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(Piano music playing)
Voiceover: Mary Louise Defender Wilson grew up in a family of Dakotah / Hidatsa storytellers
on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota.
(flute music playing)
Mary Louise: (Foreign language).
In the beginning, they said, when fawns were born,
they were all one color and they also smelled like deer.
On this particular day, while the doe was looking at her fawn and she was feeling so sad.
"(Foreign language)," she said. "(Foreign language)."
She said, "You poor thing. You may never grow up. (Foreign language)."
Here, all of a sudden, the wind blew (wind blowing)
and the deer thought, "This is a very different wind. I wonder what it means?"
But she kept standing there looking at her fawn and all of a sudden,
the wind spoke to her and said, "I know that you're feeling bad about your child,
so I'm going to help you dig some prairie turnips.
These grow all over.
And peel them and take that and sprinkle it on your child's back.
So, the doe did that and the wind came and blew
and the white spots then were imprinted on the fawn's back.
Then the wind also told her, "and I will take away that smell of the deer
until it grows up and is able to run."
So, that has been how the deer are able to live.
(flute music playing)
Voiceover: Prairie Mosaic is funded by
the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund,
with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008;
The North Dakota Humanities Council,
a non-profit, independent state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities;
the North Dakota Council on the Arts;
and by the members of Prairie Public.