Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
STACEY THUNDER: On this edition of Native Report,
we tour the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center.
We learn about the sculpture garden of the Mohegan Nation.
And from the Native Report archives,
we pay tribute to Navajo Code Talker, Chester Nez.
We also learn something new about Indian country
and hear from our elders on this Native Report.
NARRATOR: Production of Native Report
is made possible by grants from the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux
Community and the Blandin Foundation.
[FLUTE MUSIC]
-Welcome to Native Report.
I'm Stacey Thunder.
At 308,000 square feet, the Mashantucket Pequot Museum
and Research Center is billed as the largest native museum
in the world.
Tadd Johnson takes a self-guided tour
through 20,000 years of native and natural history.
TADD JOHNSON (VOICEOVER): In the middle of Connecticut's rolling
hills stands the Mashantucket Pequot
Museum and Research Center.
It is the largest museum of its kind
on an American Indian reservation.
The museum at Mashantucket was built around two guiding
principles, to show the relationship between the land
and the people who have occupied it over the millennia
and to trace the pre-history and history of that occupation.
To tell the story of the Mashantucket,
we must begin with the land.
The Wisconsin glacier that would shape and reshape Mashantucket
began its formation some 75,000 years ago
in the highlands surrounding Hudson's Bay.
By 10,000 years ago, it was already
beyond the Saint Lawrence Valley.
And by 6,000 years ago, it was but a small vestige
of its former self, located again
in the highlands of Labrador.
It left behind banks of clay, sand, and gravel, and fields
of boulders that mark and shape the landscape
of southern New England.
At Mashantucket, it left behind a large piece of itself,
embedded in the other debris that, when melted,
became Great Cedar Swamp.
Over the next 10,000 years, native populations
increased as resources available expanded.
By 1000 AD, native groups were cultivating
a variety of plants, including corn.
Not only were there more people, but they were living together
in larger groups, exploiting a range of seasonal resources.
Pequot social life was rich and diverse.
Decision making was essentially consensual,
with each village having one or more sachems.
There probably existed a rough division
of labor between men and women.
But one would expect all to pitch in as the need arose.
Pequot life changed dramatically in the first decades
of the 17th century, with the arrival
of the first Dutch traders, then English settlers.
The intruders brought with them more than goods and guns.
They brought smallpox, measles, bubonic plague, and possibly
hepatitis, diseases that decimated native populations.
By 1633, a smallpox epidemic struck the Pequots,
sweeping away whole families.
Perhaps as many as 4,000 Pequots succumbed to the disease.
On May 26, 1637, the English, joined by their Indian allies,
the Mohegans and the Naragansetts,
attacked, before dawn, one of the main Pequot
fortified villages near the Mystic River.
Within an hour or so, the village
was burned to the ground.
And upwards of 600 tribal members were dead.
The war was brought to a close in September 1638
by the Treaty of Hartford.
But the terms of the treaty were harsh in the extreme.
Some of the tribe's members were placed
under the control of the Mohegans and the Narragansetts.
Others were sold into slavery.
There are a number of permanent museum exhibits.
Exhibits take visitors on a journey
18,000 years through time up to the present day.
Botany, geology, and other earth sciences
are explored in the permanent exhibits.
Exhibitions of note include a glacial crevasse,
an interactive multi-sensory caribou hunt,
dating back 11,000 years, a 22,000 square foot re-creation
of a 16th century Pequot village,
a 16th century Pequot fort, an 18th century Pequot farmstead
on two acres of land, demonstrations
of Pequot lives, the Pequot Nation today,
and crafts and works of art by Native American artists.
There are six visitor-interactive computer
programs at 23 stations and 12 original films.
TOUR GUIDE: Our gardens are planted primarily
with maize, beans, and squash, crops
that we call the three sisters because they're
compatible like members of a family.
TADD JOHNSON (VOICEOVER): In the 1970s,
the Mashantucket Pequot nation brought suit
for the return of land lost in the 19th century.
After five years of petitioning, legal action,
congressional legislation, and a presidential veto,
on October 18, 1983, President Ronald Reagan
signed revised legislation recognizing the tribe
and settling its land claim.
The success of bingo led to the building of Foxwoods Resort
Casino.
But in its success, the tribe has not
forgotten the need to tell its story.
This museum seeks to tell that story
in a scholarly, innovative, and interactive way.
But it would be incorrect to think of it as a finished work.
Continuing research will shape new interpretations.
And the very vitality of tribal life will add new chapters.
[FLUTE MUSIC]
-Did there is still a Mohegan tribe in Connecticut?
The 1826 historical novel, The Last of the Mohicans,
by James Fenimore Cooper, is set during the French and Indian
War.
The novel has been one of the most popular novels in English
since its publication.
At the time of Cooper's writing, many people
believed that Native Americans were disappearing.
However, in spite of the title of this book,
the Mohegan tribe is very much alive.
Today, the Mohegan tribe of Connecticut
is federally recognized.
Their reservation is located on the Thames
River in Uncasville, Connecticut.
The tribe's independence as a sovereign nation
has been documented by treaties and laws
for over 350 years, such as the Treaty of Hartford, secured
by their sachem, Chief Uncas, after his cooperation
and victory with the English in the Pequot War.
Although the Treaty of Hartford established English recognition
of the tribe's sovereignty in 1638,
after the colonial period and the loss of lands,
the tribe struggled to maintain recognition of its identity.
It gained recognition by the federal government in 1994.
That same year, the US Congress passed the Mohegan Nation Land
Claim Settlement Act.
This enabled the Mohegan to establish economic development
on their reservation.
The Mohegans note that they are bound together
not only by race, but also by lineage, heritage, nationhood,
and an oral tradition.
The 1994 Tribal Constitution conferred membership
upon those who trace their ancestry to the 1861
tribal roll and who have remained
involved in tribal activities.
[FLUTE MUSIC]
-Visitors to the Mohegan Nation Government and Community
Center in Uncasville, Connecticut
are greeted by life-size statues that
honor prominent sachems and chiefs.
Next, we learn about their place in Mohegan history.
TADD JOHNSON (VOICEOVER): A gentle wind blows
across the statue garden on Crow Hill of the Mohegan Indian
reservation These statues in front of the Mohegan Government
and Community Center are memorials
honoring the influential Mohegans chiefs
and sachems of the 20th century.
MELISSA: Behind me, we have two very important chiefs.
The man with the hat was Henry Wikun Matthews.
And "wikun" means "good" in our language.
And that was something that his people called him,
because he was so pure of heart.
And we see him actually grinding corn.
Corn, we believe, feeds the body and the spirit.
We call it "wiwahcumunsh".
But when it's ground, we call it "yohkhik",
which means "traveling food".
Traveling food has-- has many purposes,
mainly for hunters on long journeys.
But also, it's very important to nourish us spiritually.
And so this is something he did.
He-- he kept us going during very difficult times
and, uh, provided for his people,
both physically and spiritually.
Behind him we have Chief Matahga.
And Chief Matahga's English name is Burrill Fielding.
And Burrill Fielding was a great preserver of our ceremonies
and kept our wigwam festival going.
Our wigwam festival is actually like a powwow,
where we invite the whole world to come visit us
every year in August on the third weekend in August.
And Chief Matahga would cook in the cook shack,
and make the clam chowder and the oyster stew,
and wake everyone up early in the morning
to make sure that things got going as they needed to.
And he also held the ti-- tribe together
during the difficult period of the 1930s, and '40s,
and into the 1950s.
TADD JOHNSON (VOICEOVER): Melissa
is the Mohegan Nation's tribal historian and medicine woman.
One of her responsibilities is to tell
the stories of the tribal chiefs honored in this special place.
-I'm standing in front of a good friend of mine,
Courtland Fowler.
He was our chief and chairman during the 1970s, 1980s,
into the 1990s.
And he was a very traditional man.
But he also was very political and very resolute.
He was the person who was in charge of our people
at the time of our first filing of federal recognition.
And he went through the period which we were initially
denied that claim and had to keep
things going through that time.
And of course there was a lot of discontent and unhappiness
on the part of the tribe.
He's pictured in his statue here with a headdress that
was the type that was one a lot by Eastern Indian men
in his period, because it was very flamboyant.
It garnered a lot of attention.
But he also wore traditional roach in many of his pictures.
You'll see him wearing a split deer tail and porcupine
headdress.
His regalia is typical of-- of the other men
you see here, with Eastern Woodlands designs.
And he's carrying a hatchet, because his Indian name
was "Little Hatchet".
And the reason for that is that as a young boy,
he always wanted to chop wood.
So his father had to get him a very small hatchet
when he was just a little boy.
And his hatchets grew with him.
He was someone who worked very, very hard
with these people in his-- in his own time.
Of course, there was no salary.
This was just something that-- that he did and devoted himself
to.
He was also a great proponent of protecting our burial grounds.
He made sure that those things were taken care.
And in fact, several of the burial grounds
which we have been able to reclaim
were due to his hard work.
Places where in the local authorities
had paved over burial grounds and that sort of thing-- thanks
to Courtland Fowler, we were able to reclaim those places.
My favorite thing about Courtland Fowler
was his stubbornness.
He was stubborn in a time where that's all we had,
was to hang on, and hold on, and say
no to people who were trying to harm our burial grounds
and do things to our people that were unfair.
Sometimes, people might have seen him as gruff.
And I saw him as resolute.
And I was proud to call him my friend.
TADD JOHNSON (VOICEOVER): It was in 1994,
under the leadership of Chief Ralph Sturges,
when the Mohegan Nation received federal recognition.
-The man standing behind me is Chief G'tinemog,
which means "he who helps you", Ralph Sturges.
And certainly, he did do that.
When he became chairman of our tribe,
we were not a federally recognized Indian nation.
And when he finished his tenure, we
had been a federally recognized Indian nation for many years.
And pretty much all of his dreams and our dreams
are starting to come true in terms
of bringing our people home.
Uh, this community center that we're standing near
was his idea.
He said this is the first thing we have to do for our people.
We have to have a place we can gather again.
Ralph Sturges dedicated himself 100% percent
to federal recognition.
Uh, it was something that he-- I think more than anyone else--
understood, in terms of how much it would benefit our people.
Some of the things in-- in the East
that sometimes people don't realize
are that Indians can go very unnoticed here in New England.
We were fortunate.
We had a museum.
And we still have a museum.
So we had some sort of a public face.
But many tribes don't have that.
In our reservations are very hidden.
They're in the woods.
And a lot of people don't even know they're there.
There-- in Connecticut, there are five Indian reservations.
And very few people could tell you where those are.
So Ralph Sturges worked on federal recognition.
And we succeeded in-- in that goal in 1994.
Uh, he's pictured here holding the paper in which our land is
returned to us by the federal government.
And that was a very important part of federal recognition.
And he wore a baseball cap they said "Chief" on it.
That was one of his-- his favorite things that--
that-- that he had.
He sometimes wore a headdress.
But the baseball cap was something
you saw him in most of the time.
Uh, he sometimes called himself a three-piece suit Indian,
because he had to travel to Washington, DC a lot.
And he had very affable personality.
And I think that's one of the reasons
that he was so successful.
These are the people who brought us where we are today.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
REPORTER: I-- I see a little one running around here.
What-- what-- what do you hope for that two-year-old
in your family?
What do you hope for those young people here?
-I hope that they can get an education,
go on-- hold on to their Indian heritage as they're doing that.
Sometimes that's hard to do, because you-- when you go out,
you branch out into, uh, a world off the reservation and off,
uh-- away from your own people.
Sometimes it's hard to hold on to that.
But, um, that's what I'm hoping for them, that they
will get an education, and go out in the world,
and try to tell people the story.
So many things are not written down.
And they're handed down.
You know, it's an oral language.
And we need-- we need other people
to be able to-- to hear these stories.
And some people don't want to hear them.
You know, it's-- and I'm sure that's common.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
-Our story from the Native Report archives this week
profiles Chester Nez, a member of all-Navajo 382nd Marine
platoon, otherwise known as the original Code Talkers.
His story is one of a true American hero and warrior.
MICHAEL LEGARDE (VOICEOVER): As evening
falls over Northland College, a welcome song
by the Lakota Ray soldier's drum fills Kendrigan Gymnasium.
The honored guest is Chester Nez, the last surviving veteran
of the original 29 World War II Navajo Code Talkers.
KATRINA: It's been a dream of mine
to bring somebody of this-- um, this level to our campus,
to see-- to show people that, um, we have these people
that we need to honor while they're around,
to honor their story.
But also to expose our young people to people who are--
are fighting for culture, and fighting for community,
and-- and fi-- fighting for education.
When I saw that Chester had received
his-- his degree last November from-- from KU--
He's a Rock Chalk Jayhawk.
We, uh we were real excited.
It was all over our walls.
And we were telling students that, hey, you
know, at the age of 91, you can go back.
You can get your degree.
You can finish what you're doing.
And-- and, uh, it was huge.
It's-- we're sending big messages to our native youth
right now that education is important.
Culture is important.
And recognition and honor is very important.
Any time you do anything, at-- at any age.
-It's been a perfect place to visit here.
And I'm very blessed to come here and see
some of these people around here.
And-- and I'm so happy to be here.
Some of these guys that were in the service,
you know, that I knew.
And then some of them have [INAUDIBLE]
with different divisions, stuff like that, you know.
But we did talk about where we'd been, and what we did,
and-- [COUGH]-- and stuff like that, you know.
MICHAEL LEGARDE (VOICEOVER): Assisting Chester,
is his grandson, Latham and Judith Avila,
co-author of Chester's story, the first and only memoir
by one of the original Code Talkers.
JUDITH: Many people think they just spoke in Navajo,
and that's what fooled the Japanese.
But really, they developed a code.
And the Japanese captured several Navajo men,
and tortured them, and tried to get them to decipher the code.
But it was complex enough that they
had no idea what was being said, even though they recognized
that the individual words were Navajo.
So it was a very, very clever code.
It was doubly encrypted.
And these guys studied like crazy to make
sure they could just take a message in in English
and spit it right out in Navajo, like they were coding machines,
computers.
And they were really an impressive group of men.
And Chester is now the last of the 29 original Code Talkers
who developed the code.
And that gave a special cache a to the story,
because he could talk about what they were thinking
when they developed the code, and how they got recruited,
and what they were thinking when they
decided to fight for their country.
I mean, it was just fascinating to me.
[APPLAUSE]
MICHAEL LEGARDE (VOICEOVER): The evening presentation
included several local, state, and tribal representatives
honoring Chester with gifts.
It also included the telling of his story, 60 years
in the making.
-On behalf of the Oneida Nation, we brought this gift basket.
Some of this is our medicines, our fruits, our things--
our-- our-- things-- all-- that sustain us, our three sisters,
corn, whole corn, and all that, in this hand-made basket
here, this box.
But there's a special gift in there for him.
And it's what we call Oneida love potion, tea.
[LAUGHTER]
So Chester, on behalf of the Oneida Nation
and all the veterans of the Oneida Nation, the people,
I'd like to present this gift to you.
[APPLAUSE]
-Someone comes to get you, a Marine officer.
He takes you all to a classroom and locks the door.
He goes to the front of the room and he says,
men, here's your assignment.
He said, we need you men to develop
a code using your native language, Navajo.
And it needs to be a code that not even another Navajo could
break.
-It took us, um, almost about a year to-- to develop this code.
And when we went overseas, that's the only thing we used,
you know, Navajo language made into code, you know.
And it's one the roughest things-- so
these Japanese tried to, uh, decipher the code, you know.
But they never did.
And it's, uh, one I always remember, here.
It's one of the most beautiful things that
ever happened during World War II.
I'm very proud and very happy about that.
When we came home, you know-- and, uh,
people-- people asked us all kinds of questions, you know.
But I think th-- uh, they told us
when we were discharged not to talk about what we did,
you know, not to tell anybody, you know.
It took almost-- a little over 20 years
before they told us it was all right to talk about it,
you know.
And that's when I told my folks and my relatives, you know,
what we did.
And they were so happy to know that we
used our native language to develop a code
and use it during the war.
-I love seeing the respect he gets.
And I love seeing that, at 92, his life is actually ramping up
instead of ramping down.
KATRINA: I think it's an important message
to get our communities together for a positive event,
to-- to recognize not only native communities,
but also military communities.
And most native communities, those two
mesh together very well.
Culture and-- and our warriors are some-- two
of our very important connections
that we need to make with native and non-native communities.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MICHAEL LEGARDE (VOICEOVER): Chester Nez
was born January 23, 1931 and raised in a Navajo community
in New Mexico.
As a child, he was sent to a government boarding school,
where his teachers washed his mouth out
with soap when he spoke in Navajo.
But when World War II began, the Marines
realized that Navajo speakers could
be used to create a code that would be unbreakable.
Chester grasped the irony.
He told USA Today in 2002, "All those years,
telling you not to speak Navajo, and then
to turn around and ask us for help with that same language,
it still kind of bothers me."
Nevertheless, he was excited about the opportunity.
"I told my buddy, let's get the heck out of here,
climb that mountain up there, and see
what's on the other side."
He and 28 other Navajos volunteered.
The Marines used their code in the Pacific
from 1942 until the war's end.
The Japanese never managed to break it.
The Code Talkers' mission remained classified until 1968.
Hollywood later turned their exploits into a movie in 2002.
And in 2013, the Code Talkers received Congressional Gold
Medals.
Chester passed away June 4, 2014.
He was the last surviving original Code Talker.
STACEY THUNDER: For more information
about Native Report or the stories
we've covered, look for us at nativereport.org, Facebook,
and Twitter.
Thank you for spending time with us here on Native Report.
I'm Stacey Thunder.
NARRATOR: Stacey Thunder is Ojibwe,
from the Red Lake and Lakota Ray Nations
and is the Legislative Council for the Mille Lacs of Ojibwe.
Professor Tadd Johnson is the Director
of the Master of Tribal Administration
and Governance Program at the University of Minnesota Duluth
and is an enrolled member of the Bois Forte of Chippewa.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Production of Native Report is made possible by grants
from the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community and the Blandin
Foundation.
Closed captioning is provided by the Grand Portage
Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.