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SPEAKER: The Turtle Mountains, how they got the name-- how they got her name, see, they figure the east part is the tail. They named that [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] in Chippewa. And out west and towards the northwest of Bottineau, they called her [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. That means the head part. So the rest of it, the body, they called that turtle. That's how they got Turtle Mountain's name.

RADIO HOST: The Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation, Our Home Town, one in a series of programs exploring the values and character of life in small communities. Produced by Minnesota Public Radio station, KCCM, with funds provided by the North Dakota Committee for the Humanities and Public Issues.

On today's program, Carol Davis and other residents of the reservation tell what makes a place home, a mixture of landforms, memories, and names. Later, we hear that for some, home also means acceptance by the community, even if one is an alcoholic. The interviewer is John Ydstie.

SPEAKER: You know, years ago, the old people, you remember, when they want to go to Rolla, they never said they'll go to Rolla. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]-- we're going to [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. That's the tail. That's where Rolla was located.

And, you know, they have changed names and everything here. Now, like that Belcourt-- that creek that runs through Belcourt there, well, they used to call that [SPEAKING FRENCH] La Grande Coulée in French, and that's a grand coulée. And now today, it's marked on the map as Ox Creek.

And the creek of ours here in Dunseith, they call it Elm Creek. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] Siipiising is what they call it. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] Siipiising is in Bottineau. That's Oak Creek-- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] Siipiising, Oak Creek.

SPEAKER: All the Indians that leave this reservation, they always come back here, you see, because we're born and raised here, you see. This is our home, and we got no place else to go. They send us out on relocation. We go up there, different places. We get good jobs. And we leave our jobs, we're lonesome for our people.

JOHN YDSTIE: Did you ever relocate? Did you ever go anywhere?

SPEAKER: Oh, yeah. I went to San Francisco. I stayed there about a year. I got lonesome for my friends, you know. You go in a city like that, and you put an Indian in a city, you know, well-- see, they-- well, that's before they had this discrimination.

You go in a bar there, they all look at you. You go in a bar, and then they laugh at you. So that's why I came home. And I just stayed there one year. So I come back with my friends here.

Now, look, I can go to Belcourt there and have just the same fun here and everything. We're just a bunch of Indians here, you know. And we're contented. And we hate to have anybody come disturb us.

SPEAKER: I guess, the advantages for, like, staying in one place, for me, would be that my children would also have roots. I think of some of my own relations who are living in cities and so forth, where the parents themselves move around.

I often wonder where are these kids going to end up when they get old, for example. They've had no ties to this reservation. Their parents themselves haven't had any ties to any one community. The kids are scattered throughout the 50 states. Where will they go to nest, so to speak.

And I-- I don't know-- myself, I feel like when my family is grown, I think that I should be the anchor for that family and should offer them one place to return, to feel comfortable, and to feel that they belong to. And I know if I had moved to Fort Yates, and my parents had moved off to California, I think this would have been really a big hardship on me, because I always felt that Belcourt was my home.

And if I wouldn't have had parents-- or if I wouldn't have had something to return to here, like the roots that they did give us by letting us live here and bringing us up on a reservation, I would have really been missing out on something. It's not really describable, it's something within, and I don't really know how you pull those feelings into words. But it's, I guess, a sense of belonging.

You know, when you drive over those hills, like from Fort Yates, the first thing you'd see was the landscaping. You know, you'd feel good about that. So I imagine, it's a combination of both. Like I say, family, friends, and so forth, that's probably the biggest factor, but still, it has to be the place.

Because, I suppose, we could have moved as a family somewhere else, but I would doubt that we would have really felt the ties. Like the land where we live now, my mother was raised on this piece of land. And it was given to her by her father. And now, we're all scattered there. So I imagine, there are some ties to the place itself.

One of the feelings that we've expressed as a group, as a family, was that we hope that our little spot of land would always remain with one of the family, with one of the kids, probably one of the grandchildren, and that they in turn would pass it on.

And how nice it would be, say, in a couple of hundred years, if there's still a world, that they could look back and just tie us all back into that one little plot of land. So I imagine there is a lot of feelings in that respect too, something we've identified with.

SPEAKER: I'm a family of 10, and I'm the only one that's nuts, that's back here. So evidently, I come back for some reason. But I am in business, back in business again. And to tell you the truth, I really enjoy it.

Because I live a day at the time, and there's just problems every day, but I seem to survive through them. Some days, I'd like to put my hat on, and walk down the state highway, and keep walking, but I'm still here. So I guess, I'm a glutton for punishment. [LAUGHS]

SPEAKER: It's all been a great experience, the whole thing. All my life, I think, has been a great experience. I think I've lived it fully, and I don't think I'd change any of it. And everything has-- all of my experiences have groomed me for what I am, and I'm satisfied with what I am.

You know, you can't point to any one incident that played a role or is a factor contributing to anything, but all these put together have made me who I am today, and I'm satisfied. I mean, others may not be, but I personally am satisfied. And I think that's all-- what it's all about.

SPEAKER: One thing we've learned by it is actually to know how to cope. We know how to cope with our problems. See, we'll sit down and face the reality, like she says, and look at them. And actually, we're able to live. And I can go on the outside, and get along beautiful, and never have problems.

Because I've been out, then I've been back in the reservation, both places. I've lived both places and I've never had problems, really. You know what I'm speaking about? Financial problems, yeah, I've had a lot of financial problems, but there's work, and I've always worked. And I think that makes a lot of difference, really.

SPEAKER: But I think it's just like asking someone in Dickinson, Fargo, Moorhead, or any place, what has living in this town--

SPEAKER: Done for you.

SPEAKER: --done for you? Actually, what does the home do for you, but give you a home, either a sense of belonging, or a sense of frustration, or what have you. And this is what the reservation means to us. It's our home. This is where we're from. This is where we grew up, good, bad, or indifferent.

I think, everything has been an influencing factor, and it either makes us what we are today, or we'd probably end up suicides, or something like that. So I don't know, really, how do you explain home. And that's what it is.

SPEAKER: And it's how you make it yourself, really. It all boils back to that. It's how you cope with it. How you handle it. You can go into tears and everything else, but that isn't going to help you. In other words, we've all grown up with it.

SPEAKER: The first thing I remember about growing up here on the reservation, we were living on a tribal farm out north. I'd say it's about five miles north of Belcourt. And the farm itself was not anything big. We had maybe 20, 30 head of cattle, a few horses, a few pigs, a few chickens.

And I remember helping, with the family, taking care of the farm. And it was a simple, free life, I guess you'd say. We lived on the farm for about-- oh, I'd say, the first 12 years of my life. Just yesterday, we were talking with my mother about how simple life was then. And she said, she really wished for the good old days too.

She said, even though there was no money, and it was a lot of hard work, it just seemed like it wasn't so hard on the-- I guess what you'd call on the brain, and always worrying about where the next dollar is going to come from now, and how you're going to make ends meet. At that time, everybody was in the same boat. It seemed that we were all struggling.

And my dad sold wood in exchange for groceries in a store, from people who were burning wood and were getting groceries in the store. I guess it must have been a welfare program or something, where they had-- something similar to food stamps. Because I remember, he used to bring home these little stamp books, and he would get so much money in the store from different people in exchange. And that's kind of how we made our living.

Every now and then, he would take out a load of post, and they would-- maybe three or four guys would get together, and they'd chop a big pick-up load of post. And they'd head out to different parts of the state, sometimes Montana, and sell their post, and bring home groceries, and-- you name it, anything that we needed to survive for the winter, I guess you might say.

JOHN YDSTIE: Did you work pretty hard as a little girl, then, out on the farm?

SPEAKER: Well, it was a combination of things, I guess. We didn't really look at it as work because we grew up with it. It was something we accepted. I know I was milking cows at the age of 5. And my brothers really helped my dad take care of the whole place. There were six of us children in the family, and we all had something to do.

I know we used to go to school up here at Saint Ann's, and the bus would stop a mile from where we lived because we were in another school district. And I don't know why, at that time, it made a difference. But the bus used to let us off about a mile from home, and we used to run over the hills.

And we'd get home from school, and we knew we had to get them cows to the barn by 4 or 5 o'clock. So we'd have a quick lunch of whatever was there, and we would head off into the woods, and look for the cattle, and bring them in, and milk them, feed the pigs and the calves, and get the cows back out to the pasture.

And the next morning-- the girls didn't have to get up and do chores in the morning. [LAUGHS] That was one thing, I have to say. But my brothers did. And dad used to send them out and get the cattle. I don't even want to guess what time he used to get them up. But he kept us all busy.

I can remember when we used to trap. And I don't remember how much we used to make, but we used to trap muskrats. And it seemed that in our area, where we lived, right in that little community, we used to pride ourselves with who could come up with a good mink dog, because mink were worth about, oh, I suppose, 10, 15 times more than a muskrat.

But we'd go out and check traps with my dad, out on these little lakes, all around where we lived, and then we would bring them home. And in our living room, we would skin all these muskrats and whatever else we came up with. And dad used to sell them in Rolla somewhere.

But that was another thing that we-- we really get a big charge out of, when we sit around now and talk about what you'd call the good old days. Because mom said, I can just imagine what we must have smelled like. [LAUGHS]

JOHN YDSTIE: In some of the communities I've been at, I've asked people questions about family and how important a unit that is to the life of the community. Is it important here, in Belcourt?

SPEAKER: The family ties here on this reservation, I think, are as strong as you'll find them anywhere. The families are very close. The families are big. If you would check into our tribal rolls, you'd see real big families. When you meet with those families, and just sit down and visit with them, I think you'd sense the closeness of the family units.

Families, like I say, with the intermarriage, especially, where they get big, you'll find people calling themselves cousin to this guy, and cousin to that guy, he's my uncle, and actually, there's no close blood relationship. But they still identify as family, I guess, because of the clan relationship, you might say.

JOHN YDSTIE: Do you spend a lot of time with your family and with that extended family?

SPEAKER: Oh, definitely. My parents and-- there are three girls in the family-- us three girls all live on the same 80 acres, right, and you can look over the hills and see any one of us walking over to my mother's any time of the day. So I guess, you'd say we're real close.

JOHN YDSTIE: What do you think are the advantages of that kind of close family life?

SPEAKER: Well, I think, we maintain this closeness-- I guess it comes about a lot through our little crises that we have, and we always have somebody to turn to. And it's not just a husband or a wife, although we do have that relationship to turn to, but we have a lot more people to involve. If we need something, or if we feel good about something, there's always somebody to either rejoice with or be sad with, whatever it might be. But it's kind of a sharing thing between us.

SPEAKER: I miss all the crabapples, and the chokecherries, and the strawberries, and the raspberries, and all the other stuff that you can find in the woods around this place. But I also miss the place itself, because we've lived here almost all of our lives.

JOHN YDSTIE: Do you have some secret places out in the woods here that no one knows about?

SPEAKER: We've got a few little camps in the woods [INAUDIBLE]. There's one up on the hill up there, yeah. There's one just across the road, but they doze it down to make a yard. Got a bunch of other ones. There was one up there in the woods, and one down in the pasture.

SPEAKER: Here, chirp-chirp, here.

[CHICKS CHIRPING]

SPEAKER: Not all the cats are afraid of them.

SPEAKER: Let me catch that chick.

JOHN YDSTIE: That's good. What kind of chicks are they?

SPEAKER: I don't know.

SPEAKER: Oh, they're crossbreeds.

JOHN YDSTIE: Does that chick mind if you hold him?

SPEAKER: Oh, they don't like to be held.

[CHICK SQUAWKING, FLAPPING]

[LAUGHTER]

SPEAKER: There's always that fear of racism. Let's face it, we've got it here. And I might add, it's bad in certain areas, the neighboring towns, the surrounding communities around the reservation. When we were out on relocation in Oakland, California-- we were there a little over a year, and I made good money. I worked for General Motors on the assembly line. But, I don't know, I guess life was just too fast.

I have-- [CHUCKLES] I might say, I-- I hope to believe that I have a good personality, and I like to talk to people. But I found out in a darn hurry that it isn't everybody that wanted to talk, you know. If I tried to strike up a conversation, people would walk away from me, and this was disturbing to me.

And my wife, she's the baby in her family, and she got pretty lonesome while we were up there. It got to the point where she wouldn't eat, and she took sick, and I had to take her to the hospital. And rather than jeopardize her health, I decided to bring her back.

After we got back here-- we were here two weeks, we stayed with her folks, we didn't have no home-- we left for Williston-- Williston, North Dakota, to go look for a job. Fortunately, I found one the same day. We made a round trip, come back, loaded up our luggage, and back to Williston we went.

And we stayed there for 11 years. We'd come home, oh-- well, the first year, we'd come home, say, just about every month. Then it started expanding, until we started coming home maybe two or three times a year. And sometimes, we wouldn't come home at all. And that's the way it went.

But as long-- I don't know what's in this reservation. People can leave for years, and they'll eventually come back here. To what, I don't know. It's probably their birthplace, I would say, because that's the way I feel.

SPEAKER: I think it's a wonderful place to learn about life, you know. I think the varied cultures has contributed a lot, if you want to be personal about it, to my personal growth, my personal knowledge about people. It would have been different if I'd have lived in, wherever-- Chicago. I might never have survived, maybe, you know.

I think there is an element of protectiveness on the reservation that's acknowledgeable, you know. See, I know everybody and people accept me. And when I say accept me, I say it with a sense of gratitude, because there's plenty to accept.

I've been an alcoholic. I've been a convict. I've been many, many things. And the community is aware, and they've accepted the fact that a person can make mistakes, can live a different kind of life. OK, I didn't have to live for 50 years before they said, you're OK, you're a good fellow, and go ahead and do your thing, or here, I'll give you a job.

I was sober, I think, six months, and a guy said, hey, you know, you're a good fellow, how about going to work for me. I said, crazy-- I'm not crazy about work, but I know I need to, you know-- OK, I'll take it.

And I think that's-- the thing I appreciated most about this community was the fact that they didn't say to me, you're an ex-convict so you can't work, or you're an ex-drunk, I don't want you around. They didn't say that. And they said-- in fact, there never has been that.

Of course, in going to a white community and looking for a job, you always have these questions. OK, yeah, I was in the pen, yeah, I used to drink, and I used to do this, and-- well, you never got the job. And here, they just accepted it and said, it's all right, do better.

SPEAKER: Before I left here to go to the service, I could not go into a liquor establishment and order a drink like any other-- the Caucasians did. What I had to do was pay, oh, anywheres from 1 and 1/2 to double the price of the cost of liquor in order for me to have a drink. And this created problems for me.

Then when I went in the service, I was treated like a Caucasian. I could go in anywheres and drink as much as I pleased. And what really hurt me, when I come back-- I was discharged. I got off the train in Rolla. I walked in the bar, not thinking, you know. I ordered a beer. I was in my uniform, all decorated up. The bartender looked at me and said, no, I cannot serve you. You're an Indian.

And that was it, I was right back in the same old vicious cycle that I left behind. And, I guess, then, this is what caused me to drink to excess, because of the hostile feelings that I have built up toward the non-Indian people. I felt that I was not being treated equally. And by that time, I had created problems for myself through excessive use of alcohol.

But after a while, I began to realize that the problem didn't lie with the people, that the problem was me, myself. I come to the conclusion that I couldn't blame everybody for what was happening to the Indian people, me in particular. And this really brought me out of my-- to my senses, you know. And this is what got me out of this alcoholic situation.

JOHN YDSTIE: You've dealt for the last few years now with the alcoholism problem here on the reservation. Can you tell us a bit about the extent of that problem, and why there is that problem here?

SPEAKER: Well, from comments throughout this community, again, is lack of employment, nothing to do. And the Indian people are proud people. And, I guess, a woman can get a job easier than a man can. For instance, Atron down here, most of them are women.

And the laughing part about that is from the non-Indian people laughing at the Indian male, about the Indian male parking around Atron on check day, picking up their wife and their paycheck, and going out, and have a celebration, and boozing it up. And this really hurts the male population. And, really, it's not their fault if they can't get a job, but they have to survive somehow.

JOHN YDSTIE: Is there a higher rate of alcoholism in this community than in a normal community?

SPEAKER: Oh, definitely, definitely. This reservation is only 6 by 12, and there are-- within the reservation, there are approximately 7,500 people. So it is known as the most thickly populated area in the United States. A survey was taken in this particular community about two years ago, and they figure about 80% of the population in this area have alcohol problems.

You take-- one alcoholic will affect anywhere from 10 to 13 people. And being alcoholism is a family problem, it will affect the whole family. Say, if you have a family of eight, like I have-- OK, with my wife and I, it would make 10.

SPEAKER: I think there is maybe a smaller portion of true alcoholics in this community, who any time they leave here, drift off into Skid Row in the cities. You know, there are a few of these guys. I consider these guys the true alcoholics on the reservation. I think most of the people here, who are problem drinkers, are drinkers because of the social system and just become accustomed to that way of life.

RADIO HOST: That was Connie Grant, director of the Turtle Mountain Counseling Center, at the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation, Our Hometown. This is one program in a series of sound portraits of small North Dakota communities, produced by the Minnesota Public Radio station, KCCM, with funds provided by the North Dakota Committee for the Humanities and Public Issues.

Producers of this series are John Ydstie, Denis Hamilton, and Bill Siemering. You may purchase a cassette copy of this program by contacting KCCM, Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota, 56560.