Indians speak of traditions for students
by Jessica Petty, reporter

     Two Native Americans wowed SE Campus students with their traditional storytelling and flute playing from their tribes.

     Resa Shipman’s U.S. history class listened to folktales and songs from Gilbert Smith and Eugene Brown last week.

     Smith of the Ottawa and Chippewa tribes spoke about powwows and their meaning to his people.

     Smith’s great-grandmother was a tribal medicine woman who could heal many sicknesses with ancient and sometimes strange remedies.

     His aunt told him about the medicine woman curing her of polio when she was 4 years old.

     “She took her to Lake Michigan and dug a hole in the beach. She laid my aunt in and buried her up to her neck. She chanted and danced over my aunt all night. A week after she was removed from the hole, she began to walk and was cured,” Smith said.

     Smith also introduced many authentic Native American items used by Comanche Indians, among them drums, spears and herbs used in ceremony. Most items used by the tribes came from the buffalo.

     Smith’s tribe thought of the buffalo as sacred and used every part of its body for items such as blankets, shields and staffs.

     The American Indian told the students of the tradition of his people to smudge or cleanse their spirits through the burning and swathing of smoke from herbs. Sage, tobacco and sweet grass were lit on fire, and the smoke was moved up to the face and body of the person wishing to be cleansed.

     Brown, an elder of the Miami tribe of central Indiana and descendant from the Cherokee and Shawnee tribes, played flutes from his personal collection.

     He demonstrated the difference in sound between flutes made from different woods and taught words from the Miami tribe.

     He played several love songs that young warriors would play outside the dwelling of the girls that they wished to pursue.

     “The young man would write a love song for his intended, and she would distinguish it by the wood and construction of the flute that was used,” the Native American said.

     Brown also instructed students on the importance of the circle symbol and eagle to all Native Americans.

     The circle signifies that every start has an end and that it is a repetitive cycle. A piece pipe, thought by many to be a peace pipe, comes in two pieces and when put together for use symbolizes the joining of a circle.

     Shipman invited the speakers to highlight a heritage project that her students are working on for class.