Exhibits > Trout Creek >
School Boy
16. School boy at home, Date Unknown (Kassel
Weeks, Wind River Archives at CWC
Sorry Image Unavailable
[Homesickness] was the hardest thing to fight. You used to suppress
that feeling. You had to have had. If you showed any signs of it,
well, you caught heck for it. In other words, they punished you
if you’re too weak to admit it, “I’m not liking it.”
You had to like it....[When things began to change] they weren’t
still treated as they used to be but you still had that feeling
hanging over you all the time, [that] somewhere, somebody is going
to come and, you know, give you what for. That stayed with us a
long time. It’s what you call suppression, suppressing yourself.
Your American native tongue and all that other traditional stuff,
well, most of us forgot it, our elders couldn’t teach us, they
wouldn’t allow us to do that, they’d be pulled off of
that. So that’s where most of our tradition went. It’s
only when the BIA changed over into this other day school that they
eased up....By that time it was too late. (Val Norman)
|
