Cultural Identity with Kade Ferris

When we did talk to people about how are you using the you know your forest we have a lot of people saying well we cut wood we gather berries but what we really want to know is are you teaching people how to do it are you talking to your kids are you showing them how to do it now I think that’s my favorite one as I talked to brothers they’re both great outdoorsman and I said did you teach your kids this and one guy said yeah my kids are always out there doing it did okay I said well I haven’t because you know it’s no longer that important and all sudden culture died you know that right there is boom something that you own that makes it part of you is all sudden severed and that’s where we really have to stop that or repair it because that’s what can be done because a lot of kids the if they might not have learned because their parents didn’t live here they grew up in a place like Fargo or Minneapolis and so they weren’t exposed to that culture or boarding school or relocation all these external effects that have done their part in kind of harming native culture they can be corrected but it takes a community effort and it takes getting those things in people’s lives again so making sure the language is seen not just there one of the things that they’re trying to do at the school over in Red Lake is get the language everywhere and they’re putting these little QR codes so you can snap a picture and it’ll read the word to you which is just wow you know all of a sudden you’ve taken something that every kid has a cellphone and made it a tool for culture and that’s what it boils down to is getting that back into people’s lives because you’re competing with a lot of different things television the internet YouTube I watch cat videos all the time so it’s those type of things that you’re competing with but then on the same vein you can find discussion groups where people are talking about language you can find videos of people doing wild ricing there’s all kinds of things that can be done so it’s how do you get you know I guess native culture to traditional culture the things that your culture and your community values back into your life your 21st century life and it can be done you really can