Main Street, Wyoming; 325; Native American Art

Main Street Wyoming is made possible in part by grants from Kennicott energy proud to be a part of Wyoming's future in the uranium exploration mining and production industry. And by the Wyoming Council for the Humanities and ridging lives of Wyoming people through the study of Wyoming history values and ideas. Every summer under the cottonwoods along the little wind river TVs and tents are erected Arapaho children gathered to learn the traditional ways of their tribe. Their lessons in beating and bow making their storytelling in Arapaho language sessions should be gains which machines going

to test too. And a lot of fun splashing in the river on a hot day among the teachers you'll find there is Richard moss at nearby Wyoming Indian schools and Ross Brown. Today on Main Street they're going to talk to us about some of the traditional arts that they're keeping alive. Richard will be talking about the making of the traditional drum while M. Barousse works on a war bonnet. Once that work is done we'll get a look at the end results. Also with us today is Maria Haas a curriculum and computer specialist at Wyoming Indian schools who's been designing the Arapaho language and culture program at the schools. Welcome to Main Street. Richard let's start talking about the business of making a traditional drug game make a not a simple refuge here for the big grown here it's not like what you would have here to that or for that it's going to

take time to make one trip to that or to the earth to go to know what animal what kind of an animal you're going to use whether it be elk deer or MOVE THAT PHANTOM OF you're going to look for. And to get it through to get to Hyde today if there is a lot of work to it you're great but hide. Take the meat off of fat whatever on one side. Turn around take it down and remove the hair. And you clean everything up on both sides as to what this is. Set it aside when you have to work on the rim. This is just from my dream of the modern type. Just cooked and fictions to avoid that you know that's just handy there. But to make one start from a cotton wood work down through the curtain thickness and hold on to have the

ends meet their time together with a new or raw hide. Or wooden paid to hold it together to dry that out do you credit on a grown up book pages here to keep that round shape. Now that you're trying to show that cake maybe you're on your third week to that part. Whenever you seemed ready you really really choke if you had grown up while you were making it. Refocus the hide and when it's ready and then you're ready to cover the remeasure you see here what you do here. What you need to go over the edge of the room here. You go over when you cut out the strips from the rest of the to read it here all the way around as you see on this one. Not true because you're not pretty good right. What are what are you soaking the heart of what if you saw water in water with broken

hide and water. One night when I ready you'll know when it's ready we'll real solve everything then you get to this one. That's what you're doing know by going in there. No script. An F for this place here all around the edges of the. You cut holes here and there all the way around as you see on the park here when you get it together and get liked it done here don't you. But deed cross-pieces don't care that's another script raw hide or go here and get your government here. One guy that there are some will wrap some cloth around our books going to make their. Courses hard work and all the choir they rap and who they can hold it more comfortably and actually finish

art if you want to paint. You may go there. These drums are used for focal length and focal dance and there are drunks of the shrink type thing. Thank you for medicine. Oh men are for men have drummed out of that so their coup usus who are the tribe any tribe had filled and this is for the group think and they have this type here. They're grown. This is what you call be in Arapaho ME BE FREAKING KNOW ME THEY BOTH sides. And that's all I have to say about Graham Macon now that it's quite lengthy but I could cut it down that short haul crew come to take. Make a name for another. Fire cooking dinner.

Or. I'm just holding this up so we can get a better look at it. Use this style of drum making done the same way now as it was done generations ago or has it evolved. Well the day at the park here the young cylinder with made out a hollowed out cottonwood tree that guides the hollowed out the cottonwood tree and dried up to. More than one crack on you you know and there are buried one drum out there and I made that we made from a movie made from a hold up come forward. Yeah. And came with this one here you know Cottonwood or small tree maybe Bob Michel they used to use the big will but we don't have those around them and they get they're young they're not grown. But back when I was a boy they have quite a bit of both long where we were you know Phil my dad and uncle you could go down and work with them through the desert

you know and going to narrow them down to going to sharpen to have them meet and kind the Motown Rawhi and on and how did you learn this technique from your father. Yeah I watched him I get more learned by watching on. Oh I didn't know nobody actually showed me how to make the well water turn on I put it on and what they're what do you hope for it told me about these things. I just remember the old you know. Why they need it and why they have to have them and their followers here. Let let's let's come back to that for a moment let's see what Ambrose has here and talk a little bit about the making of the robot which is what we have the materials for in front of us in numbers if you want to speak in Arapaho will keep picking at work at Cambridge at work translating.

So tell us a little bit about that the process of making the learning that it may be alone who you've had going after and he will go to whatever you use in Cloon then you read it here. I knew I made eagle and I had to use tail feathers for the front. You can tell these readers which we who like to write. Some here that you know that's right and good who are different than all of the good through right and left that's what you pick you I think you put 36 will you

do when you first started here's a here's a we do you know I don't have street you know heated up reading up like that. Coups all the obvious like the spin room get on the right who could bottle See that's the inside there's the outside I could do you say it to you clean it up and turn this back to where I cut it up put it back in their new sort of period tack it on there. All of that when I get through I get that. Crew here just hold on and hope for any good cue yarn tied up with Eritrea that's where we're almost through with us here.

We week you get a good disagreeing here that's who is going to goo but I don't use a good news so I could maybe like that to put on here was that with this but it won't be that much you'll be just maybe maybe he likes that. That's what's going to grow on their own handle. Then a good bunch of these I'll get a book's going to run through real reward. New first for me to start from the back and I wish I had here. I took the receiver north then his I could be in the hall and you actually cut the brim of the hat. Yeah ok then you could have been even but I took caffeine talk you through this we were there for this kind of good like the

universe do you have to get somebody beat or hit bad. What. 17th and inch and a half inch was so right on here. So you put it on the Internet on your way here you may get a couple reasons why you were put on the movie rivets or whatever you call it that. It will be good I guess. Whenever I get through with a lot of them will do through their good or bright brighter color maybe younger maybe three blues your side here see this be all who've been here but just be close here. He'd be reading here but this would be a hoop necktie street a month they're getting more up than I could do

inside here you would know the rule books get all the way around. This well said it here where I sit we would go all the hoop in here but just be against it. That's we still get hit bad board. You know you get to be all of them that are traditionally making war bonnets and making drums every step had significance there were certain ways of doing things and I guess I'm wondering and in modern times as people work on these sorts of things and as you teach younger people to use them how much do they understand about the traditional background. Maybe I should ask you this since you're developing a program in the schools. Are young people aware of the history and the significance of some of the steps of producing this kind of things now.

More so in the high school because Richard is the instructor there with the primary grades you know there. What the time that they have I think they get 15 minutes a day toward language and culture. And so you know there's not that much time to really you know not to really show up. A lot of these these traditional class where we're been able to do that the language counts but aspire as you know like to me in the in the schools you know with that with that with the young people well it's just you know our major focus is the language and in the cultural part of it the cultural activities to complement the language. Well what about at home. Are kids getting any kinds of instruction like this in the home or do they need to come to Richard or to Ambrose for that. I think that probably there should be more happening in the home. But one of the problems right now as far as tribal

people trying to maintain some of the traditional crafts in the language is that there's been a breakdown in the extended family relationships you have more younger people you know getting married and going out and living by themselves so that so that some of the. The link with you know these type of things you know with the past that they could get from grandparents or uncles and aunts were there. They're not in the home you know and it's like that with a lot of families. But I and I think you know I like to believe that there are you know that there are people in the homes that are that are passed in these traditional ways doubt Richard how how do you find young people respond when you're teaching drum making when you're teaching language how excited are young members of the tribe to learn some of these things that they may not have in fact learned at home you know the student will already know or through their.

Mother Like the young girl. You know the young boy may be the first time for them such as making war behind me can I grow or do in be do or go over there and a lot of those you know the first time for them. Good note from the home I think. It's not there I know in some places that you have to pass the phone to go if the parents do not know at least parts of it that they didn't have that back there. In their time and when they were young kids going to school would I need some do what I think and major part of the population that kids don't know anything and you describe learning by watching and watching watching your relatives and your parents and I guess I'm wondering how much how much

time one would need to learn the very I mean you do beating you drum work. You saying there's a great deal to learn there that seems to me it would take a great deal of time the way I have learned by walking on it. That way I remember who who like that crew or the man who didn't go on and on drum and I you know they walked on a lot of what they're pouring all your if that's how you do go look at what's going on when I was younger and not caught on or over there WERE the time when I wanted to make a drum fill I went by that procedure and I may not have done a good job and by that I learned what to correct and make a different Tom. And after that well the way I wanted the groom could get caught why put it together for. Me if you're going to put the growing together by what you see in the record and you know you've done something wrong. And then you make your own death and correction know what might have happened.

If you strictly can you're going to be like a little canyon. He will now back down. Well what do you want. But you have to be careful how you make the dome could that do that. It's seems to me that all those things require enormous patience. You have to test you have to try things and I wonder again in today's world with television and all the distractions that we have rather young people are approaching it that way do you have any sense from the schools. I think that it seems like they used to have a different form of expression that comes with their music and even the way they talk you know and growing up I think one of the first things you know that that I had to learn was to listen. But then with my own children you know it's a lot different they're more expressive with how they how they talk to me and. I think that some of these traditional values that were passed down through the stories

and in the stories associate it with learning these traditional cut the values associate it with with the language. You know I think those need to those need to be taught more in the home and you know and one of the frustrations that the children have is that they are learning the language in the schools. They go home but their parents you know they don't they don't know what they're saying. And so you'll have parents coming back to school I don't know what my my my child is saying to me in the rappel hall maybe the grandparents to the parents. Right. But then a lot of times the grandparents you know are not in the home you know. And so it's kind of frustrating for the for the children. And it's interesting to me that in an era when the language of commerce and so many other things might be English the Arapaho would make such an effort to keep a lot of these traditional origin to keep alive the language. Could can you say what what is the what are you going to do there with OK I think six years ago when I was asked by the Arapaho language culture commission business council to observe that first year at the language camp I was

in attendance had a meeting where the elders were speaking and they were talking about how they felt very sad about their young children not speaking the language because they felt that. They thought the language should be there. With with. With the lives of the people and I think their main major concern and you know I can remember the elders crying because you know they said we go into our ceremonies and it's all English. We are rapport people we should be speaking our language you know we should be passing this language on to our children because that is what makes us Arapaho in the end at that time and I feel that a lot of girls that that same attitude are that you know same way of looking at that is still there with them and with the elders and with the parents you know they're you know that this where we have sort of the missing link because we have even myself you know I I can understand the language fairly well. But now I have to start speaking it will at this point I think

we're going to listen to a little bit to the language itself and also to the songs that have been handed down through generations to Richard. Richard you've told us about the process of making a drug. Well I think it's time to hear what the drum sounds like and use. So if you could do a song for us and maybe explain first a little bit about the song you're going to do. OK. Back. Some time some years ago my father and my uncle dear you didn't know Graham what they called drome. Meaning Chong which made me pull around grabbing her now down there our songs for forever and now down more around their big drum.

That time I and the group of work I was training with and by that time. Macon the early 70s. We're going to a dance and never were called along o my dad who will come to the next. Then if they don't call us then we'll quit. They don't need it and IMO they don't need this kind of dance kind of war maybe change are changing. Seniors are getting more modern today now the dank told nothing but the competitive games and like fancy dan traditional oh night time maybe one can while they'll get to a big drum through our ground and I trip no more and then he nudged it out of a power system so the rather deaf from the old if they're not going to be on no more. Some of that are still there. Don't click if her feel here. I've got

no interest in that. And of all of the songs likely to die out at this point since they're not being used to power they will have me and I'm going home maybe I know them. Maybe some are much younger than I am. No one and the other way thing can't go on all of them. Maybe Mike can't go on a little though that age you know that generation the younger guy Gration don't know nothin of mine. Well let's let's hear a song that we still have a rabbit dance song or our dance on and on. Ya.

Ya ya. There. That the phone that they had made me a different sound you know not

not that different song at the contrary used for Ramadan or you know then now those at that time back there they were that they were named for their people. A true three ring around their hall and they know if we're in proper time but were from region need to get out. We want to anymore. And do people still know how to do the deaths of their older people like my parents that age may be to my age I don't want to know. Would you try to teach your younger children when they have one heck of a crime trying to get on to the steps. Is they also all the same as the rabid sort of difference or depth or same market same same family and you shift that I think different different that they are looking more like a wall maybe extract a like a wall or you walk through that type of guy who are they all right.

Is there any is there any effort to bring back those dances and have them it would be up to the younger generation whether if they want to or don't want to give up to them. Leader can teach them. Can you get it. Go for it. Thanks for joining us Richard. And thank you for joining us on Main Street while. Main Street Wyoming is made possible in part by grants from

energy. Proud to be a part of Wyoming spirit in the uranium exploration and production Industry Council for the Humanities enriching lives of Wyoming people through the study of history.