606 - Bubbling up many truths - Dr Ian Her Many Horses

You're listening to Blowing Bubbles.

I'm talking with Dr. Ian.

How many horses? I have to ask.

Surname.

It's unusual.

So, Northern Plains tribes typically have a unique experience that our surnames were translated into English.

Surnames being a name that actually means something is pretty common across all cultures in the world.

You see this out of England where the guy's last name is Thatcher and Smith and things like that.

So when we started to become part of the US system, whoever was the head of the family, in my culture, head of the family is the oldest living relative.

For my people, it was a woman named , which could be translated as her many horses.

There's also different ways that it could be translated.

So her name became the family surname, translated into English, and then everybody after that have, you know, Americanized first names.

Prior to that system, people had, you know, individual names.

My tribe is the tribe of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull.

And so the individuals were known that way prior to that changeover.

There's a few tribes within the U.S. where that has happened.

With Northern Plains, they let us have spaces with, say, folks who are from, like, tribes down in Oklahoma.

They removed the spaces.

It's an interesting thing.

But yeah, otherwise our names would be very non-American sounding, which is what a lot of other cultures have as well.

Do the tribes consider themselves part of America? There seems to be a slight

I would be wary of myself speaking for my tribe, but what I'll name is I do consider myself a citizen of my tribe.

We're a sovereign nation, and when I'm wearing that hat, I approach it that way.

But I am also a citizen of the United States and engage with that deeply, just as all my neighbors and everybody else around me.

I guess one of the trickier things often comes with relationships to the state.