 My auntie came along. She started learning the stories, so the stories were passed on to her. And when my auntie started working at the university, she was scared that these stories are going to be lost. And because our belief is we don't print them, then she was wondering how do we get away from this. So what they did is she got a bunch of elders together on her reserve, and all of these elders are now gone. And they were stolen speakers. A lot of them didn't have that education. So what she did is she brought these elders together and she pleaded with them to let her record that so we can keep these stories, so we can keep them going. So she did. They all agreed. So now we must have about 50 stories in the language at the university all on cassette tapes. So my auntie retired now and is rehearsing that she had iPad. So what I want to do is get all these stories put on CDs or something so we can keep them. But what she did is she took seven of the stories from my area. She wrote a book. And it was the elders okayed it. If that's the only way we're going to be able to teach our kids then the way they're learning now that we might as well teach it that way. So she did a book. This is just a copy. I don't have any copies because everywhere I go if I get a copy I get it away. And I'm sorry I should have brought copies. But this is called made-a-bush unsokable and maternity-a-bush mentions. There are seven stories from the Kansas Act area. I'm going to read one today because I wasn't given the stories then. I'm able to teach them but I wasn't given that right to go and tell them. I mean where I come from that's what we do. We don't just take things. We have to be passed on to us. But this was given to me in school because my auntie retired and I took her place. So I teach these stories in the school and I teach them in English. And it kind of loses a lot of stuff in English because a lot of our words have no meaning in English. So it's very hard to translate and a lot of people don't realize that. Translate this for me. Translate this for me. There's a lot of our words. There's a lot of English words that we don't have in Soto. And as you look at English, English is a bastardized language where it borrows from everybody. It doesn't have an origin of its own. So a lot of words are in French so you can't translate. You don't have to translate it to one of the languages. It's very hard. So I'm going to tell this story in the Soto language. And I got about 20 copies here whoever wants to copy. This is called Nianapushapa Pupupu. This is called Nianapushapa Pamsen Nuka Min. This is called Nianapushapa Min. This is called Papapa Pamset. This is called Kiketan. This is called Gema Antonéva. This is called Gema Arvizma. This is called Pamsen Nuka Min. This is called Kitevpa. This is called Utenangu Stepanen. It is mechanical kukuku, a kind of kukuku. She got the same note after kukuku, when you get the same result. I need to go to get an hour key, because I don't know. If I don't go, I'm not going to be in jail in any time of the month, I'm not going to be in a room if I don't go to kukuku, I won't be in jail. If I don't go to kukuku, I'm not going to be in jail. I'm not going to be in jail. I'm not going to be in jail. I'm not going to be in jail. So that tells about how the owl got its name, and what the owl did to it. They fought, the owl was throwing things on his head. So when he looked up, he was seen. So they ended up fighting, and they fought for a long time. Finding a name was wrong, his neck to where he broke it. So now today the owl can swing his head around, that's the one, because they never did that. And our belief is that when we see an owl, we're going to hear bad news and ask the reason why, because they never pushed what the owl. And that's one of the stories that we tell in class, and the language is very important. If you look at that word menanguna, nanguna has no meaning alone. It needs that myth beside it. So how do you teach that to kids in the school? I teach solo, I've been teaching for 14 years. We haven't made a phone speaker yet, and we never will, because we're teaching it the way the white man teaches us English. So we need these stories to keep going, otherwise our histories are going to be lost. Our stories are told in our language. We have histories from back home about our ceremonies and how they began here. And those ones are stories that I don't, they were shared with me, but I can't go and share them. They were told to me because those are my family members that they were told to. So they shared them with the family. So some of those stories we can't share with people. Our songs, like jone kao hao, with the songs, us too we have songs that tell our songs with our ceremonies and only certain people know those ones. They can't be passed on or they can't be used anywhere. Our beliefs, our customs, our traditions are all told in these stories. These are our teaching tools. These are how we repop our behaviors. We have stories that keep kids away from going out at night. Today they're not being told. We have kids walking around all hours of the night. There's a belief we have that the spirits room at night and we're to stay in and be quiet and not bother them because they can come and bother you. That's not being told anymore. Those stories about that is not being told anymore. I remember as a kid being told these stories because we had no vehicle. You know what I said? It was winter. You couldn't go anywhere. So my grandfather would start telling us stories. Once in a while he threw something in there and my grandmother would keep mad at him. Don't change it. Tell him the right way. But he'd do that to see if we were listening but we'd hear the same story over and over. I'm just sorry that I didn't listen. You know what, I couldn't learn these stories. I know them in English but the language is missing. And a lot of words are ineffable. They can't be translated into English. And we need them. We have the Dancing Duck story. Now that story has a lot of teachings in it and it's full of kids and kids from there take stuff out of there. We have teachings in that story like being lazy. We're talking about to be lazy. Nana Bush is a lazy man. We're talking about to be like him. He's greedy. We're talking about to be like him. He's mischievous. We're taught not to be like him. So these stories tell that. We also have stories on our belief system. The word, it's very hard to translate that into English. For us, that's our belief that whatever we do to anybody, especially mother nature, we get paid back for it. When I was a kid, we used to run around like play outside a lot then. One time there was a big wing that we were running against it screaming. My grandmother yelled at us to us to come inside. We started getting shipped. We thought, well, we're playing outside. No, you're not. You're teasing the wind. You don't do that. But that's the wind it told us. Going against mother nature, teasing her. He said, she'll come back and she'll do something to you. You don't do that. So that's one of the things that can be translated. Today they call it like karma. Onjini away the game is another one that can be translated into English. That's another one. We do something bad to people and nature and animals. We get paid back. Whatever you do, others will befall you. So those things are taught in these stories, especially the dancing ducts that have auto-teachings for the kids and nobody tells that anymore. I went to Kodi one day to tell stories. They invited me to a class room and I found them so cute. These are my people I was thinking. One little girl had a lot of questions. She's just sitting there scared, just saying, who would scare an animal if she's scared? And I was telling the teacher, see this is what we need. We need these to come back. And that little girl said, when I get home I'm going to tell my mom and I'm going to tell her we can't go outside when it's dark anymore. So it had an impact on her. So it has to come back even if we can start off in English and throw it in soloist. You know, people pick up fast. And where I teach, we can teach those words like something like that. We just teach the basics and grammar. And I go out to communities and teach them. Actually, they teach me. A lot of them are non-speakers but they remember things. As soon as you bring it out there, they remember. Like with the stories, I gave them all books to one of the elderly ladies as I remember these stories. I told her you've got to start telling them. You know, we have to start bringing them back because once they're gone, we lose our beliefs, we lose our history, we lose our ceremonies. A lot of our ceremonies have a story and how we know they came to be. And if once those are gone and nobody's going to know who we are, each of us have something that we were given our language. And we weren't all given the same language like English. We were given each a special language which is only our language. And we need to bring it back. We really need to bring the language back. Something else I was going to... I was going to write stuff down and I thought I probably wouldn't even know if I can remember what I was going to speak about. But language is very important. Language is our lifeblood of our culture. That's what makes us all unique is that language. You know, we always push this story. There was a language being lost in the States. Only one woman knew it. So what she did is she started telling her son words and he started collecting them. He started telling him little sentences. He started collecting them. Now he's got a dictionary and he can speak. So it starts at one. Only one can do it that there's how much of us here right now we can save our language. We can save our languages, our stories. When we talk about the Earth too like we have a different view. I mean, Anishinaabe Karakana. Welcome to our kid. How does the world see the world? Our world view is a little bit different. Each person has a little bit of difference in their world view. When we talk about the Earth the way I was taught and the way I was taught how to say the Earth is Atsukane K. Which is Spirit Land. Even though the Earth sounds like a mother we don't call her Mother Earth. We call it Spirit Land because everything that was put on Earth was given as Spirit. The Creator again. When I used to hear my grandfather and uncle speak and talk about the Creator they never used Chema Nikko. Because they say that's modern. That's just like following a church the Great Spirit. For what I used to hear them say is Kaatime Nang. And the way it was translated to me is the one who oversees everything. Not female, not male. It's the one who oversees everything. So that's how I say the language is very important. Doesn't translate out what English means but you have a sense because you understand the language then you have that. You understand what the words mean. My dad he's the second youngest second oldest of his family he's actually the last one left now but he always kicks himself. Why didn't I listen? My teachers were right there his parents, his grandparents why didn't I listen to them? Now he's trying to remember things and help when I have questions I go see him because he's the only one I have left and that's who we learn of our family. I always tell my students that I'm giving you guys some information here but I'm not your family member you know go to your families get the information of your own family. Everybody has a story, everybody has a history. I'll give you the information you use it now you go find out your story stories and that way you're keeping your family alive, the language alive, you're keeping your history alive all these beliefs that we have they're told in the stories the little men you know we have stories about them what did they give us mo-mo honey and what does honey do for us? it's our natural sweetener if we all use honey instead of sugar we'd all be diabetes free another one is it acts as a healer we put it on a cut or something it seals it, it still does that today honey still does that it sounds to bleeding we have stories about ween the go he's a cannibalistic monster, he teaches us not to be cannibals, not to be beating off people if you look at it in the sense you're living off somebody you know and today we've got a lot of ween the go but you know they're evil monsters they take things from you and that's what they do is they eat your life away they take your life we also have stories on the besides name I push there's name we also have historical stories we have children's stories so all these kinds of stories that we have they're all told in the language and once they're taken out of that language they kind of change a bit they also have meaning that the language gives them and I'm very sad that I can't remember these by heart you know I have to read them in order to remember them and it shouldn't be like that we're losing our speakers fast so anytime I get a chance I try and go and talk to somebody that I know and get into also so writing a book when I go around to all these camps I go all over in the summer I go to white bear sacchame houses mustapating pipod the bread I go to all these camps and they're not all solo camps some of them are creeps so we mix them we teach both because a lot of people are a mixture of solo and creep so we go around telling teaching our language, teaching what we can but it's still not enough because by the time we go back the next summer some of them forget so they're only taught in the summers where it should be on going from that summer on going but anywhere I go I get these stories and I said it must be the way I look maybe I look like it needs to be told something but as always I get these older people they'll come I need to tell you something so they share their stories as we so I got stories from all over that some of them are origin stories how they got there some of them are on their name how they got their name so and I'm really happy that they do that that they can trust me and I was telling one woman in houses he told me the history of houses houses is a solo reserve but they call themselves creep their name causes means his key was ace which in solo means little boy or small boy so he was telling me this story and then I told him oh thank you Kush I said thank you I said thanks for telling me I said I heard this before but I wanted to hear from a band member and I told him when I write my book is an already flying home he looked at me and said I'm just kidding I'm not going to write the book first I even got the story of white bear white bear too was solo he left the campsite and went towards the states and he ended up staying in white bear and then his brother keys who and then moved to Manitoba and that's where he's going so all of these stories they were all told in the legends the language passed out to these people where it got to Kush Chris said he couldn't speak the language when he understood so now he passes it on in English and he says he wishes he could have kept the language another one is Victor white bear who told me the story of white bear and him too he said it was all told in the language and he comes to me once in a while bringing words to me because white bear has creed two weeks solo so they honour those three every summer they have a camp for the three they have a six week camp two weeks creed, two weeks solo two weeks Nakoda so when Victor gets the writings he comes to see is this solo or Nakoda so I try and help him out so it's really important to keep our language especially the stories and to share them but again the way where I come from we have that belief we only share so much there's a lot of things we can't share storytellers like I said there's certain people that can tell certain stories certain people can only tell maybe men stories like Joe talked about our Mises talked about our societies, we had women's societies we had warrior societies and all these societies they had the language and they had their own stories so they kept them so that's why I use that title because there's only so many stories that I'm allowed to tell I can't just tell stories I can't maybe I'll sit with Gilbert after and it'll be in print after you know that's what we're scared of people to do that that's why we keep our stories to ourselves there are stories they're not meant for somebody to take these ones we're meant to share because they teach us lessons they teach the kids things go back to our old way and start using stories to teach we've got to get away from hitting our kids you know that intergenerational trauma I went through that and you know it didn't bother me that I went to day school until we started having to apply spent a day you know when the stuff I went through I can't imagine my parents going through worse than that these help these stories really help you know we have all kinds of stories teaching stories humorous stories children's stories we have all kinds of genres of teach of stories and they have to come back but I think that was what I wanted to cover is how important our language is especially for the stories once you put them into English you're leaving out a lot you're leaving out the most important stuff a lot of our words can't be translated into English then you're weakening them they weaken our words and our words have a lot of power because they come from the creator the creator gave us that gave us all individual an individual language only meant for us and songs also songs again we have our own songs we have songs and we don't share these we don't share them our round dance songs they're never sung outside of the round dance they're not shared anywhere our warrior large songs they're only sung there they're not shared anywhere our sung dance songs again they're only sung there they're not sung anywhere else so even those they're all kept and they're all in the language I find that so great that when our young boys are starting to learn to sing they can sing in the language but as soon as you ask them to say a word you just say you know what that sounds like so maybe that's what we need to do is teach it by singing you know what when I went to White Bear I saw the kids three songs and two general prayers they learned them kids are smart they pick up things but we sang the prayers so they could learn them and they learned them this isn't going to be my fourth they're going back out there and they're going to sing them to me when I go out there so that's a start whatever you can even using a language a little bit you know not the servers not the bad words you know and just using a bit of it even reading people with it like our words another word we had made them all way which is the old lady and English that's what it's translated out to old lady but that word means the one who holds things together and who does that in the families the old women Achillesi in English old man but does it mean in solo the man from the earth is a penuciak a penuci English means child what it means is the one that was lent to us and created so that's why language is very important has more of a meaning than English you have all these words that we have to try to make up English for so language is very important language is the lifeblood of our culture we have to we have to we have to we have to