scale interrelated systems. They have been out in queer gender identity and sexual preference for almost a decade. Ola has been with NDSU as acting youth mentor, educator, photographer, and maker with the Standing Rock Sioux County Extension since September 2017. Shared in, in front of me, is Dakota from Standing Rock and Sisseton-Wapiton Oyate. She has worked in the education field for most of her adult life and currently serves as the career and technical education director for UTTC. She is advisor to a student cultural group on UTTC, UTTC campus. She is passionate about bringing awareness to murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls in education. Going to a new technological advancement using my cell phone. Petra Harmon-Wenhock at the end has her MPH and is currently the Title IX director for Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Nutrition for the Elder Caregiving Support Program. She is enrolled member of Standing Rock. Petra has a background in medicine, health, and education. Petra has her BS in biology from the University of North Dakota, our sister university. She completed three years of medical school at the University of South Dakota and has her MPH from North Dakota State University. Her mother ship from yesterday. She is also an eminent scholar in the Lakota language and culture through Sitting Bull College. She is certified as Lakota language culture teacher through the state of North Dakota and served in the capacity of teacher at various grades and has worked as a medical and health consultant for her tribe for a number of years. In addition, as a role as director, she also serves as a cultural competency instructor for her tribe. She has been a long time advocate in these areas. Her passion in prevention by using food as medicine, do you want to say, I don't know if you could hear that, do you want to use the mic? I would have practiced, but I just got the word today, so the words. She is also dedicated to education, cultural competency for all, traditional food conservation and working to improve food security on the reservation. As we go forward with this panel, I'd like each of us to realize we're probably going to be uncomfortable, and I don't know about all of you, but for myself, I learned a lot of things when I'm uncomfortable. So let's all look at everything with a good heart and be willing to carry on very valuable conversations, ask meaningful questions, and let's all seek to learn and move forward to be better people. Thank you. Thanks, Sue. At this point, I'm going to turn the mic over to Ola. Hello everyone. So my name is Ola, and I use day-them pronouns. I am genderqueer, so there's a difference between gender, sex at birth, or assigned sex and sexuality. So my sex at birth is female, so I do have ovaries, and I do have estrogen in my body. And my sexuality is queer as well, which means that, or some people also use the term pansexual, which means that I can be attracted to any kind of person, but the attraction is really only important when it's consensual and it's actually talked about, so I don't usually sexualize people that I'm not in a relationship with. I'm talking a little bit today about the differences and also how it might come across in a workplace when someone's gender isn't affirmed, as far as both productivity, and then also on the other end for a co-worker who maybe isn't used to using a different gender, a different pronoun for someone, and maybe some tips about how to switch over in that transition period. But there are some resources you should be aware of, and maybe you have seen them. If you're not used to the program, you might have seen them in the spring, or also in November. But on the NDSU website at ag, so ag.ndsu.edu, backslash, cff, backslash, lgbta-1. There's a series of six videos, and they do a really good job of going through definitions and also just what we know as far as how people experience going through life, not heteronormative. So I would recommend looking through that and for more of the details, but I was going to go through more and talk about my background and maybe things you don't think about when you're working with a new co-worker, someone that recently is coming out as wanting to be who they feel like inside. So I have known about my gender identity for as being not heteronormative, meaning not male or female, probably since age 14. But a lot of children, I didn't even know there was anything other than straight, and I didn't know there was anything other than gay or lesbian until my 20s. Specifically with that, too, is even once you find a community, sometimes when you realize you're not necessarily gay or lesbian or not necessarily male or female identified, there can even be exclusion from within the gay and lesbian community. So this is something to think about when you're working with youth or people that it can be quite a journey to find even the terminology to figure out who you are, let alone how to go through the world. A lot of youth are actually kicked out of their homes. I was lucky enough not to be kicked out of my home when I came out, but I actually wasn't able to come out until I was engaged with my partner. That reason is I went through pretty much daily verbal exposure to homophobia, but I was lucky enough to not be totally expelled from my family, like a lot of people are. So think about when someone comes out, it might be a really big step for them to talk to you about it. They might have had to think about it for quite a while, and in some ways, I'm like, I don't know if we're just the right word, but I'm able to pass as female in this world and that can be hard, whereas some people recently are coming out as trans and they're trying to transverse this line of figuring out at what point are they going to be actually identified as what they feel like inside, especially for trans people. It can be like a year of constant therapy, and if you don't have health insurance, it can be very expensive, time consuming, almost like a part-time job of trying to transition into what you feel like inside. I've known a lot of people when they're on testosterone or estrogen again for the first time, it's like going through puberty again. So imagine being a teenager with desires and emotions and intense mood swings in your 20s and 30s, and then also trying to live your daily life. So not only are you having to do injections every day, go for therapy, and also then try to cross that line of trying to feel safe, both in your home and your community, and it'd be nice to spread a little safety to your workplace. So just think about that, and as far as quantifying it, a lot of people have, it's kind of like a known thing that's based on people who are willing to talk about their sexuality and their gender, it's at least about 10% of this population, about 10 to 12 to identify as not male or female, or identify as not straight sexuality, as far as not being identified to the opposite gender. If you're identifying as a female, people might be attracted to a female or to queer people. So at least like one out of 10 people around you that you know identify this way, so it's something that's to think about that it isn't an insignificant number, and those are just the folks that feel comfortable talking about it. So imagine how hard it can be to talk about it and to actually be willing to be part of a statistic. It's a good way to be an ally, so if you're thinking about the kind of alphabet soup of LGBTQ, there's also the A, so it can stand for asexual, but it also can stand for ally. So if you want to be part of that community and help someone that maybe is having a hard day, like think about ways to make someone feel safe and welcomed, and a way I like to start is regardless of how you identify, like offer your name and your pronoun. So it's also a good way if you forget someone's name, like just make it a part of an introduction, you don't have to be ashamed about it, like just say like for me, like my name is Ola, I use they them. Some people use the word preferred, but for folks you know who are going through intense medical or intense sessions of therapy, it's not a preference, this is how they feel inside. So I usually will just say this is what I use instead of using the word preferred, but to even bring up that in a conversation when makes someone probably immediately feel safe, or at least open to being understood. So just something to think about when you're going through your work lives and when someone comes to you with you know their openness. Something also I want to say too is there's the I in that alphabet soup, which also means intersex. So not only is gender as far as male and female, not necessarily the only things out there, because or sorry not gender, sex as a sex in birth. Some people aren't born with chromosomes that match your genitalia. So you might have a vagina and ovaries, or you might have testes and a penis, but you might actually have chromosomes that are slightly different, or your body might not produce hormones in that same way. So for me, even if I wanted to transition, I have a disease called endometriosis, which literally means my uterine wall spills on my uterus, coats my whole abdominal cavity, and I produce excess estrogen. So even if I want to transition, the act of taking testosterone would increase my estrogen for a period of time it would be unsafe and likely mean I would need surgery again and not be able to work for about a month. So just to think about it, like there is a spectrum you can't always assume, try to have an open heart and for me, I just like to um I don't want it to be like the main conversation or what has to take over like a relationship at work. I just try to present my pronoun and just go on with being a person, because it's just part of me, but it's not everything that I am. But for some people, it's something that's on their mind every day if they are transitioning. Thank you. Thank you all for that. That was really informational. Yohaniwashi de Madaki api. Oyate ohoi charawi machi api. Chante nape wa shite chiusapi. Good morning my friends and relatives. My name, my Dakota name, is Respects the People Woman. Um sorry, I'm a crier and and it's it's emotional for me even to say my Dakota name because the Respects the People Woman, that name was given to me by my grandmother. After she was observing me interact with people at one of our ceremonies and for me that's it's a huge honor for for her to see me that way through her eyes, but it's also a responsibility for me to live up to that name and to always remember my place in this world and how I need to be respectful. And it's a really it's a big struggle because the things that our people have to endure and go through and to have to remember that I need to be respectful not only because of what my grandmother's seen in me, but just to be a good relative to you all be a good mother. And so that responsibility sometimes is really hard to remember when you're anger or your passion and things you know just take over you. So I want to thank you all for for being here and having an open heart and open mind. When we learned of the topic you know being comfortable in an uncomfortable situation or you know however it was worded sorry you know I was excited but yet I knew you know that might be a hard morning and I really encourage you all to ask those questions that you've always been wanting to ask. I'll share with you how I've been taught and the things that I know by no means you know am I speaking on anyone's behalf or anything by no means am I an expert in our culture, our beliefs or anything I'm still learning a lot, but I try to carry myself in the best way that I can. But some of the things that I think you know taking this step and being here and wanting to learn you know about our different backgrounds and our people and everything you know are I really appreciate you guys all being here. There's so many things and I don't think you know we're going to have time to talk about a lot of things today and and hopefully we have time to open it up to a lot of questions. I was telling my husband you know over the past past few days here about you know the topics and things I'm kind of anticipating you know might come up and then I started putting a list on my phone of things that I would like to talk about that I felt were important to bring awareness to and things like that. So if I'm looking down at my phone you know I apologize but that's kind of my reminders and things like that but I'd really just want to open it up you know to questions and and hear your guys' perspective on on some things but you know like I said the questions you know I can give you you know my word that I won't be offended or anything like that by any of the questions that you have in my bio you know I said I was passionate about education as well as MMIW things and because I think education you know if we learn about one another you know that's going to help us squash all these stereotypes and barriers and things like that and hate and just by understanding one another and taking the time to learn about each other. I really appreciated you know the introductions not by us but by Kim and Sue and they had acknowledged you know their ancestors and where they're from and that's one thing that I always you know encourage people is is that we'll come from somewhere you know and that might be different places but you know and but just to remember those teachings and how we're more similar than we are different and have that respect for one another I was I'm really fortunate to be a part of different groups to Bismarck area when I've just moved up here about three years ago from from Standing Rock I'm from Cannonball and in order for my son to get a better education he's into robotics and engineering and things like that and we can't get those classes back home and so when he was going to be a freshman in high school I'd made the choice that you know he had set some high educational goals for himself and he had the interests that couldn't be fulfilled back home and so I had to take us out of our culture and bring us up here just in order for him to get that better education and we're fortunate to have the means to be able to do that so because of that move I've been really fortunate to be a part of different groups here in Bismarck and one of the smaller groups that I belong to one of our first meetings they had talked about providing a safe place for people to talk their truths and to be able to have you know hard discussions and and the group I'm the only native one in that group and so I was sitting there listening you know and this was I think our first or second meeting and and that had really kind of stuck out in my mind and I really appreciated that as providing a safe place to have uncomfortable discussions but the one thing that I had brought up was that you know how I appreciated having this space but are you ready to accept the truth my truth and the things that I want to share acceptance of that truth acceptance of our stories or your stories or you know anybody else's out there you know as a big part so just kind of you know remember that I feel like you know you've created this safe place to have this discussion I hope that you have those open hearts and I hope that you know between our shared stories that we share here that you know it has an impact positive impact on you and that you can you know affect someone else's life positively in some way or another so thank you again for to the coordinators of this event and again to all of you for for being here in and wanting to listen thanks good morning everyone Francine McDonald um this is really an appropriate topic for me becoming comfortable with the uncomfortable because I am really not comfortable public speaking even though I'm an instructor so but I'm glad to be here I will I'm open to sharing anything that I know or that I that you feel that can be helpful to you and in the job that you do I thank you Kim for inviting us to be here on your panel and I just want to share a little bit about my background I'm come from Spirit Lake Reservation and my background is probably you is one of those stereotypical households that you probably heard about for Indian reservations I'm come from a single parent home I was raised by my mother actually didn't meet my father until it was about eight or nine not because we didn't know who my father was but just because he was an absent father I was raised in a family that drank a lot but even though we had all those hardships it didn't mean that I was going to be that way and I think that's the thing that I feel that I want to inspire that like the kids that I teach at United Tribes is that you might face hardships throughout your life but doesn't mean that you have to be that way my mom was a drinker my dad was a drinker but I wasn't a drinker so I did just because they were doesn't mean that I am so and I guess looking at families are what you believe about natives our Indians is try to get to know them first or know about them first because we we are not the stereotypes that we are portrayed a lot we are not all alcoholics we're not all drug abusers we have our same problems that every community has but we there are a lot of good that also comes with that bad so and we're not closed off we are open to being asked questions we are open to having dialogue with people of different races our different backgrounds and I guess we were taught to be really friendly to be to treat everybody good that's part of our culture so and and we're just we're never every not every day we're told you need to treat everybody good it's just the way that we're brought up that that it's not expected of us it's just the way we're brought up again so don't take it at face value when you meet someone or when you work in a community I guess is what I wanted to you to take away from us is to get to learn the people and get to learn who you're working with um don't be scared to ask questions or to visit with the people all right thank you hey honey wash day just like shared and said um chante wash day a nape chi you zappi means um I extend my hand out to you with a good heart and that's one of our teachings with like Francine shared is that even though we come from different bands we come from a big tribe known as the ochetti shakowee the seven council fighters and um moving about in this world with a good heart chante wash day so when I say I'm happy it's chante ma wash day I am my heart is happy my heart is as well and and in our prayers you ask the creator you ask God clear my heart clear my mind so that I can do good in this world and so um you know the sad thing is that we're we have as a people become very um disconnected from those teachings and and that was by design so um there's I kept reminding keep reminding myself that this is a really short time but I really encourage you to read on history read um read our history and what has happened to our people and what is still continuing to happen to people and it's not just our people because I you know um I'm a storyteller so when I went to medical school um that was that was the time I went through culture shock because that's the first time that I was totally immersed among and I don't like to call white people because we don't call we're not red people or you know and then they call you know they call it black people so because as us we identify with our bands our tribe our tioshpaye we we identify with our families so that's really a a hard concept um so that was in when I was in medical school that was the first time I had total immersion and I didn't know I was going through culture shock and and that's not the time to go through culture shock so um so so needless to say there were a lot of questions that I had and what I realized was that um you know there's always cultural diversity trainings for um I say European Americans because um to learn about us but it has never happened for me that I never learned about the cultural norms of European Americans um so here I was in medical school trying to say um we have this practice that yeah we go out to lunch and I'll get you um oh I you know my classmate would say oh I forgot my wallet in the car well that's okay I'll get it for you and it's called doksha it you know I'll cover it for you and then you you know that just means later you know if I am in the same same situation you extend the same grace to me but she would say no that's okay I'll just go without so then my feelings were her I didn't why why won't she accept my friendship why doesn't she want to be friends or you know so it was really really tough and so I I had to ask those questions and I and I um I've been blessed to have people who would help me to understand but I also I still have questions because some of these practices um I always think is it the process that happened um and I I call it oftentimes I think of it as the immigrant way so what happened what happened in that process of immigration um because there was a disconnect from Europe there was a disconnect from the huge families over there there was this giving up of things and in the process does that harden people because and I ask that because we've had to experience a lot of things growing up um and my mother is what they call a full blood she's Lakota and Shoshone so she's all Indian and I've watched her be mistreated more so because um um her children were lighter skinned and so um she never taught us she always says there's good people and there's bad people in every group of people and she never she never taught us to to be hateful and just like Francine said we were talk to to that you pray for them as mean as they were you pray for them because in their heart something isn't right in their heart that they have to be that mean to people and so um shared and shared her Indian name and um mine is Wauhushalami which is compassionate woman and uh that's a tough name to have to live by so I'm the director for nutrition for the elderly and following the dash diet and the menu uh and the recommendations from USDA and my native plate it's tough as a Lakota to to give out these portion control meals and and the elders are telling me that's not enough so it's it's tough but um I could I could go on and on but some of the words I wanted to throw out there just for people to think about is that um in public health we we are really trained in cultural competency and the danger in being culturally incompetent and and that's when people don't even know that they're culturally incompetent is that they're they're then culturally destructive and so the best thing to know I mean the best thing to move forward into this uncomfortable situation is just to step back and say okay I don't know but I'm open to learning and having that cultural humility that we are all different and of course as humans we all have our basic needs we all have our similarities but culture-wise there's there's these differences and and that's okay that's what that's the beauty of of the world and that's the beauty of the human race and so um the other thing is the talking about the the uncomfortableness there's even a term for that now and that that term is white fragility so looking up that term and reading about it and it's not that um you should feel guilty about anything Dr. Phil actually I just watched a video on this with Dr. Phil and he was saying you know it's not that you did anything wrong it's just that the system is designed to to um to add or the the system is designed for the advantages for white people and and so oftentimes I like that when people acknowledge who their ancestors are because that's a big cultural component for us as we acknowledge who our ancestors is and so when people ask me who are European American ask me about well I what if I don't want to say I'm white anymore what you you have it I mean you have you're a German or a Weijian you're you have that ancestry you have ancestry and and well I'm all these other things too so I'm I'm all mixed up and these these are some of the comments I got and my my recommendation is that in our culture and of course in each Tiochpae the extended family and the bands it's different but in my Tiochpae we really believe and follow that you are what your mother is so you follow we're matrilineal and we follow that so even though like for example my my father is what we call Spala he's Mexican I was raised with my mother's people and I spent time with my father's family in the summer times um I'm really raised and my my worldview my thought process is really la cota but there's still things that are still um I I say is my collective memory that are Mexican for example living in North Dakota where there's not Kala lilies all over the place but I really love them for some reason and then when I went to Mexico they grow all over the place so I I would think you know for me that was my experience and just knowing some European American to have gone back to their countries because you also have that and that's beautiful that you can go back to what was your ancestors original homelands and reconnect so I will stop there thank you all for being here and sharing your stories at this point although we do have some scenarios and questions we want to give you a chance to think and process and and soon we'll be walking around the room if you want to raise your hand she'll let you ask your question and as the panelists said please feel comfortable knowing that they are open to any question give him a second again I'd like you guys to please just give everyone on the panel a hand I'm got the best job in india shoe because I get to work with these people who has a question they'd like to ask this is a question for ola you mentioned sex versus gender as different concepts and I've heard that before and I've never really understood it I was wondering if you could clarify clarify that difference thanks absolutely so um sex can be identified as we'll say what a doctor puts on your birth certificate so that would be indicated by eugenitalia hormones sex organs and then gender is a kind of a blend of how society sees you so there's like the societal gender and then personal expression of gender so gender for say a personal expression is how someone sees themselves or how someone puts presents themselves in society so say like I can be like female my birth certificate but I can present myself one day as male if I wanted to I could present myself as gender neutral so um say society like American society so it depends on where you are gender say here versus in a different country might be different so a gender can be a mix of physical attributes meaning like hair makeup clothing physical mannerisms or it can be cultural so it can also be like what what when does someone enter a room when does someone participate in a meal what are some of the greeting rituals of a particular culture and that's going to be really deeply ingrained in gender so um sex tends to relate to your physical sex and then gender is either how you present yourself in the world or how the world is gendering you based on someone's processing of physical cues next question hi I'm Jan Stankiewicz I use she and her and my ancestors come from Norway and Germany this question is also for Ola so in extension we need to get data and we need to have surveys and post surveys how might we go about getting survey data and reporting accurately to federal registers um in gender neutral or gender queer audiences yeah so in medical school we had to study embryology and it was really interesting because Ola had mentioned that there's this broad spectrum and in studying embryology which was a whole semester we learned about how the body becomes what it is at the time and it's not as simple as we think in regards to female and male and um and it was really sad because we also had to read the book and I don't remember the title but it was about these twin boys and one of them had a botched circumcision and the group of doctors who treated him actually they botched his circumcision and so then they just declared him a female and dressed him as a female and a little girl but he always knew that something wasn't quite right and actually it was those group of doctors who decided in the medical field who have decided even to this day that a doctor has to declare the sex of the of the child at birth so it doesn't even it doesn't even give time for the body to figure out what what it's going to be what path it's going to be and it's it's there's all these different um and Ola does a really good um has a way of explaining it but um you know the the body just there there's the hormones in the brain there's the hormones from the the ovaries or the testes the liver processes the hormones if there's something that doesn't function right um for example uh if even in in men if they're to drink too much and their liver starts to fail they're no longer going to be able to filter the estrogen and so they're going to start to have be estrogenized and and start to take on female characteristics and so the body is really complex in those regards and and then the testosterone there's testosterone receptors or estrogen receptors that fail to work and so um in medical school and that's that's why it was hard to go through that culture shock because culturally in la cotta um we didn't declare the the sex of a child until they were eight years old and so we were we were treated as um what kind of jar you're just children in general up until that age and then when they were eight years old they would go with their aunts or they would go with their uncles to learn their role um what their role was in life and um and and and we so we also acknowledge that there were um different different um genders there's there were different genders so we have um males who uh we call them winked us but they're they're males but their outward expression is females so that was present in our culture and so it's really difficult when we're going we're going through the education and um we see that when when i saw that that was really hard for me because to me it was really sad that um that children are declared that at their at their birth even if their body hasn't decided what it's going to be yet thank you petra so in relation to the question that was the conversation we've actually had multiple times today um when it comes to transgender i would as far as people who are um stating that they are now going by female or are going by male i would recommend on the reports to go by the stated gender um as far as gender queer people i really don't know currently so that might be something to ask like is that necessary for reporting are there other ways to um still get what you need as far as the information but is the gender necessary for that as far as trying to quantify um who you're serving and that's a really good question it might be something to kind of think about moving forward um with how you structure reporting but as far as currently i would recommend as someone identifies um be a co-worker or a participant in a program um as female i would state them as that or as male i would state them as that um you might want to ask if the gender queer person is comfortable talking about it if they are comfortable with you know going on the form one way or the other or at least saying that you see them and understand that they're according to this form there isn't a place to put their information on it maybe you can i don't know if it's possible to not check a box but at least say that you see them as a person but you're in this position where you have to write this report and not saying that it at all like minimizes who they are and that you're aware of this situation leave even giving awareness is a big step hi uh good morning my name is Anita Chirmamila and i'm i am an extension agent in Cavalier County um my origin is India and so i think we have a lot of commonalities most of i do look like you too you know um so you know when i was a student and and yes you i was uh going to downtown in Fargo you know there used to be some Indians who used to come walk right to me and then they used to start talking the language and i said like i am an Indian and said like yeah yeah i come from India but being an immigrant and uh just like you you know um human beings uh you know they whether they accept it or not every human being has racial bias you you being you you have your own racial biases and i have mine and being an immigrant i i face that all the time um but not to maybe not to the extent that you do but still i do um i what i uh i want to know is like the female gender bias female bias do you have that in your culture because i do have have in my culture and uh i see that in us too and the fact that us says that it is a great country it may be in every other means but the fact that it doesn't have a us president until now i don't see that you know every other country the third world countries everybody have a female uh you know president or prime minister but not us until now i'm not saying that Hillary Clinton should be please please don't take that but i'm saying that the female bias is still there and it adds a layer of uh another layer of bias just for sure uh women do you experience that is that in your culture that's my first question and the second one is do you experience that in your work life yes we do we do experience it in our culture and i just want to share with you that we're in a time of rebirth and renewal and revitalization it's um the 40th anniversary this year for the Indian Religious Freedom Act so it wasn't until 1978 that we had the freedom to practice religion in this country and um so my mother is the last generation um that was forced into boarding school and forced to be christian forced to be catholic so we're also catholic in our family um and so there's uh there's there is definitely similarities in our in our in the in Catholicism and in our belief system in regards to the teachings of Jesus but um in all of that too it has created almost a mass confusion among our people so assimilation has really been forced upon us in the last 150 years so general george patin he said uh uh pratt it was pratt he said uh um kill the indian and save the man so that's that was the start of the boarding school era and my great my great grandfather was the first among the wave of children to have to go to carlyle boarding school and um uh it's really sad and heartbreaking because a lot of those children never came home so i always think of a story um when when when when nelson mandela was in prison and he was freed and he came home they asked him what did you miss the most when you were in prison and he said the laughter of children and i can't imagine what our ancestors what our relatives felt when the villages were completely empty of all the children because they were taken away and forced into boarding school and so now um what i see in our communities is really people struggling to find their place back into a society so the cultural competency doesn't just have to happen for the non indians it has to happen for our own indian people and so um i it is really it is really a beautiful time for us to live in as indian people um grant and i say that amongst um in what we see for example um sherrydon has this the skirt on the skirt that is um printed um is actually printed and we can we can buy that off the internet uh there's you know we can go on the internet and buy things that are are culturally um appropriate clothing for us whereas when we were growing up that was not available to us the language that was not available to us i asked if we could learn it in in high school and they told me that um no there's no reason for you to learn it because you're not going to have a use for it and when i taught summer school for the summer program in grand forks they told me not to teach anything culturally related because there was no use for it in science and so um so i think i think that it's it is because of the assimilation process that we really have to deal with the misogyny that is existent but historically we've had a great place in our societies as matrilineal um societies and um we we have to draw from our collective memory for that because historically in the books when you go to college and you read those books um the writings in the books from the late 1800s was from the eyes of a european male for example lewis and clark and so they really um painted a picture that was self-serving for them and not so much the true picture of what was going on in our society and so for example i'll share this story in regards to the chiefs having multiple wives so that's the the common stereotype or misnomer and even our people carry that on oh he had multiple wives or he had five wives but culturally when you when you learn our when you're learning our language and our tio spayed the way that we're related it's all different it's um it's very much different than way the europeans are related to each other so for example my sisters i have five sisters when we have children they don't call any of my sisters aunts they're all inna they're all their moms we're all their mothers and so what did it look like if if i was in the 1800s and and all my sisters came over and my husband came in um came in and here's all these children calling all these women inna calling them all mothers it looks like my husband has multiple wives and these are all his children and so that's how it got documented and the thing is is if if say if my sister heaven forbid well historically if a sister lost a husband she would be taken in by her sister who was married so that that male also provided for her so we had these we had these tight obligations to each other so um historically we really have to we have to pick things apart and redefine things for ourselves as indian people and that's not so easy next question before i ask um uh you the question i want to apologize because i do not mean to stereotype you so my question is that uh my my um exposure to indian people or native american people or in canada they call them native canadian is just the western movies so and i still like gunsmoak um i try to watch it every night if our kids let us do that so my question is that and again i'm not trying to stereotype you but uh you mention a very good point like there are lots of misconception so one of the misconception or a slight reality i hear that uh the youth is into drugs unemployment what do you see is a positive path and francing it's for you you grew up in that environment but you didn't follow that path so two things number one how can you bring your youth to become positive individuals who will contribute to your tribes and the community and how could you remove those misconceptions the misconception is that um i think is that um indian country or indian reservations are the only place that have drug problems and that's not true because in your communities if you look at your communities you'll realize that there's drug problems there too so how do we any of us stress this um issue i know they're trying to address it on a national level but on a personal level are and i say personal because my home is personal um my home reservation is personal how do we address that at home is um we try to have more positive influence for our youth to educate them about the dangers of drug use um to um have um activities for our youth to do we are bringing them back to the horse which is a healing for our youth um bring um of doing different things are trying different things what are you there i don't think there's one best practice but um as long as we keep trying to address that drug issue with our youth and i think we um that is a good thing i don't know what may be different than my mom or my dad in um um when growing up i just knew that i didn't want to be like that um i didn't want to um um drink all the time or um and my mom even though she was a drinker she did encourage us to um get our education to go on to college i'm the first one in my family to get a college degree um and i don't know what that what made me do that but i do know that i had the support to do that in in the form of my mom and my other siblings and my um my spouse um to um so i had that support there so having if the children have that support then um i think that is something that could help them deal with drug issues are in the school systems play a big part of in this problem too to um making sure that our we're building those self-confidence in schools one of the biggest problems i found i used to be a um advisor for the upper bound program out of the University of North Dakota your sister school but um and my job was to go out to visit the different schools that we are that had under our program and they were used um they were reservation schools um i went to turtle mountain i went to ford fertile and i went back to my home reservation to spirit lake um to visit with the students that we had in the program and our job is to encourage these students to um go on to college to get that college degree um to go further than just high school um but when i would go into the high school um and i'm just going to speak about my own high school at um for totten going into that high school and visiting with a young lady there a student there and talking to her about um taking college algebra in school um because it's going to help her with our taking algebra in school because it's going to help her um with college algebra which you'll have to take when she gets to college um but what she told me is that her um advisors in the school system um didn't push the students that way they pushed them more to general math are um um a easier map just to get them through and then get them graduated that's not doing anything for our students when um we're not challenging them um our students can be challenged and they will live up to that challenge um but um when our school systems don't challenge those students then um i think we're failing our students we're setting them up for failure um if we could um have more belief in the school systems that our students are um stronger people that they can do more then i think um that will help out with um the type of environment that they come from that they that will make them stronger um so i i don't know what made me different than um everybody else from our family to to go on to school but um i think it's just having a really strong um support system and i think you could do that in any community it's just not native communities are um so being there for our students and being there for our children thank you for the question i could just add to that um i sat in on a presentation with dr uh donald warn who many of you probably know and he had a really good point he was talking about about that alcoholism on reservations and drug abuse and things like that and then he said but what if there was a study done to to measure or to get the data on all of the native people on different reservations who completely abstain from alcohol and drugs that data has never been reported um there are many of us who abstain from alcohol and drugs and tobacco and things like that for ceremonial purposes just for the lives that we lead um you know for different reasons and yet you know that's never been talked about and so you know would it be higher than the drug abuse and alcohol you know i i don't know but that's just something that's not been talked about and not ever been collected i guess you know for for the people that would need to see that data and things so but like francine said you know it's not just an just an issue you know on native lands by any means you know i'm sure we're all aware of that um but it just seems that um that when we start talking about all these different disparities in North Dakota and things like that then the the tribal nations are the the easiest ones to pick on because those are that's what's always being reported on is the the statistics on tribal lands and things like that so um but yeah thank you for the question there is a difference between racism and discrimination so does anyone know the definition of racism yes the the the key word in that is the power difference and so yes we all have as humans we all have the we all have it in us to discriminate i like starbucks more than caribou coffee you know but but racism when if someone was to accuse me of being racist um they can't do that necessarily because my people don't have are not in a position of power to be racist so for example if i'm to go into a bank and sue is to go into a bank and we both apply for car loans sue comes out with a five percent interest rate and i come out with a 15 percent interest rate based on skin color that's racism and this is the truth i took a young lady that's in our program to help her purchase a vehicle they quoted me one interest rate when they thought i was buying it when they found out she was buying it he said oh we need to check her zip code and her interest rate would be 14 and a half percent this is real it happens every day just real quickly i know we never had a time to there's there's so much and i feel like we didn't really get to talk about a lot of uncomfortable issues but the questions you know were a lot of educational stuff which was great but you know that that real in this day you know we were sent well i don't know if everyone was sent but then we were forwarded by president mcdonald um some of the because i wasn't quite sure you know besides the title of it like what's what to expect and things and so we were forwarded some kind of sample questions i think that you guys might have sent in um but one of them had something to something to the effect of um if you heard a really racist comment or things like what what can you do to overcome that and then it talked about the history given the history of the recent history of the events in North Dakota how would that and and i kind of laugh because it's like well are you talking like which history and of course it was probably the daff wall but it's like are we talking precarious and damn or i mean there's a lot of you know history that had happened that wasn't good for our people but um in today's world what sue said is is alive and real um even walking in the hallway um you know a lot of people just kind of you know that kind of weird you know awkward like kind of smile turn look away like they didn't know what to do um and so when i put on our traditional and this isn't a traditional skirt you know this is a beautiful skirt that i can't take any credit for other than paying for it um you know but when i put in our our ribbon skirts you know and which now is considered kind of a traditional thing but um it's i know i'm a target as soon as i walk out the door i know i'm a target when i stand in line at the cashier i'm waiting just to be treated normal i'm waiting for that cashier to ask me you know did i find everything did you you know did you find everything that you needed and not just to look down and start swiping my things because those happen and i don't want to have to feel that anger or the anticipation i was at the doctor's office probably flashed year i think and one of the things in our culture is to be respectful is we're looking down when someone is talking and in this day and age and to be a leader in your school or your communities or whatever if in our culture it's hard for me to sit here and to look out at you in the eyes because that's not something that we're taught growing up that is respectful that's being disrespectful if i sit there and stare at you in the eyes but in today's world to be assertive to be this i need to be looking at you but i was at the doctor's office and he was telling me all the do's and don'ts and things like that and i was sitting there and i was just looking down at the floor thinking like i'm listening i'm being respectful and he looks over at me and he goes are you listening to me and um i'm sorry he didn't slap me on the leg he was slapping the desk in front of me but um i was hurt because i thought i was being so respectful and and to him i wasn't but yeah he thought he could and he did he did that to me just slammed on the desk so it's very much alive um it takes everything that i have to come out and dress how i want to dress how i'm proud to dress but i know i'm a target soon as i walk out my door and that hurts and that's something that i don't want for my children you know i want them to feel safe i want them to be proud of who they are it's and i would be i would i just i need to mention halloween um is is uncomfortable the the costumes and things like that and i need to mention this because of the murdered and missing women indigenous women thing when when you encourage or when your child wants to go and put on or your daughters your grown daughters or whatever wants to go and put on a sexy Indian women costume and go wear it to a party or the male wants to put on something like that you're dehumanizing our people you're putting me and my daughters and all of our women and girls at risk for being sexualized and dehumanized and so if you take anything away from here for this month and for every halloween thereafter is go to your schools and ask them to just please be more respectful of the costumes that they allow in their school systems not just of native costumes but of whatever other costumes that might dehumanize a people and that would help that would really help and that's why you know you see all these different megyn kelly's blackface you know news story has been out this week and her comment was because it was okay when she was growing up as long as you're addressed as a character that character is a race of people and that's the dehumanizing portion of it that's why it's not right it's not a character that's a person thank you thank you and I'm sorry I have to end I think we have so many more things we could say and and comment and a lot of more questions but I'm going to end with a quote we need to give each other the space to grow to be ourselves to exercise our diversity we need to give each other space so that we may both give and receive such beautiful things as ideas openness dignity joy healing and inclusion let's help give a round of applause for our speakers today I'm not sure of the next session but we are done with this is a break and somebody tell me the next sketch thing or is it World Cafe so welcome back Carrie thank you