01 Dyan Fox Introduction

Hi my name is Diane Fox that’s my married name I am now divorced my maiden name is thundercloud my parents are Quentin thundercloud he’s a whole chunk nation tribal member full-blooded and my mother is our del Jean Baker she’s of the Mandan Haddad Sonora tribes here on Fort Berthold I always like telling the story about my mom and my dad my dad is like I mentioned he’s a full-blooded Ho Chunk tribal member and as he was growing up he joined the service he was in the US Army and at the time he had an arranged marriage he was supposed to be in so he went to the service and upon return he was to marry an individual who was also full-blooded to keep the blood alive in our and her family and at that time my mom was a young woman who was sent out when the relocation was going on and she was sent out in to Washington DC where my dad was stationed at and they happened to me in a in a cafe and they fell in love I was like telling the story so what and he came back to his mom his dad he said I love this woman in love with her and I want to marry her and at first they are kind of against it you know and they grew to love my mom and eventually they got married so I have an older sister and a brother and I’m the baby so that came from there we lived in Wisconsin for a while and then I was born in Minneapolis our st.Paul sartre in st.Paul Minnesota and we lived there for the beginning of our life so we never moved back here and I was about nine years old but in st.Paul we went to a parochial school and I was a very young guy must have been about I was died always talked to my older sister I’m really close to my older sister and what’s the men between three and five and I can remember some of the stuff that we went through and we were there we danced in traditional regalia so I always had braids on and stuff and being the younger one my sister kind of really took care of me and my brother and this was inner-city so back then we used to ride the inn inner-city buses by ourselves you know being adults and we go back and we think gosh how could we have done that you know cuz I don’t think I’m a mother of five and I don’t think I would let my children do that at a really young age but times are different back then and I remember one particular time we had to arrive late and the nuns were standing on top of the stairs remember these really long stairs we had to walk up and we got punished for being for being late and back then punishment was I don’t know if I want to say legal but it was still intact and we would get hit you know so being at a young age to remember those things my parents got divorced and my mom moved back here my grandmother is May Howard and she lived in white shield and that’s where we arrived first and when we got there we were different we never been on the reservation before we’ve never came back to Grandma’s before so moving to white shield was kind of scared for us so when we got there we were kind of little picked on too you know we were called they used to call us off reservation Indians you know and so was a little adjustment when we came home from there we moved to partial and then we eventually lived here in the third grade and been here since graduated from Newtown High School in 1993 and it was a different time then we were the minority I think I was the only I believe I was the only Native American cheerleader I like cheerleading and I also played volleyball and I played basketball and I ran track I did hurdles then at the time but I was one of the few Native American girls that did sports so I kind of got it a little bit from the native girls and they you know kind of tease me and call me awake girl because I wanted to do some of that stuff too but I was friends with both sides at that time we didn’t have Native American Studies in her school foreign languages then was Spanish Italian I took 2 years of Spanish and I probably just know how to say hello because I don’t remember much of it I mean where should I go from this what you teach now your position well um this is my fourth year teaching no when I first came on board here for the school I used to work at the tribal college and then I worked for the tribe and I was gone a lot you know when I was my kids were growing up growing up at that time I have three my girls are my oldest and then I have two young boys but my girls were just growing up then and I missed a lot because at the time I was helping allocate funding for the new album woods clinic that we got here we’re a part of the land selection and we were doing all that so I was in Washington DC a lot traveling back and forth and one day I was like I’m missing a lot of the stuff that the first of my of my girls and my husband would stay home and he’d tell me well today Brooklyn was walking I rickland did this and I’m like oh I miss that so much so I decided that I wanted to be closer to them and so I came to the school I do have my double master’s degree in business administration and business management from the University of Marion Bismarck so I kind of took a drop and pay a little bit but I knew that it was gonna benefit me more and being around my children and when they would off I’d be able to be off and four years ago mr.Bluestone approached me and he said you know what we need to use your degree a little bit he said how do you think about teaching and it kind of threw me threw me back for a second and I’m like what do you want me to teach math and then we laughed because I was teased no I’d like you to talk about Native American Studies and I was like okay because I got a set curriculum for you for middle school so I teach sixth seventh and eighth grade native studies we talk about Native Americans American Indians of North Dakota for the sixth grade seventh grade we do the Wahine book that when mr.Kevin Finley was here earlier and that says relative and there’s a lot a lot of kids in the school that are related and in eighth grade they read the good bird book which is wahini son so it talks about kind of when they’re going through a simulation and they’re coming off the planes and living in homes and stuff so getting the kids familiar with some of that and then for high school I teach tribal history tribal culture tribal government and tribal studies yep