Red Earth and the Girls

I am so proud of my 'little' girls! They did very well in the basket and beading competitions!

Susan got First Prize (and $100) for her basket!


Kimberly got Second Prize (and $75) for her beaded choker!



Kimberly got Third Prize (and $50) for her basket!


All the money is going into their savings accounts.

Thanks to the Indian Education Program at Edmond Public Schools for their help in making the baskets and bead work!

Here is a link to the article about this that was in the Edmond Sun.

Kimberly is now a published author

Wow - I'm so proud. Kimberly's book "The End of the Trail" has been published! Ok, so we had to pay to get it printed, but I believe it will be available at one of the library's in Okc or Edmond.

It's all about the Trail of Tears and actually contains some important facts. Like the president that signed the ?bill?order? to relocate a lot of the indigenous people of America to Oklahoma.

It makes me wanna get a sharpe and change my shirt to look like this:

NDN Hand Game Event

The four of us went to a dinner and hand game event last night. The event was put on by the Edmond Public Schools Native American Education program. It was a great time. Many thanks to everyone who helped run this event - Mrs. Yellowfish, Mrs. Smith, and Susan. I don't remember the other peoples names.

We were fed Corn Soup, Fry Bread, Grape Dumplings, fruits, and brownies. Very good stuff. I got some tips on making Grape Dumplings. My first try wasn't all that good. Susan wants me to make them for her internship presentation.

The hand game was played by the Plains Indians back in the day and is a lot of fun. We played the version that the Ponca and some other tribes played.

You have two teams and one team guesses and one teams hides. The hiding team has 2 small objects and one of each is given to two players. They put their hands behind their backs and when they are ready, show their clenched fists. The guesser has to guess which hands the objects are in. If he/she are right, then the guessing team hides and the hiding team guesses. If he/she guesses wrong, the hiding team gets one or two points (depending on whether they guessed wrong for both or just one of the hidden objects).

Each team starts out with 5 sticks/points and you win when you have all 10 sticks/points.

While the games is going on, the singers are drumming and singing. The hiding team claps and tries to distract the guesser by waving their hands in between the guesser and the hiders. This is one the really fun parts.

Our team got creamed. We lost the last game in less than 2 minutes. It only took about 4 bad guesses.

Almost everyone won a door prize - mostly t-shirts and canvas bags. A really nice Pendleton briefcase was the 'big prize'.

Here are some pictures of the event:

American Indian Chamber of Commerce Scholarship

Susan was one of the 5 finalists for the AICCO scholarship (http://aicco.org/). This is a $1000 scholarship for Native American high school seniors who live in the OKC Metro area.

The AICC held a luncheon today for the finalists at Twin Hills Country Club.

She didn't win. But all 5 finalists were given a savings account with Bank2 (owned by the Chickasaw Nation) with $100 in it. The interest rate is around 3.9%. So we may move her savings account. Just gotta figure out how to get the money to her after she starts college.

Susan's mentor, Mrs. Yellowfish, attended the luncheon with Susan, Laura, and I. Here is a picture of Susan and Mrs. Yellowfish.


Mrs. Yellowfish has been such a great teacher and mentor to Susan. I know Susan will look back at her school days and think that Mrs. Yellowfish was one of her best and most influential teachers.

Here is a picture of Susan receiving her $100 saving account:

UCO Pow-wow

Susan, Laura, and I attended a pow-wow at UCO Saturday night. It was a rather small one. There were about 100 people. The food was great - corn soup, fry bread, meatloaf, brisket, fried chicken.

Susan and Mrs. Yellowfish (with help from Susan's friend Rebecca) were able to raise over $200 for the United National Indian Tribal Youth (UNITY). They want to send a representative or two to a national UNITY conference in Reno, Nevada in July.

We won a bakeware set from the UCO Native American Students Association (NASA). NASA was really nice, they had a blanket dance to raise money for the UNITY group. I think they got around $60 from the blanket dance.

I bought a shirt see it here. I'm feeling a little hypocritical about this.

While Laura, Susan, and I were are the pow-wow, Kimberly was in a suite at the Redhawks game! She was spending the night with her friend and they stumbled into some tickets from Ozarka.