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SPEAKER: Art is nothing but a reflection of man's society, all people's society. And too often we get too involved in the process of glorifying the individual artist, rather than the theme of the art, or the beauty of the art, the aesthetic sound beauty of the art. And I feel it's the reason that American Indian art has been left out all these years.

I always have objected to American Indian art shows where they say, we're going to show American Indian art, and they have a teepee, and an arrow, and a shirt, and a little fire, and you discuss the Sioux Indian Wars. And I thought, well, that's not very artistic. That's not very sophisticated or professional. So I decided to change that and show art as a very highly sophisticated form.

And one of the problems in dealing with art-- and I'll get right into the culture after that-- is that-- or American Indian art, rather-- is that there are no books written on it, no Western European traditional books written on how you should do it, how you create it, and therefore we will glorify you as an artist. Much rather, Indian art has three aspects to it.

First of all, it's utilitarian. We all know that. That's why all the art historians and anthropologists-- or not art historians-- historical museums and anthropologists made the shirt, the arrow, teepee, and the fire. And so we deal in the utilitarian value of American Indian art, which it is utilitarian. American Indian art was made to be used up. It's as simple as that. It was not made to be placed in a museum.

Secondly, it's very aesthetically sound and beautiful, which I think a lot of people recognize, but not in art terms. And therefore, we call American Indian art prehistoric. We call it pre-Columbian, and we call it primitive. I object to primitive.

There's no primacy in American Indian art. It's based on centuries of tradition. It's based on the ability-- there's no one in the room-- I doubt that there would be anybody in the room that could do porcupine quill work, which is a very difficult thing to do. It's very beautiful. And based on these centuries of tradition, American Indian art becomes very aesthetically pleasing and sound.

Now, the third aspect of displaying American Indian art is based on the tradition, because there is a very strong-- and you can use the words interchangeably, religion and tradition, but of course, religion being an English word, not an Indian word. And so based on the tradition of what Indians created or religion, what Indians created, everything had a religious or traditional base.

Now, in my show, that's what I did. I called the show American Indian Art, Form and Tradition. I tried to bring in the aesthetic beauty, plus the tradition that created it. And needless to say, I caught hell from the anthropologists. One letter to the editor said, I object to the drugstore display at the Walker Art Center. And one young, very emotion-packed young lady, who was one of the tour guides we paid $10 a tour for, said it was a hideous show.

And I asked her why, she not knowing that I had something to do with it. And she said, whoever did this awful thing obviously left out the rich cultural value of Indian people. I asked her to explain that. And she said, well, walk over to this case. So there was a case. And it had Chitimacha carvings, woodland carvings, the Kachina dolls all in a case. And she said, look at that. They're all together.

I said, gee, I think it's really beautiful, because, to me, that's three dimensional. It's sculpture. And being in the art museum world, I really enjoy sculpture. I think it's very, very pleasant. She said, well, but they've left out the culture of the corn dance of the Zuni Pueblo. And I said, you have to be an anthropologist. She [INAUDIBLE] how she was, and asked me how I knew. And I said, I didn't know. I just guessed.

And she said-- well, I said, well, then isn't that your world? Isn't that what you have to do as an anthropologist? Maybe we could get together sometime. I'll do an art show. You do an anthropological study and teach a course. And we'll all work together. Wouldn't it be very fine and nice? And of course, I didn't change her mind.

To start with, in the basis of American Indian life, traditionally, I'm talking about one of the problems I'm going to have and maybe one of the problems you will pick up and perceive as I go along is that I'll be speaking about Ojibwe or Chippewa people, as you call them. By the way, I have some friends in the audience tonight from my hometown who didn't know the difference between two words. And I told them, I've never taught anybody anything as a teacher. So for their benefit, I'm going to teach them some trivia. So the next cocktail party, you can pass it on. And I only learned this after I left Walker, Minnesota, [INAUDIBLE].

There were 380 separate Indian dialects, speaking dialects in the United States. None of them could understand one another. There are very few similar language bases. And people have tried to categorize them. And they've gotten as low as 59, but they can't get any lower than that.

So for tribes that didn't understand one another, what they did is they took a common word that was pretty well-known amongst all Indian tribes, and particular to that group of people. And that's what they call them. The Pueblos are people who live in the Pueblos. But they're not Pueblos. They're Acoma-Zuni, Zia, Acoma, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara. There are a whole bunch of different things. They're bands of people.

The Sioux are not Sioux. That's half of a dirty word in the Ojibwe language. One theory goes. Since my people supposedly fought them very harshly in the battles all the way up to 1750, I think my ancestors supposedly called them, in our language, [OJIBWE] which I won't tell you what that means. And the French were on our side as trappers. And they took half the word, [OJIBWE], gave it the French spelling, S-I-O-U-X. And Sioux is the word. Actually, the people are very proud and magnificent bands of people called Oglala, Hunkpapa, the Mdewakantonwan, the Brulé, the Santee, the Yankton, the Arikara, the Mandan, things of that sort-- Hidatsa.

So we get to the Chippewa or Ojibwe. The word Ojibwe-- well, there's a moccasin that my ancestors wore that was made out of buckskin, that was made out of one piece. It was cut like this, and then folded over. And the seam came over the toe. And what you did is you took a piece of rawhide. And you took the rawhide, and you got it in water-- soaked it.

And then you pull the seam over the toe. And you pull it very tight, and put it over a fire. And it warmed up. And everyone knows rawhide shrinks, because we've seen Indians torture whites in the movies. And you pull the seam over the toe. And you warm this. And it gets all puckered up. And it became watertight. And the word Ojibwe means puckered when roasted in Algonquin. That's why I told you the story before I told you [INAUDIBLE]. Because you'd have all kinds of imaginations, things in your head.

So the word Ojibwe is puckered when roasted. In our language, the word is [OJIBWE], which means human being. So then back a long time ago, a fellow named Father Baraga, a Latin scholar, came along, and he helped the first Indian agent write a report on the Indian people that lived in that area, the Ojibwe.

And being a Latin scholar, Father Baraga spelled it O-T-C-H-I-P-W-E, Otchipwe from Ojibwe. It was shortened to Chipwe, later Chippewa, which is the plural of Chipwe, and we are now the Chippewa Tribes Incorporated of Minnesota. [INAUDIBLE] there you are. That's the history of that.

Back to the family, the extended family structure of Indian people is not dissimilar to tribes of Africa or tribes of Australia, or other places around the nation, in that the extended family structure was of necessity. The grandfather and the grandmother played the very most important role of all, in that they were the educators. They were the people who carried the child from early childhood up to become a viable product of that tribal group. They were the most important.

The father was of little importance to the family in that he was just the provider. He was like the supermarket manager, so to speak. And very seasonal cat-- I mean, he hunted when the hunting season was on. He fished in the fishing season. And harvested wild rice when that was there. And he did all those sorts of things.

And the mother-- and the women will love this-- was the drudgery symbol. I mean, she had the baby, and then after she had the baby, she came back and made the fire, and skinned the deer, and cooked the deer, and dried the meat, and all that sort of thing. And although there was almost totally a democratic situation as far as rule of this entire group went-- that is women has as much right as the men.

Children, when they chose to accept that role, had as much right as the elders. The women were usually too busy to play that role. But they did. They had the right, and they did it. Women were also warriors at one time or another. They could be, if they wished.

So in the extended family structure, the grandfather and grandmother are the educators. If I may break it down, the father and mother were of little importance to the family. Now, the child, that is the person growing in life, stature, and the whole thing within the tribal group is the object of all affection. It's the object of all educational thrusts, of all growth, which is well it should be. I think that's where our modern educational system fails to a great extent.

Now, outside, tangential, but directly related to this child's growth are the people-- cousins, uncles, and aunts. Now, the uncle and aunt, I don't know if people ever thought-- have you ever thought about how uninstitutionalized Indian tribal groups were? They had no jails, no orphanages, no old people's homes, high rise places, the vertical coffins, we call them. They didn't have places like this.

And being uninstitutionalized, you know, how the hell can you function? I mean, if you didn't have politicians and cops, how can you function, as Charles Stenvig would like to say. But Indians did, and they did function. There has to be a reason for that.

Well, in an uninstitutionalized tribal society, there are strengths that take the place of the institutions. And these are the family people. The uncles and aunts were the disciplinarians. And that's not even a good word. But that's, in fact, what they were.

Now, discipline was brought on, first of all, because you had a very strong role to play within the tribal society as a person. You had a role to fulfill. If you did not fulfill that role, you were a weak link in the society, and this was told to you in no uncertain terms.

But in my own memory-- and I think this is brought out somewhat by people I've talked to and known-- the uncle and aunt played kind of a different role of disciplinarians. The uncle would smack you upside the head. I mean, that's his role, you know? And that doesn't hurt all that much all the time. I had three uncles, and mean.

But the aunts are more of a-- some Indian people-- I was born in White Earth, by the way, not in Leech Lake. And we have White Earth people. So in deference to them, I'll say I was born in White Earth. I moved to Leech Lake.

The Indian women-- and I don't know if you have aunts-- but were the teasers. They cajoled you into shaping up. And this has always been a kind of an Indian way-- teasing. It's a very big part of Indian humor. The nicknames that are given to you are a source of teasing.

And it's kind of hard to explain, but this teasing or cajoling part is to keep you in line very nicely. The slap upside the head is kind of the last resort. And so they bore the institutional part of justice, if you will.

And I'm going to have a rough time in this whole kind of thing tonight in keeping out of the white society's version of what I'm contending the Indian version was, because the comparison is always so starkly visible that I go to it. Then I have the problem of going in and really disliking white institutions, like education. So I'll try to stay away from that. So if you see me doing it, ask a question, and you'll stop me.

But you get things like the judicial system. The judicial system of this society is based on economics. And it's based on-- because it's economics, it's based on an accountant's ledger. And our judicial system is very archaic. The laws are OK. I mean, they're based on-- well, they're not OK. I shouldn't say that. A lot of the basic laws are OK, and we just don't follow them, interpret them according to our love of mankind or feelings for people. They're based on economic resources.

So to illustrate that, since we have an economic ledger, let's say that I am Judge Miles Lord. And this gentleman here is a policeman. And you just committed a crime. I'm sorry, sir. It's merely an illustration.

In this society based on the accounts ledger, it's you think she committed a crime, so you arrest her. Now, one of the things I object to in this whole system, first of all, is that you have a weapon, which doesn't give you the law enforcement status. You actually have the judicial status. You can end her life.

You now have taken on an extreme concept that was never given to you. You're a law enforcer, but all of a sudden, you're the judge, jury, and executioner. Now, OK, so that system is weak at that point, at the very point of apprehending the criminal.

But let's say you don't shoot her. Let's say you caught her, and she had a television set in her hands. And she was just leaving the shopping center out there through a broken window, and there were 500 people in their cars that saw her. And so circumstantial evidence would say she's guilty.

Well, first, we say a person is innocent until proven guilty, but that's not true, because we lock them up until the trial. So obviously, they're guilty until proven guilty. And so they stay in the prison until a hearing is set.

Then I'm the judge. I'm Miles Lord, a federal judge in Minnesota. And you come before me, and I say, OK, larceny. Larceny is really heavy stuff. I look at the accountant's ledger. And I say larceny, 0 to 20. I look at the top of the thing. There it is. It's very beautiful, 0, 1, 2, 3, all the way up to 20. I can do all that-- acquittal being one end of the spectrum, 20 years being the other end of the spectrum with a fine thrown in.

But then I don't stop there. What I do is I go down the left side of the ledger. And I say, now, are you white? Are you Black? Are you Indian? Ah, Indian. God, it's terrible. You're number three. Are you poor, are you middle class, or are you rich? Find your poor. Now you're down to six.

Where do you live? Do you live in the slums of Moorhead? Are there slums in Moorhead? You live in the slums of Moorhead? You live in the middle class section of Moorhead or the wealthy class section of Moorhead? Are you a professional? Are you a blue collar worker? Or are you a day laborer? I can bring you all the way down to 12. I get you down 12 right now. Then I come over from 0 to 20 to the 12, and I give you 20 years in prison.

On the other hand, grand larceny, 0 to 20, I go, our guy's white. He's wealthy. He's from Baltimore, Maryland. He's the vice president of United States. Let him go. Hell, he doesn't have to have a probation officer at that point, you see? So with the accountants ledger, the white system goes to work injustice.

Now, the Indian judicial system said, a man commits a crime-- they didn't call it a crime. He did something wrong. The Navajo legends and prayers say they actually pray. The man does something wrong. They bring him into the ceremonial Hogan, and they pray.

And the prayer goes something-- a bad paraphrase-- the man has fallen out of harmony with the Earth. The man has fallen harmony out of harmony with his brother. The man has fallen out of harmony with himself. [NAVAJO], the god, please tell us how to bring back the man into harmony with Earth, brother, and self. So you try to bring him back into harmony.

If he killed a man and the man supported four people, this man will now have to support four people, plus whatever else he's supporting in the past. That's what he may have to do. It's done by consensus. You don't lock them up. You don't beat him, cut off an arm, or whatever other revenge motive we might have. Much rather, you look at them as a man out of harmony, and how to bring him back.

Now, capital punishment, in our system, of course, capital punishment is based on whether-- everybody that dies in the electric chair is Black or Indian. No doubt about that. The records prove that. Tom White Hawk in South Dakota, that I helped defend, 17 years old, allegedly committed a murder I don't think he committed, and sentenced to death in electric chair without a trial. So we know what happens in this judicial system.

Capital punishment with the Indian people is that if we cannot bring you back into harmony, I mean, if you are that bad, you are that recalcitrant, then what we're going to do is drum you out of the tribe. You are now a renegade. I'm sorry. We can't work with you anymore. And you can just no longer be one of your people. That's the way it is. I'm sorry. And we'll see you around. And the renegade leaves.

Now, most renegades in history, if legends can be believed-- and I think they can-- went out and tried to commit a heroic act in the name of their people, and usually died. I mean, if you attack the enemy camp single-handed-- even John Wayne couldn't pull that off-- you'd probably be wiped out. But it was their last act to show that they could have been a very noble person in their tribe. That happened many, many times. I don't know what the rest of the renegades did.

So in the judicial system, just the judicial system alone, that, to me, is a stark difference in value systems. And I think I can go through piece by piece, institution by institution, in the white society contrasting to the Indian society. In education, for instance, our educational system today in the United States of America is based on an agrarian concept foisted upon us, I think, by the Norwegians and Swedes, who are all guilty.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

SPEAKER: I know. That hits a bone. I'm just kidding.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

SPEAKER: I'm leaving tonight. I must-- the educational system, the educational system of this country is-- it's all right that I'm leaving town?

AUDIENCE: No, [INAUDIBLE].

SPEAKER: Oh. The educational system of this country is based on an agrarian concept. That is people came here and had a stark, kind of a harsh living situation. They had to till the land to make their food. You know, that whole thing.

Because of that, there were delineation of work standards set up. It's one of the big reasons that I believe in the feminist movement, by the way, because in the delineation of work, the work situation, the man did the outside work, the women did the inside work. And I think the person that suffered most are the children, who had work, and today in this society really have no place.

And we still work on the work delineation of women doing the inside work and men doing the outside work, when, in fact, in our modern technological age, women are as capable as I am of running my job at the museum, which my secretary, if she's here, would tell you in a minute. And there's no reason for that work delineation at moment.

So I think the women or the feminist movement is showing this, is expressing this fact, that we are no longer living in an agrarian system. Now, the school system still bases a lot of their work on the agrarian system, where we let out school in the summer to do what? To go farming, but no one farms anymore, or very few people farm.

And with the energy crisis, it might be worthwhile to have school in the summer here in Minnesota and the Dakotas, because that's when you wouldn't need the fuel. And we still have our school system based on the fact that you're trying to inform the ill-informed.

Now, that was great when I was a kid, because I was ill-informed. I mean, I was really ill-informed. And these teachers were up in front to inform me. And so I was like an empty vessel that, within 12 years, they were trying to fill me, to pour me out into society to be this viable product to get along economically, and not be a drain on the society.

Well, in this day and age, in our modern technological age, our children are well-informed. We have television. We have the mass media. We have the Red River Arts Center. And I'm being very serious about that. Art museums and art centers are playing a vital role in education, and our children-- well, if you read the poetry around here, that I could have written something like that when I was 13 would have been amazing.

But our children are very sophisticated. They're very knowledgeable. And yet the school system goes meandering on, trying to inform the ill-informed out of outdated textbooks. They go on the system that they're going to take a certain number of children, place them in one building with a static number of staff, and that staff is going to teach them something. Well, that's nonsense. It'll never happen.

And therefore, we have to gain our experiences, our educational experiences in other ways. And unfortunately, that takes on a lot of-- the other ways could be drugs. The other ways could be stealing, wild things that everybody can drum up in their minds. So those are some of the other experiences that our children are going and looking at, and trying to gain. I think it's very unfortunate.

Now, with the Indian educational system, the Indian educational system was based on the way of life. You learned how to harvest wild rice in September, because of the mere fact that's when you harvest wild rice. You learn how to dance it out. You learn how to winnow it. And you learn how to prepare it for the staple crop of the year.

You learn trapping. You learn the language. You learn the legends, because the legends were the way to tell Indian children the right way of life, according to the tribal tradition. And so the educational system was not institutionalized. You didn't have to be on page 495 of some social studies books by May 14, or whatever they do in the school system. And the bell didn't ring every 20 minutes in this great modular scheduling system they have today, which would render me paranoid, I think. It was hell when the bell rang every hour where I was. Now it rings every 20 minutes. I'd be a jangle of nerves even worse than I am right now.

So the educational system in the Indian way was based on the very lifestyle and his growth, a child's growth to be a productive member of the group of people in which he lived. Now, I guess I don't have any pat answers on how it could be done in this society-- and I guess that's not what I'm here for anyway tonight. So the educational system is starkly contrasted to the present day system.

I think what I'm trying to suggest is that in the old system of the Indian education is that the educational system should be based on a series of experiences that you yourself can choose and receive to make you more of a productive human being, whatever society you choose to live in. That's pretty vague, too, I guess.

This country is called a melting pot of the country. But that's not true. We choose to melt those people that we choose to melt. The rest of the people can stay the hell out. And so we don't put up with other lifestyles. We're beginning to more and more because we have to. But we all hate hippies, and those people that freak out, and go live off the land, because they're just not doing anything productive.

This has been up until, say, this year or so, it's been a statement by a lot of people who are fairly conservative in the United States. And yet those people, a lot of those people, are experiencing a lifestyle that they choose to experience. They might not always stay there.

In my day, the educational system was that here's what we got for you, and if you don't go through it, you're a bum. With the Indian educational system, if I may go back to a small tribal group, you could be-- let's say you choose to be a provider. You choose to be a hunter. You choose to be a warrior. You choose to be a homosexual, let's say.

I mean, maybe people didn't think that Indians had homosexuals. And yet there was no institution, or they didn't beat them up, or throw them in jail, or give them operations to make them transsexuals in those days. And so what did you do with that difference of lifestyle within the tribal community? Well, in the Indian community, very simply, it was accepted. It was accepted because the individual did it.

Take the area of warfare. The Oglala had a very beautiful leader named Crazy Horse. And at 26, he was a military leader. One day he chose not to fight because his medicine wasn't strong. They didn't arrest him for draft evasion. They didn't do anything of that sort. The rest of them went to fight because Crazy Horse didn't feel like going. The man was accepted for his individual foibles, his individual thought, and character.

And I don't know if that's too simplistic. But I think that is the basis of the entire educational system of Indian people. First of all, our economic land base was taken away from us, like in Minnesota, you cannot hunt, and fish, and harvest wild rice exclusively. That was the economic basis of Indian people.

This happened in 1940 at the same time that Indian people had to go into the Second World War. And they didn't have to go in the First World War because we weren't citizens until 1924. And that's the only reason they made us citizens is for cannon fodder, because they didn't allow you to vote or hold land.

But as a matter of fact, the vice president of United States-- I can't remember his name now-- in a Supreme Court decision-- was an Indian. Curtis, Charles Curtis, who was an Oklahoma Indian. They said that he served three terms in the Senate, and was vice president of the United States. And the Federal Supreme Court ruled him incompetent to hold land because he was an Indian at this time. And of course, I think some vice presidents are incompetent. But I don't know about Mr. Curtis. I wasn't around that time.

So Indians weren't allowed to hold land, or vote, or things of that nature, but they were allowed to go to war in 1940. Well, when you take the economic basis away-- that is hunting, fishing, trapping, harvesting the wild rice. And then you send them into the Army, and they go overseas, and fight, and they get a taste of the white man's situation, a lot of Indians, I think, in confusion, tend to become very mobile, and start to move from the reservation to the urban areas, where you could get a job, because you couldn't live on the reservation except in welfare.

Going into that situation, you're kind of like in purgatory. It's between two worlds. You're traditionally bound, because you're a traditional Indian. You're in the urban area, working where economics is the basis of all life, and not fully understanding that economics, or credit, or whatever.

Then the Indian is totally confused. So he works for six months, gets enough money, and then goes to the reservation and lives there for two years on the six months he had. And of course, not in any great splendor, but you can still poach, and that sort of thing-- get beer in town. Although, we weren't allowed to drink until 1956, I guess, or '55, '54. 1954 Indians were allowed to purchase alcohol. But there was a lot of bootlegging at that time.

Well, if you think about that, 1940, the children conceived in that time are 33 years old, median age. And they're pretty angry. They're the ones you read about at Wounded Knee, Alcatraz, places like that. And the reason for it is they have no land base. They don't-- never came from a reservation. They were born. They've lived in the urban area, but they're still tradition bound because their parents are. And whether you like it or not, you have parental dominance. Everyone does.

Some of the areas, I've used justice. I've used education. An area like health, for instance-- dealing with an art museum, and putting on the show, I discovered a very important field of study that I think is important that I enjoy very much-- are the healing ceremonies of the Indian people. Our medicine is institutionalized. We have fewer practicing doctors, by the way, now than we had 50 years ago on per capita numbers, fewer. And probably more medicine is dispensed by druggists than is dispensed by doctors, which is neither good nor bad. I have no opinion on that.

And so our educational system being institutionalized, it costs you $20-- go in and say hi to the doctor, and it costs you $25. And so our whole health system is based on the fact that you go visit somebody you really don't know. I mean, the guy is there. He's a professional. He's a specialist. I mean, you go to different guys for your ear, and one for your hand, and all these sort of things.

In the Indian healing society, which I know very little about-- I'm going to admit from the very beginning-- is very interesting, because the Indian healing society was based on the religion, on the tradition, and on the fact that the man was from your own tribe, and is a member of that tribe, a productive member. He could be a hunter, a warrior, a lot of things.

Sitting Bull-- his name was Sitting Buffalo Bull, by the way-- was a healer of his tribe. He was a medicine person. Medicine man takes on a funny connotation, because everybody thinks of voodoo, or that sort of thing. But the medicine people were dispensers of medicine. They were kind of super druggists. They were sort of a high powered Hubert Humphrey without the verbiage.

And medicine people dealt not only with the medical part of it-- that is dispensing of herbs and medicine-- they dealt with the psychosomatic illness. That is the illness-- the mental anguish that goes along with the physical illness. And the two I'm studying at great lengths-- and I've been invited to two ceremonies that are secret and sacred, and I've attended them both. And they're very interesting.

One is the Navajo Nightway Chant, which is the initiation of a healer into the sandpainting ceremony of the Navajos. What this amounts to is some sandpaintings. A Navajo becomes ill. He goes to what is translated as a hand trembler, a man who sees trances. He diagnoses the ills-- usually the eldest man in the tribe, the elder of the tribe, and he's a medicine person.

And then he sends them to a medicine man who has a series of sandpainters with him, who are all really nothing but practicing interns. And the initiation I went to was the fellow who was a guest of mine at the Indian art show, who had been practicing as an intern for 38 years before he became a healer. And then they get the patient. They diagnose his ills. He takes off.

Then they go into the ceremonial Hogan, and they do a sandpainting. And there are 304 separate sandpaintings, each one having significance they can never deviate from, and each one having a series of chants, the chants that go with them. That's why it takes so long to learn.

The Nightway Chant has-- or the Nightway Chant ceremony has 19 chants of music that go with it. And the patient is brought back to one of the 304 sandpaintings, sits in the middle, and the ritual starts. Now, you can never see this. It's secret. It's sacred.

And they start administering the drugs. And they have incense burning. And Indians knew about cocaine and acetylsalicylic acid, which is the basis for aspirin. And there is a book called The Ethnobotanical Study of the Ojibwe Indians of this area, which 49 herbs and medicines were found by whites to be used by the Chippewa and Ojibwe. And so this medicine dispensed. But a ritual goes along with it to ease the mind, the psychosomatic illness.

So all you've done is incorporated an MD and a psychiatrist into one body. That's pretty general, but that's, in fact, what happens. And the patient sits in the middle, receives all the herbs and medicine, that sort of thing. The chants are over. They take the patient out, and of course, he's cured. And then they destroy the sandpainting. And they deposit it in the north side of the ceremonial Hogan. It's as simple as that, except it's based on centuries of tradition.

The Iroquois False Face Society is the other, where they meet the patient, diagnose his ills. The healer goes up to a living tree, prays to the tree, explains to the tree that he must carve it to save one of his people's lives. He hopes the tree will forgive him. And then he carves the tree-- the mask out of the living tree, cuts the tree down, hollows out the mask, and goes into a ceremony.

And the mask-- I don't know if you've ever seen an Iroquois false face mask. But it's this distorted thing. And there are a certain number of those that exist. And that is the institutionalized medicinal process of American Indians, more or less. It's generally played-- this whole drama is played in a lot of tribes in a lot of different ways.

Now, what I've talked about in the value system of Indian people, I think, is if I may summarize, is that, first of all, contrasting one to the dominant society in which Indian people have to take part in which is this country, the one society, the dominant society, is based very strongly in economic terms. Everything we do is based on economics. Where you go to school is on economics. How you get judged is on economics. Everything is economics.

While the Indian people are still tribally based, we are the Native, Aboriginal people. This was our land. We were from here. Our family ties are still here. And whether Indian people were moved around, reservation by reservation or not, we are pretty much contiguous to those places from which we began. And the women in front here were sitting-- I guess we're all related, as it turns out. It seems to happen all the time. We've got all the same relatives. I've never seen them before in my lives.

And this sort of thing happens all the time. It's a very strong tradition. It's one, whether you try or not, one you cannot break. And Indians are finally becoming proud in that tradition. We're finally becoming proud in our system, in our value system. We're becoming proud of our art that's displayed in prestigious museums and art centers all over the United States.

And I think that Indians have come a long way. We're supposedly the fastest growing ethnic group in the nation. I happen to think part of it is because Indians are finally starting to call themselves Indians, or Native Americans, or what they choose to do, and are finally beginning to realize how this system works, and how they can get into it, and how they can manipulate it and maneuver it, as seen by some of maybe the legal confrontations. And so I think Indian people have come-- you've come a long way, baby. And maybe we're going to get there after all. So thank you very much.