The Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations recently suggested that the province develop a separate First Nations school system that would help preserve aboriginal culture, knowledge and languages. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recognizes that “Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures.” But this declaration, adopted in 2007, came too late for many indigenous peoples. In many aboriginal communities, knowledge of histories, languages and traditions has faded to near extinction.
The Lakota people are no exception. According to Tusweca Tiospaye, an organization based on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota that organized two annual Lakota Dakota Nakota Language Summits in 2008 and 2009, the Lakota language is “becoming alarmingly close to being lost.” On the Pine Ridge reservation, only 26 per cent of the Lakota population claims to know any of the Lakota language and the average age of a fluent speaker is 65. But there is renewed interest among Lakota youth in reviving their cultural heritage – and the Lakota of southwestern Saskatchewan have a valued friend to assist them in this revival.
Thelma Poirier
“I was meant to be a story-keeper for the Lakota people” aren’t words you’d expect from a white woman. But Thelma Poirier isn’t a regular white woman. She comes from a long line of ancestors who had connections with the Lakota and Dakota people. Having held on to their stories for over four decades, Poirier is now ready to share them with a new generation of Lakota who want to revive the culture of their forebearers.
I first heard about Poirier from a worker at the Ranch Rodeo museum in the village of Wood Mountain, near Assiniboia. “If you want to know anything about the Lakota, you got to talk to this woman,” I was told. Eager to learn more, a colleague and I arranged to meet with Poirier.
Nestled in the beautiful rolling hills of southwestern Saskatchewan, Wood Mountain is now home to ranchers and a few Lakota families of the Wood Mountain reservation. We meet at a charming, locally owned joint coined the JH Quarter Circle Restaurant. Inside, an older woman with grey-blond hair, glasses and a plaid overcoat looks at us with friendly eyes from across the room. We join her at a worn, wooden table that is reminiscent of my grandparents’ farm house.
Family History
“My father grew up across the Missouri River from Standing Rock reservation and he loved horses,” Poirier begins. Poirier’s father ended up trading eggs and butter for an Indian pony. He also picked up a lot of Dakota language, which is closely related to the Lakota language, from the friends he made at the reserve.
Poirier’s mother came from a family with a history of strong relationships with Dakota people. “My great-grandpa was a frontiersman who came after the Civil War to the Western United States. His first wife was a Dakota woman called The Wind Blows On Her,” Poirier recalls.
Poirier’s great-grandfather later re-married, to the daughter of white pioneers, but the couple sent their daughter to a Catholic school for Dakota children. Poirier’s grandmother was the only white student in the school and learned to read and write in the Dakota language long before such schools outlawed learning in aboriginal languages.
When Poirier’s grandparents moved the family from the U.S. to Wood Mountain, they brought along a hired hand, the same man who had traded eggs for a Dakota pony (and would later become Poirier’s father). The family’s knowledge of the Dakota language helped them forge new relationships easily.
“The very first night that my family moved to Wood Mountain, they met up with all the Lakota people who could speak the language that they spoke in South Dakota,” Poirier explains. This first meeting sparked a long-lasting connection between Poirier’s family and the Lakota people — a connection she continues to sustain.
Becoming a story-keeper
With the death of her parents in her thirties, Poirier quickly gravitated to her parents’ Lakota friends. One Lakota man, William (Bill) Lethbridge, a friend of her father’s, played a special role in Poirier’s life.
“Mr. Lethbridge… became like a second father to me. He would sometimes call me daughter and he named me,” says Poirier.
“To receive a name from an elder and have it recognized by the community is a great honour. It is an appreciation of the interest I’ve shown in the Lakota people,” she explains.
“Only last week I was told the meaning of the name: White Feather. The feathers of the white eagle are considered very sacred.”
Like many Lakota, Lethbridge became a Roman Catholic due to his residential schooling in Lebret and was able to reconcile these two cultures and belief systems. He married a white woman and managed to pass both his love for his church and his Lakota culture on to his three sons.
But straddling European and Aboriginal cultural lines was difficult for many Lakota of Lethbridge’s generation. During the Great Depression in the 1930s, coping economically often took precedence over cultural traditions. Add to this the damaging effects of residential schools and non-treaty status and you have the ingredients that led to the near destruction of Lakota culture.
Present Lakota chief Dave Ogle, whose grandmother was a good friend of Poirier’s, admits that there was a time when “there was no carrying on of traditional ways and traditional practices.”
“There was a priest who came to Wood Mountain and said that the Lakota people could receive economic help if they dropped their traditional ways,” recalls Ogle. As a result many second-generation Lakota in Canada kept their traditional beliefs underground. “People will do whatever they can to survive,” he adds.
And so, Poirier became the conduit for the few Lakota who wished to share their stories. Lethbridge was one of the Lakota people who used Poirier as a story-catcher. Another was Chief Ogle’s grandmother, Elizabeth Ogle, who made sure to raise her grandson in the knowledge of Lakota culture.
Today, chief Dave Ogle has the support of a strong council and has re-introduced pow wows, pipe ceremonies and sweat lodge ceremonies into his community. Seeing the importance of revitalizing Lakota culture, Ogle values the role that Poirier plays as a story-keeper for the Lakota people. “Thelma Poirier has spent her whole life talking to our elders and documenting the history of the Lakota people,” he says.
A new generation
After spending her life gathering stories and at 69 years old, Poirier is ready to share them with a new generation of Lakota – a generation that seems ready to hear those stories.
According to Ogle, “gang violence and the cost of living in the cities is resulting in people coming back for more peace.” Young Lakota people need “to get back in touch with who they are and where they come from,” he adds.
Pearl Yuzicuppi, a young Lakota woman and Masters student in Public Administration at the University of Regina, walks the line between maintaining her cultural heritage while succeeding in white society.
“I have always kept in touch with my culture,” says Yuzicuppi, whose mother is Dakota and father is a Lakota pipe carrier. “We have leadership who are bringing back the Lakota ways. This is important for our identity,” she says.
“Many of our young people, both Lakota and other First Nations, are looking to belong. This is why they join gangs; they don’t have other choices,” she adds.
With young Lakota such as Ogle and Yuzicuppi re-engaging with their traditional culture, Poirier feels it is time to unearth her inner time capsule of Lakota stories. She has written several books on the Lakota, including The Bead Pot, a children’s book recounting the life story of Elizabeth Ogle.
After all, “I am just a story keeper; the Lakota people are the story,” she says.
Hi, this certainly is a beautiful and captivating story, about a meeting of cultures, and survival of First Nations culture. Thank You