Who Am I? with Dyan Fox

As far as identity I want to talk about my dad’s side of the family I’m proud to say that my dad is full-blooded ho-chunk and a lot of people are like well ain’t you - and I’m like no well I am and I said well we’ll try D along - and they’ll have about three or four different tribes and I said a full-blooded is one tribe that means my dad’s mother and my dad’s father were full-blooded and so forth all the way down the line and if you take a look at my family chair my dad side it’s really long we go back all the way back to the early 1800s who was our first ancestor whose name was Mojica thundercloud and I have a breakdown and that some of the things that I do in my class - as far as identity you got to know who you are and you know how to figure that out is who did you come from you know and sometimes it’s a sour subject for some people but I share you know I share a lot of my personal self as well my parents were divorced and I was a at a young age so I went to go visit my dad a lot and I had to I had to know my mom’s side of the family and I had to know my dad’s side of the family also and so when I’d go back you know on either vacations or summers you know I was always called by my Indian name and on my dad side we’re a part of the Thunder clan so where did we come from the sky and so my Indian name and ho-chunk it is this is how you pronounce it’s we Palma honey we that means rainbow so I was just talking to my dad a little bit ago my dad’s gonna be here tomorrow so oh that was kind of a surprise so hopefully nobody says anything you know my I got a senior daughter and her senior nights on Friday so he’s coming down but when I was young when everywhere we’d go he said tell him your name we pummeled her Navy that’s my name Oh rainbow oh I love that name sometimes my dad will call me hey I seen you in the sky he said you must have been thinking about me and so my younger my oldest daughter’s name is rainbow also on this side and in Arikara so when they have the double rainbows like that I’ll call my daughter and I’ll say hey we were in the sky today this had been thinking about each other and she goes to school and uh United tribes Technical College she’s playing basketball up there she’s doing really good job but so all our names come from the sky I was just talking to my dad and I’m not gonna pronounce it because if I get it wrong he’s gonna get mad at me but his name it means visiting cloud and my mother my mother and father were married in Medicine Lodge ceremony so she will always be married to my father no matter what and even if they got divorced she so she has a whole chunk name and then her name is good cloud her main means good cloud and then my older sister she’s queen of thunder so one of those thunders come really loud and I psycho there’s my sister and my brother my brother is roaring thunder right before this thunder storm comes and you hear that roar I’m like oh there’s my brother there’s my COO no that means older brother and then me I’m ramble so I come after the storm that’s why my dad I was like when I say that I always see you in the sky he said I always tell everybody about you all the time so I coulda had to know those things and yeah um when I would come back home might have to know stuff here one of the things is here when we bury people they will take something like a flower from the grave and hold it and keep it there we can’t touch because we’re come from the sky we’re not supposed to touch the ground you know so you know growing up it was kind of hard for me kind of did it to decide as I got older in my dad says well you’re you’re both he said so if you want to practice that on your mother’s side and you practice that on my side he said because you’re both identities you know and you have to live this you have to live this identity and then you have to live the white man identity in there so I kind of talked to my students about that who are you know it’s hard for this generation some of them don’t know who they are and only they know deep inside who they are and where they come from so going back to the family trees you know I tell them that my parents got divorced and I was young you know I am currently divorced right now but I have a great relationship with my ex-husband for our children so he’s involved in their life and he lives locally and he is hit odds on that side comes from a big long family there so my kids know that side in this side my mom side and my dad side so that’s that’s a knowing you who you are you know in your died entity it’s it’s different nowadays you know be who you are because back in the day we had to be who they said we had to be nowadays you can be who you are you can dress how you want to you can wear your hair how you want to you can change your name if you want to because that what you were born into might you might not feel that identity in you know what as you grow older and I mean and I like working with high school students because I tell them now and nobody told me that life is gonna be hard life is gonna be really hard especially for a Native American woman I had to kind of figure that out myself and so I tell my students that too I’ll tell you that right now if you know who you are and you get out there it’s gonna be a lot better because you need to have goals you set these goals what do I want to do in life and life might not be everything that you set it out to be because that’s how I grew up I was supposed to graduate high school I was supposed to go to college I was supposed to get married I’m supposed to have children I’m supposed to live happily ever after well my happily ever after was then you know when I got divorced and went through a hard time but everything came back here again you know and like I said I’m and I’m proud to say that I have a great relationship with my ex-husband for our children and a lot of people can’t say that and it didn’t and it’s for their benefit because I was like that my parents didn’t live together I never knew my parents ever being in the same household even when we would come like to my graduation and stuff they would be separate you know but I had to adjust and I had to learn that so again going back to family trees I explained that to my to my students a lot of you might not know your dad side a lot of you might not know your mother side you might live with the grandmother you might live with an aunt you might live with an older sister because that’s how our people are we take care of each other and so there then they kind of you know because some of them will kind of you know sheepish down because they might not know stuff so I share that with them you know I have to know both sides and my parents were divorced too and so am I and it’s not a bad thing you know as long as we still know who we are and then going back to my high school students the other day I was talking to my seniors and they’re like you’re right in this box I kind of have to worry about what I’m gonna do and I said yeah because you go out there that’s what my mom said go try go try it because I remember being 18 and I wanted to get out of here so bad oh I wanted to get out of here I want to get out of my household so bad but when I got out of there I felt alone you know and then I came back after a year cuz I didn’t I went to a four-year college I came back after year my mom said well you’re gonna work are you gonna go to school so I worked at the casino for nine months and I woke up one day and I thought am I gonna be a waitress again for ten years no so I went to school got my degree started my family got married went as I was having my children got my bachelor’s done went got my Master’s done I thought well I got to take more a couple more classes to get my double masters so I might as well go for it I think back on it how did I do it but I did it because I was strong and when I was growing up I knew my identity I struggled with it a little bit but as I got older I knew what I wanted to do so I instill that in my children my oldest girl was salutatorian of her class she’s doing really good second-oldest is up and running for one of the top students this year and so education is a big thing and being an educator now I see I did come full circle because when I was young they used to ask me what do you want to be and I said I want to be a teacher and a cheerleader so I kind of do that right now I teach and I cheer my team on when I coach so I see that okay now I see that I come full circle in that so knowing your identity and with this Native American essential understandings I talk about that in my class my culture class and what kind of laughs and oh yeah we no sense of humor we know storytelling you know I think that’s one of the biggest things is generosity and sharing you know we talk about those things so