Native Americans' Day: Youth see good, bad of Sioux Falls

They get annoyed by references to scalping.

Disappointed with friends who seem fixated only on stereotypes.

And mildly put off when they're working the counter at Hy-Vee or McDonald's and some customer scurries away so she doesn't have to interact with the Indian.

"I'll be working the express counter, you know, where you can only have 12 items or less," says Anthony Iron Moccasin, a 19-year-old senior at Washington High School who works at a local grocery store. "And the person will, like, look at me and see that I'm open, but they'll go to the next register. I mean really, I feel like I'm being discriminated against because they won't come to my register. But hey … it makes me do less work."

And he laughs.

With Native Americans' Day upon us Monday, Argus Leader Media sat down with nine tribal students at Washington High and asked them to provide a perspective on life in the city from a demographic group that numbers a little more than 1,000 youth in the Sioux Falls School District today.

At ages 15 to 19, they're too young to remember a time 30, 40 years ago when Native Americans in the city would identify themselves as Italian to avoid the racism they perceived as being inherent in Sioux Falls. In fact, today's students all insisted that they feel much more welcome and a part of the community, though with some exceptions.

Here are excerpts from that round-table discussion:

Question: What is it like to be a Native American living in Sioux Falls today?

Bryce Redwing, 17, junior: "I feel we are different from Caucasians and get treated different all the time. Like I have people shoot me dirty looks all the time. I'm at work and they don't, like, want to touch me. It's weird. I'm just, like, whatever. I'm just going to walk away. I'm not going to take offense to it."

Zayda Zuniga, 16, junior: "I really don't feel a difference at all. I feel like I'm not discriminated against in any way, with like schooling and everything else. If you do as much as any other person would, I just don't feel that it would be any different for me living in Sioux Falls compared to a Caucasian."

Question: Do you think your culture is respected in this school and community?

Iron Moccasin: "There is one kid I can think of; he always makes jokes about scalping. I don't really take it too seriously, but it does get annoying. It's a daily thing."

Question: Do you find that offensive?

Iron Moccasin: "I don't find any of it offensive. I honestly don't know why. I mean growing up, I never really cared to know too much about my own culture. I mean, I probably tried to run away from it more than trying to learn about it."

Mackenzie Lee, 17, senior: "In this school, I feel we have a lot of respect because we honor our culture here, and we talk about it. I don't really ever hear anything that's disrespectful. We have, like, our showcase area out there and the murals, and in the gym there is the mural … and we are the Warriors."

Question: Do you finds the school's Warriors nickname offensive?

Lee: "I don't find it disrespectful at all because Warrior has never been once used in a derogatory term, as Redskins has been. And it was given to us by a native chief."

Question: Would you be more offended if you were called the Washington High Redskins?

Lee: "Yeah, probably, because that is a derogatory term."

Redwing: "The way I see it is, you look at all the football teams and all these other things that are named after Native Americans. … Warriors and Redskins and what not. They're going to do it anyway. You can't stop it. As long as you don't take it in a derogatory way, you can just shrug it off and walk away."

Question: Do you feel like your life in Sioux Falls is any different because you're Native American?

Redwing: "I honestly don't. I've been to worse places than here where I've been treated much differently. (In those places) I felt completely like an outsider, like I didn't even belong there. Like, all of the people would look at me. I literally lived in a town where people would try to run over me in their cars. Here, I'm just another one of the GP (general population)."

Question: So do you feel like you are part of this community, an insider as opposed to an outsider?

Lee: "I'd say I feel like both. … When we go to school, I know there's quite a few of us, but I feel like there's still not enough. I wish that … because, of course, the African American community and the white community are a lot larger … I think it would be, like friends-wise, a lot more comforting if there were more Native Americans here. But I do feel like an insider because when we do have our classes and stuff together, we connect pretty well."

Question: Are there moments when you feel unwelcome or disrespected because you're Native American?

Lee: "I have multiple friends that are white, and they don't honor my culture as I do. They see it as a way that I can cheat on a lot of things. … like how I can get money for college. They don't understand the reasoning behind it as to why we get that money, and they just think it's not fair and so they continue to say things like that. I don't acknowledge it. I mean, they're my friends for other reasons. But I don't like when they talk down about my culture and they say, 'Well I don't understand why you drunk natives get money and we don't get anything.' "

Question: How do you feel about those stereotypes?

Lee: "… When other people don't honor (my culture), it's like they don't realize how much it means to me. They think it's funny. 'Oh, we're going to scalp you.' And then they run around making, like, war whoops. I just say, 'Yeah, OK, that's not very funny. Stop.' And they think it's a joke. The thing is, they only look at the stereotypical people from a culture. They don't look beyond that. So of course, if they know the stereotypes, they're going to try to find anybody that does follow the stereotypes to show that they're true. But there's multiple people who don't follow the stereotypes."

Question: Is it a challenge in this community to stay connected to your culture?

Lee: "It's a dying culture. It's a dying language. I mean, they offer multiple things at the school … a Native American Studies class. And they have Lakota classes. But it's always a struggle because you're never going to know … it's never going to be from an elder handed to you or told to you by another elder. So you're learning it all from a book, and of course not every detail is going to be in a book."

Question: Do you not have access to others who can share your culture with you?

Riley Taborda, 18, senior: "There's always an opportunity (when they go to their home reservations) to learn about it. It's a little hard for me to stay connected because, actually we moved here from Arizona. So I'm Navajo. I got that really big distance barrier between here and learning my culture. But every time I go down to see my grandmother, she's always telling stories. My sisters will go out and do art on canvasses. That's where we'll learn. But since we've got that huge 24-hour drive, it's kind of hard to constantly go back there and keep learning."

Question: So does the celebration of Native Americans' Day mean anything to you?

Zuniga: "Yes. … Most of the other states are celebrating Columbus Day. I feel like it's an honor that we're celebrating Native American Day because … it didn't really make sense why we would be celebrating Columbus Day, especially in our region where the Native American people are plentiful. It just doesn't make any sense to me how we're celebrating Columbus when he was the start of all our genocide. It was just terrible."

Question: And do you get a sense that everybody else who is not Native American cares about this day?

Zuniga: "I feel like maybe not everyone will care, but they all know about it and they're informed, where in other places they don't even know."

Taborda: "I'll be talking with my friends, about whatever, and maybe somebody will say something like, 'Oh, this test is on Monday,' and someone offhand will say, 'Hey, no we don't; it's Native American Day.' They won't say Columbus Day, they'll say Native American Day. I think that's good that they recognize it. They're not deliberately saying Columbus Day to spite me. They're adjusting, so that's good."

Native Americans' Day events

Two events honoring Native Americans' Day are being held in Sioux Falls. Sponsored by All Souls Churchm the South Dakota Humanities Council and the Sioux Falls Area Community Foundation, the events are:

Sunday

Yankton Sioux tribal member and local artist Jerry Fogg will give a presentation called Native Soul at 10 a.m. Sunday at All Souls Church, 2222 S. Cliff Ave. The Eagle Spirit Drum Group, featuring George Eagleman and his sons, will open and close the program. Fogg will take questions after his program, starting at approximately 11 a.m.

Monday

A Native-White Relations forum with former state Secretary of Tribal Relations J.R. LaPlante will begin at 7 p.m. in the Belbas Theater at the Washington Pavilion, 301 S. Main Ave. LaPlante, a lawyer and enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, will take questions after offering remarks. Again, the Eagle Spirit Drum Group will open and close the program. A social with art on display by Fogg will begin at 6:30 p.m.

For more information on the two events, go to www.sfuu.org/journey