What do these three grandmothers and their stories share?

Why should Euro-American know their stories?

Why are these grandmothers doing what they do?
Why is it problematic to refer to indigenous people in the past tense?
There are examples from the video.
What is the Ojibwe perspective on the rock/stone in the museum?
What knowledge have you learned from the video that you have not learned in lecture or readings?
Minimum of 3 paragraphs

The three grandmother in the Nokomis video, Bea, Esther and Makwa shared the stories about the loss
of their peoples identity, some wrongdoings of white men to them, the teachings of their ancestors and
many more. Bea talked mostly about her old school experiences. She did not favor the Christians
teachings in school where they were so different with her indigenous cultures and beliefs that make her
confused which one to choose. She then realized she did not have to give up one of the identities as she
is already an Indian. I dislike the statement of if you do not go to church and pray, you will go to Hell,
as cited by the grandmothers about their teachers saying. They shared similar childhood experience,
where they were trapped in the white teachings world and how they were treated as Indians. Esther
told about his father wrongdoing toward her when her teacher complained about her dirty hands. She
was bleached with lemon. I was shocked because it is not clearly the right behavior you should do in
order to teach your child. The effect is very clear, Esther felt very upset about the incident. Instead, she
gladly thinks that maybe her father thought it was a right thing to do to help her. I also agree with
Makwas statement about the teachers in the school; they might had bad childhood experiences and
that is why they treated the Indians children in school poorly.
These are some stories I cited from the video and Euro-American should know about these. They should
know the fact that even todays indigenous people still suffer from the effect of the past events. They
should know that they should be given their right back to own their ancestors sacred items in the
museum, the right to live their way of life, and so. They were human as others, regardless the skin color
and traditions and should be given the freedom to belief for what they want. I think it is very good to
perform teachings of your belief in God or Heaven and Hell for examples, but one should do it in
humanity way and ethically. When people shoved your belief, you should make peace with them. The
grandmothers in this video tell us several things about the importance of being the elders. They
continuously pass on the teachings of their ancestors to their grandchildren and believe the
grandchildren would do the same to their children.
It is problematic to refer to indigenous people in the past tense because they are clearly here, now. They
still live the way of their life and still, performing their customs and ceremonies. I am very interested
when I see them perform the drum ceremony, cleaning the animals skin and make shoes from it,
painting the bones and many more. They believe they can pray wherever and whenever they want, not
just in the Church. One example is the museum itself. We know that generally museums purpose is to
exhibit and tell us histories about something. The grandmothers are very upset about the fact that their
stories and items were exhibited in the museum near them. Their ancestors might be a past but the
sacred items of their people like drums, pipes, feathers and others are still being used until today. They
told us about the rock in the museum, but I did not clearly understand why they felt upset about it being
in there. But then I knew the rock is sacred too, and they could bare to see the rock being tied with iron
and locked with bolts against the wall. For me, it does not represent freedom.
The perspective of the grandmothers towards the museum exhibiting their past were new to me. The
differences from the Honor the Grandmother book is that they talked more on the loss of identity than
the suffering as a child. But they did shared the same thing about their childhood experience in boarding
school, about racism towards the Indians and also about the teachings that they need to pass on to their
grandchildren so that they will be remembered.