Cross-Cultural Knowledge with Leander “Russ” MacDonald

But I think this is true not only for us as a people that is true for all peoples is that a fear for my German descent then you should be proud of your German descendency ancestry and and should be knowledgeable in ancestry in regard to how you carry yourselves I think that’s part of the self identity piece but it’s not just - not for us not just for us the other thing is that in my own interactions is that I never had any trouble with anybody that was knowledgeable in their own culture with the non-native goo but those ones I had trouble with they’re the ones that were not knowledgeable in their culture who didn’t have an understanding of how to respect to one another or to have it more knowledgable within their own value system and so those are those so I think just having a cross-cultural not cross cultural knowledge would help everybody in the long run not only the native students but also the Nadia students and so I think we need to also be exposed to the German cultures and Norwegian cultures and I know we did a create a faith terrine was a professor at the University of North Dakota when I was there and we did some reviewing for her I did some reviewing for her and regard to a story book that she created about the Norwegians when they first came to North Dakota and actually she created a play from the story book and so we interacted with her and I worked with her in regard to bringing in a drum group and some dancers and she brought in some dancers and what I found out within this story book was stories of little men that lived in trees and how they kind of mess with you every once in a while and though we have those same stories and that Norwegians culture has drums they use drums within their there songs in there dancing and so we have drums you know saw so there’s a lot of similarities between their cultures and I think we need to look for that and I think we a lot of times we’re always looking for the differences because it’s just easier to do I think but if we continue to focus on that we’re never gonna get to where we need to be as a people as overall people I’m not talking this about American Indians or non-american is but as overall as a people I was in the st.Claude for a workshop and we shared a booth of some somebody and this is my Epiphany or mine when the light bulb went off is that said I’m sitting with her and we’re sharing a booth and we’re just busy and she’s talking about this we’re talking about Jim cars so she’s talking about the ADI a for and so then uh so embody a four she says that was her dream car she said but I and I said yeah I said that’s a nice car you know and she said but I could never take it home and I said why not and she said well my grandma would kill me and I and I and I said well oh and we’re kind of laughing about it and I said well why and she said well she said it’s okay to have money but it’s not okay to show it off and that and that’s what can I open my eyes because that value is the value of value that we have it’s okay to have money but it’s not okay to show off that you have money don’t show off don’t put yourself up front you know and these are the things that you know that we’ve kind of part of our value system is that they don’t draw attention to yourself you know and so those things I think are common place where I especially up here in North Dakota among our tribes is that we’re we’re supposed to have humility or we carry ourselves and that somebody’s gonna stand in front that’s reserved for our elders that’s a reserved for our veterans so that’s their they have the right to the order to get up and do that we as younger folks we don’t do that and so I don’t know when we get to be old guys or whatever but you know so but whenever that comes so I think the people decide that when were elders and when we’ve got some wisdom and I think that you know so we let them decide right ourselves [Music]