Interview · North Dakota · Kevin Finley · NDNAEU 2
Themes: Kinship & family, Identity & belonging, Storytelling & oral tradition, Culture & continuity, Food & plants, Arts & expression, Listening & observation, Children & young people, Humor & play
Learn About questions
When is the time of year for stories to be told?
When were stories shared in the past? How were they shared? Why are the stories important to identity and history?
What role did/do dogs play in the Hidatsa culture?
What role did/do horses play in the Hidatsa culture?
How did horses and hunting abilities impact the identity of hunters in the past?
Learn From questions
When are stories told in my family? Are there certain stories that are retold often? Why?
What do I know about what my family members in the past did for a living?
Have I followed the same path as other family members in the choices I have made in my life? In what way?
How do I feel about my own family’s lineage?
Transcripts
05 Kevin Finley: A Time for Stories
Watch this interview on YouTubeWhen you sit and listen to stories there’s a there’s a time of the year that you can tell a lot of time that’s not followed too much anymore I try to as much as I can there’s a certain time during this doing a season for different stories but when I go back to my great-great grandma one of the things that have a lot of pride in is that she sang and she talked to her corn like they were kids and people really believe that’s why they their corn grew so well now there was a winter when she made an abundance of corn and they didn’t know why and she really didn’t know I but she because Sheila loved to garden who knows but during that winter a lot of the soup he’ll sue people passed away because they just say relied on their rations of meat that they had from the summer so after that after that spring when there were those deaths they told her why didn’t you widen your gardens so we’ll have more for the winter so they think that’s one of the things that sustained him was that and also we go back to how our dogs you know we see dogs here today we don’t really it’s just a dog well back then dogs were a means a means of everything when they were gonna when they were going to hunt at the next day they would feed their dogs a lot the night before so they wouldn’t make any make a lot of noise and scare the game boy and there there was what if you had they called it a buffalo horse if you had a buffalo horse that meant you there you were probably really rich because that’s rich having a good horse and if you could shoot an arrow through a buffalo not just shoot it but shoot it through it you were revered as a very strong hunter a strong man so those are some of the stories that I’ve been handed down and I and the first account you know those first account stories are true are true stories you know they’re not something that’s just made up so I story about being Charlie that’s a true story that did happen
Source materials
Supplied transcript documents. Text and transcription uncertainties are preserved as supplied.