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Iola Columbus
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Iola Columbus 113 114 [3.230.147.225] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 11:11 GMT) iola columbus, a Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota, was raised on South Dakota’s Flandreau Reservation. She lived more than forty years at Lower Sioux (Morton) Community, where in the 1970s she became the first woman in Minnesota to be elected tribal chair. As an elder, she traveled throughout the state developing a Grandmothers’ Society that encouraged women elders to pass on their traditional knowledge to younger generations. She passed away on April 12, 1997, at age sixty-nine. 115 I was born in Pipestone, Minnesota, but I was raised in South Dakota on a small reservation by my grandmother. I came from a real traditional background. I was raised in the traditional way, and by that I mean when I was about three or four years old my grandparents wanted to raise me.I imagine they told my mother,“Well,we choose this one to raise.”The reason for that was to pass on their knowledge of our culture, the traditions and things, to one of the grandchildren.When I think of 116 it,that’s quite an honor.I didn’t know it at the time,but that was the beginning of learning all our ways. My grandfather didn’t live too long after that, so it was just me and my grandmother that lived in Flandreau. Her name was Anna Wasu— translated, it’s“Hail,”that was her Indian name. It was really nice how we used to go and dig roots,and pick berries,and we’d pick tea and dry meat. I helped her tan hides, and we always put in a big garden too.All of these things were survival skills that she taught me. From the time of spring, first there was the tea that we picked, and then we dug turnips, and then we dug roots as they came into season for medicinal purposes. Then there was the time when we dried corn, and we dried meat.All of these things were by season. We traveled a lot to go and see my parents. We went to Montana one time, and we camped way out in the hills someplace just to pick berries. Oh that was neat! We didn’t have ice-boxes, they didn’t have nothing like that then,so we had to eat wild game,ducks, and different kinds of animals. My brothers or elder members of the family would hunt those, and the women would clean them. My grandmother used to say when we’d go dig medicines,“If there’s two of them, take one, leave the other one so it can seed. Or if there’s eight of them, you might be able to take five or six.You don’t want to get greedy because that isn’t good.” There was a certain kind of medicine we used to go dig and she said,“This one woman got real greedy; she dug everything she seen in sight.Here,she was digging and digging that one time, and when she got to the end of this root there was a snake. So,” she says, “Granddaughter, you don’t want to get to that, 117 where you’re going to be greedy.Always be certain to give thanks. Take your tobacco or whatever, and always give thanks to the Creator because they’re there for us to use.” One of my favorite times was in the winter because that was storytelling time. She’d tell me stories and she always said,“Come spring, I cannot talk about these things anymore.”I used to wonder why but you just never questioned what your grandmother did. Nowadays, when I give talks, they question a lot of that stuff and I said,“I can’t answer some of these things because we just did what we were told to do, or we observed. I don’t know what the reason is for that. I do know some of it but some of these things we cannot talk about, like ceremonial things. I can tell you how we did it but the outcome , or the purpose of it,some of these are very personal that we keep to ourself.” My grandmother talked to me about respecting and honoring people—young people, or old people, or little children, especially little children. I was taught by my grandmother that they were gifts from God,and that we needed to...