 Hello! My name is Fern Naomi Renville. I'm an enrolled member of the Cicetin Wapatin Oyate, an Eastern Dakota band. I'm originally from South Dakota, but now I live in Seattle. I'm going to share a scary story from the Dakota tradition. This story is called Ia the Camp Eater. A long time ago, a long time ago on the prairie, a group of children were playing in the tall grass when they heard a baby crying. The children looked around. They looked everywhere through the tall grass until they found a little baby abandoned in the grass. A beautiful child with quite a set of lungs crying its heart out in the grass. What is this little baby doing here all alone? We better take this baby back to our village. And so that is what the kids did. They took that little baby back to their village. They took that little baby to the head man. Now the head man happened to have a daughter who really wanted a child but could not have babies. And so the head man, when he was handed this little baby and heard the story of how it was found with no one around, all alone, we can't leave this baby out there in the prairie. We must take this child and adopt this child and raise him ourself. I will adopt this child for my daughter as my first grandson. I will call him Chaske, which means firstborn son. And today we will celebrate. We will hold a feast and a dance to celebrate this child being adopted into our village. And that is what happened. Well, his daughter was thrilled. She took that little baby into her arms. You know how babies are. Got those little rolls of fat that incredible way they smell. She held that little baby in her arms. Oh, he was beautiful. She was so happy at the idea that a son had come to her. He was very hungry so that all day long while the village prepared the feast and then ate the feast and then danced and enjoyed themselves. The new mother was taking care of this baby and feeding him and feeding him. This was a very hungry baby. This baby's big mouth was wide open and it just cried and cried and cried. And she fed the baby and fed the baby all these different things they could think of to feed the baby. I'm still hungry. But finally, finally that night after the village had finished celebrating, after the village had quieted down and people had drifted off to bed and the village fell into quiet. Finally, that little baby fell asleep. Finally, that hungry little baby, Chaske, the firstborn son, was asleep in her arms and she rocked him and she drew his head close to her ear and she rocked him. And as she was rocking him, she heard a little voice. Help me! She looked around. Where was that voice coming from? She started rocking baby again. Help us! Where are those voices coming from? She put down the baby very carefully. The young mother went out of her teepee. She circled the teepee but there was nobody. She went back in. It was just her parents there. They were both sleeping. Where did those voices come from? Once again, she picked up her baby. Once again, she rocked him. And this time, she pulled him close because she was feeling scared. She pulled that baby close. His mouth was right by her ear and she heard the sounds coming out of his mouth. Help us! Help! She put that baby down as quietly and carefully as she could and she stepped away and she went over to where her parents were and she shook her father. She shook her father and when he woke up, she whispered, Well, the father, her head man, he knew. He knew what was going on and as quietly as they could. He instructed the whole village to pack up right then and there in the middle of the night and leave and get as far away as they could while the baby slept. For that is no baby, said her father. That is Ia, the camp eater who comes in disguise as the thing you most want. Ia can eat all of us up in one sitting but Ia can only do this at night. Ia is a shapeshifter and can become his own form and can eat us at night. We must get as far away as we can and that is what they did. The whole village packed up. They packed up and moved as quietly as could be so quietly that the baby did not awake so that the next morning, so the next morning when that baby woke up, the little baby was expecting that the village would still be there and he would have his chance to eat them but no, they were all gone. Everyone had left and the baby was abandoned. This baby transformed into Ia. Now they say that Ia was very tall. Ia had these bony stick-like legs and Ia has a huge red mouth that's always open and always hungry and then kind of a naked bulbous body with no fur or feathers and a huge belly from eating villages. Well, Ia's very dangerous at night. As I said, Ia can eat a whole village at night but in the daytime, Ia has no shapeshifting abilities. Ia should have just stayed right there and waited for dark. He could have caught up with that village and eaten them but that's not what happened. Ia was impatient and angry and his fury overpowered his better judgment. He started after them. He went after the village. He went after them and when they saw him, the headman said, he can't hurt us now. He's terrifying to look at, I know, but gather sticks, gather knives and stab his belly. He can't hurt us right now and that's true and when they took their knives and their sticks and they stabbed Ia's belly, his belly split open and all of these people came out. Thousands and thousands of people from villages far and wide speaking different languages. Everyone was very happy to be free from Ia. Now that's the end of Ia. Ia died that day. We don't have to worry about Ia. There's some other monsters still around but not Ia. That is the story of Ia and the Camp Eater and thank you for letting me share it.