Learnsting to come in and about land usage and who makes those decisions. This is land who that land that has been walled off from the rest of the city. And who makes the decisions that happens there next . One of the things i am interested in is community participation. They are building something and tearing something down. I think it is important to import to understand. Think about what is happening in , happeningommunities right there in their neighborhoods, so they can understand what should happen to their land now. And other watch this American History programs on our website, where all of our video is archived. Www. Cspan. Org history. Next, from the Buffalo Bills center of the west in cody, wyoming, artist arthur amy at talks about his greatgrandfather, Standing Bear. Tte shares photos of the performers. This is about an hour. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] the man i will introduce to you today has many accomplishments, which i will get to. But i would like you to hear first a little bit about the historical associations of mr. Arthur amiotte with the Buffalo Bills center of the west. Arthurs Family History with the much furtherack than you may think as he is the greatgrandson of Standing Bear, a lakota performer in the buffalo bill wild west show. Untilng bear would tour 1890, when he was injured in vienna and he was left behind to recover. His eventual return to pine ridge was with his the emmys nesee who had is vien nurse who had become his wife. By the strange twist of fate, and maybe this was also a bit of a spiritual night from the spirit of Standing Bear, arthur became a Founding Member of the Plains Indian Museum advisory were when he was a wee bit 1976 back in 1976. What hasnt he done . He has spent a lifetime sharing his philosophy, his vision, his cultural knowledge of lakota life. And i did not feel it was appropriate or necessary to edit such wonderful life achievements. Im sure i have missed a few things, too. Please, make yourself comfortable and prepare for an earful. In addition to being recognized isakota artist, mr. Amiotte an educator, a historian, and an author. He served on the Indian Advisory Committee for the National Museum of the American Indian in d. C. , the commission for establishing the indian memorial at the little bighorn battle site, the president ial Advisory Counsel for the performing arts at the kennedy center, the board of directors for the native american arts studies association, the u. S. Department of the interior indian arts and crafts board, and the council of regents of the institutes of American Indian arts. As an artist, he has had extensive group and solo exhibitions. He received three honorary doctorates. Awarded in 2002, he was a Bush Foundation or disclosure. In 2010, the bush endearing award. He received a masters of Interdisciplinary Studies in anthropology, religion and arts from the university of montana. In june, we were most pleased to honor arthur with the spirit of the American West award here at the center for his contributions as a founding advisor. He is an author of many publications with contributions to exhibition catalogs, including the Nelson Atkins museum plains indian artists of urban sky. Arthur also contributed to the book memory and vision of plains indian people published in 2007. He recently wrote the introduction for an upcoming publication titled plains indian buffalo cultures, art from the [indiscernible] collection. You will see that in may 2018. His most recent solo exhibition transformation and continuity in lakota culture, the colleges of 2014 wasiotte 1988 to featured at the Lakota Museum and Cultural Center as well as the dolls art center in rapid city. I would like to note that arthur will be doing a book signing for to 2 3talog today 2 00 in front of the museum store. Be sure to get a copy of the catalog and have arthur senate. It is a wonderful publication. His art is featured in the centers collections and these are visual dialogues between multiple world that span the barriers of both time and cultures. Arthur has stuck with us through all of this to provide unparalleled division and wisdom unparalleled vision and wisdom. Also, read inspiring reinstallation of the museum in 2000. He worked tirelessly on the recreation of his greatgrandfathers cabin in the university and renewals section. Visited that,t please do. It is a timeless installation brought to life by arthurs life and voice. Spend as willingness to lifetime sharing this knowledge that makes him so special. Although it is now 41 years later, his mind is of the sharpest quality, his life is strong and he has a wonderful head of hair. Also, a marvelous sense of humor. He is a friend, and mentor, and very happy to welcome arthur amiotte. [applause] thank you very much. Jeremy and all of his death and all the way from the person who runs around in the Storage Units to the very ,op of the Directors Office all of them are to be congratulated on this magnificent occasion for the symposium. Scholars, all of you, deserve the greatest accolades. Arena, this is your place for the exposition of your life work, your ideas, your mind and your dedication. I pay homage to you today. Of course, it would not be complete if you did not have to want to talk to. I want to thank all the guests and interested citizens and additional scholars who have come to this event. Years of being a board member. As another accompaniment of this magnificent institution. Time does take its toll and i do feel like a very old chicken that crossed the road. Asks why did i cross . Is road metaphor, again. With what comes first, the chicken or the egg. The subject i want to discuss with you is a very complex one. The essence of his message long before i was born. It passed through the seams of oral tradition, through which it was strained and parts were left out, part were forgotten, parts were diminished and it was not reason reached an age of with a modicum of education that i had to go back and rediscover. That is what historians do. I am not a historian. Im a member of a very strange and exotic family. Again hasll together but iomething of a task daresay this institution and my appointment to it as a board member in 1976 had a profound effect upon me. Once i got here and discovered my i already knew about family positive association with the buffalo bill experience. And you discover a place that had archives, objects it created anether and indigenous for me to want to pursue this. Kind of like that mormon guy when he saw the valley in utah. This is the place. Something like that happened to me. That i knewiphany this was going to be the place that i wanted to spend a lot of time and to try to do as much as i could because i had spent the first half of my life acquiring education that would enable me to function institutionally and it also gave me a perspective on the use of scholarly methods and approaches and how to manage the materials that i thought was here because i found out there were some things here that did not exist that i thought i would learn a lot from. Over the years, there has been an accrual of additional material. Most certainly, at this time, the great contributions that all of you as scholars and curators particularly this most recent look on performance, i look forward to delving into essentially that is what my presentation is centered around this afternoon. Desire andh intellect that you have and with which you have brought to further elucidation, the remarkable elements of the Buffalo Bills story, it has been good. This old chicken knows why he crossed that road. To begin with, the gentleman that you see here in the business suit is my greatgrandfather. His name was Standing Bear and i must say that he is not related luther Standing Bear d may standing henry Standing Bear, nor the Standing Bear from 1991 that was brought along with short bowl bull. Withs sent abroad along ull to bear and short bow show them a Broader Vision of the world and show them how futile their efforts were. Standing bear did a good number of things. They are not to be confused with this Standing Bear. Received his bear name in a very traditional fashion. He returned from a horse capturing expedition against the 1859 and 1876 as he was growing into a young man. He was badly injured at that time. Significantries are for this man because he was brought back to life by his uncle who was a bear medicine man. Healing,adition of should he recover, you are somewhat inducted into that realm of those practitioners. Thats during the recovery in a state of delirium, upon with the rattles and the drones and the doctoring that he had a vision of a giant there standing up and embracing him. Healing him as well, hence the name, Standing Bear. He did not take a christian name. In 1859 and he lived until 1933. He did not take a christian name until 1932 at the begging of his daughters who thought he should be baptized just in case. Names given the Christian Stephen so that he could have a proper death certificate. Life and through the travels with the wild west show he was simply known as Standing Bear. On the plate that survived or was given out during the 1887 campaign in england, there is a list of all the performers and his name appears on there as Standing Bear. Then of course, they did not have members of other tribes so thatuous that were with i am talking about the 7778 show in england. Some of them played the roles of cheyenne and arapahoe on this little print out. As sueblackout appearing and then we see another blackout appearing as cheyenne and so forth. It is a nice little document that i got from these archives. At that time, that was one of of who thetiges indians were that had traveled with this expedition. Betterg bear was much behaved than blackout. That he hasyou remained an upstanding figure. He came to light after the. Ublication that book was written in the same community that i grew up in the home of black elk and Standing Bear and rocky bear. And redshirt. Members of the crazy horse band. They were present when crazy horse surrendered in 1877 at fort robinson. Their names appear on the crazy horse ledger book. Was there. Orse band because of crazy horses charisma and personality, he was able to pull down members from other bands. And crazy brules of theseand was made different tribal members. There were slightly different traditions. Once the reservation was established at Pine Ridge Agency band got away. Bands. Vided into two sub one went to the Madison Community where i grew up. This was on a pie made reservation. By standingated bear, black elk, rocky bear, all of those people that you read about at a wild west show. That Standing Bear by 1931 and 1932, he had become the leader of the community. Established that he tell his great vision in front of the authorities. Because Standing Bear was the chief of the community, that interview where black elk reveals his great vision was done in the presence of standing elk to make sure that black did not tell any lies. The son, benjamin as the interpreter. The story of Standing Bear we will go back to the chicken before the egg. He fought at the battle of little bighorn at the age of 17. Once again, he traveled with crazy horses band to fort to then and relocated Madison Community at the Pine Ridge Reservation. Man of, as a young hely 30 or so, he was went with the wild west show to england. Unlike black elk he did not stay behind. Some of the stories that were generationsgh two just one generation, this was the first of the children to be born on the reservation. My mother was one of the first to hear the stories. Experienced the life of his austrian wife. I marvel at the fact that i was the in the last half of first half of the last century. That was 1942. My grandmother was born and she had two sisters, one was born in 1892, one in 1895 and she was born in 1897. 1985 and raised for generations in her home er her father died in 19 in 1933. It isaying this because the passage of stories that has preserved my knowledge of Standing Bear having traveled with the wild west show. Storytelling tradition. Some of you may have experienced this as you were growing up. The evenings, there were no videos and tvs. After the lamps were turned down , all in theirhold little beds, it was the goal of the grandfather and the grandmother to tell stories. The stories they told arranged all the way from the origin stories, the sacred origin stories of the chew, how the world came to be, how it was created, how the mountains were created and the great trickster. How he could change into other beings and he was perpetually and heing human beings could change himself from one being into another being, he could be part human, part animal. Years, he was a horrible character. As you grew up, if you are being naughty or sly or in causa trent, they said that to be like that person. Not to be like that person. In the changing of his character and the changing of what a trickster means to most cultures, you come to the representsng that it the growing consciousness of conscience. That if you learned behave like a dummy, you are being adverse to the culture. You try to emulate Good Behavior andto be a good person benjamin black elk nicholas that heks son tells me lives in all of us. Task is to get away from him and dont be like him. However, when i was growing up, i asked my grandmother she would be telling stories because she was part of vietnamese. She would tell stories from grimms fairytales. Her mother was austrian. Europeanup on hearing mythology and in the old bookcase, there was a book of grimm fairytales. They would not allow us to look at it because the illustrations were so gruesome. I ams also a book sure it was dantes inferno. We were never to look at that book. That was hell. I asked my grandmother if he lived over there in europe as well. She said he probably did. Convinced are all that he also lives in washington dc. [laughter] arthur i just dont know what the chances are of changing it. However, be that as it may, the isry of Standing Bear remarkable. He went through the entire from of the travels he joined in 1889 and attended and continuedn there. Wreck work by peter has a talks about the rocky bear and a performer with the wild west show and the painting that last the last of the buffalo in the front window of the sun in paris. He quotes rocky bear as saying that upon his return to the united states, he planned to make all of his children of his tribe look look upon the great men dear staff. The indian was the master of all he could survey. Bear could have been there. I know we have heard stories about him traveling and going up to the top of the eiffel tower and seeing the world from that perspective. Redshirt and others, there are stories that went after that, those become incorporated parts of stories about europe. Aboutwas one story redshirt and then sometimes they switch it to iron tail. They are standing below the eiffel tower. This is 1889. The people are coming around and they want to take pictures of the indians and that day they say where is redshirt . We want a photograph of redshirt. Rocky bear tells the interpreter that he is not here right now. He is riding the carousel. [laughter] arthur we will see something about that a little bit later. These wonderful stories were passed down through the oral tradition but thanks to all of exposition er exposing all of these other stories that were going on at bicultural as i as a bicultural person, have been able to fill out the picture. I want to go through some photographs here to show louise, the picture when she in dresden was either 16 or 18 years old. She was the daughter of a retired military officer, her uncle was a surgeon and she was his assistant and she spoke german english and french and of course had a command of latin because she was a medical assistant to her uncle. She was his nurse. Readu know how to victorian photographs, you know that it was standard if you wished to portray that you werent educated person that you also included the book. You can see the hand on the book. If you are a very socially conscious person at that time and you wanted a photograph of yourself as an educated person, you are pointing to the book that you knew how to read and that you were accomplished in that realm. He was injured, he had been through two leon and naples,e, barcelona, rome, florence, venice, munich, it was in indiana when he was injured and he had to stay behind. Cody left his ticket and some money for him. He lived with them for five months and then he got news that his young wife and baby daughter were murdered at wounded knee on december 29, 1890. In february of 1891, five or six nurselater, he and his got married there. Immigrated along with the two daughters because i believe that she was a young widow and i believe those young girls were hers. The immigrated to the united states, returned to the Pine Ridge Reservation and her parents could not bear living there because it was illegal to drink beer or wine. They moved to chicago. And dryame prosperous goods, he opened a dry goods business. Luis remained on the reservation and they created a hybrid life and initially, their first house looked Something Like this, it was a tiny cabin, this is the weather cabins looked in the early days of the reservation. Eventually, through her entrepreneurial spirit, they dont a log house with a framed roof and a wooden floor and a wooden ceiling and after grafting their talents to each other, she knew Animal Husbandry and horticulture and Land Management and believe me, she was a force to be contended with. Allotment,ays of indian people were just, they put names in hat and pulled them out in terms of the location of the land they were going to be allotted. He was initially given a very poor piece of land, two miles away from the river. Louise, being one of those german entrepreneurial persons, she took on the government and insisted on seeing the maps and his relatives give her a tour of the reservation and she picked out a prime piece of land with a that continue to flow all through the 30s. There was a creek that ran and they had and cattle pastures in the winter and summer time. Relativesnd his grazed up on top of me of the and near the fall, Standing Bear and the community at pine ridge would go up in a andn train and butcher store of dried meat for the winter and share it with all the cattleto prepare the during the summer. He became chief of his community in doing so, distributed his role was to redistribute the food of his community. In terms of the old system of sharing ones bounty. Of course, it would not have been possible had the louise not that shebusinesswoman was. She also made sure that all the at the Standing Rock reservation and other reservations, he inherited allotments from all of those relatives and she took track of that. Kept track of that. 1950s, when oil was produced, the family was quite prosperous. She managed all of those affairs here they are, it is louise and Standing Bear on the righthand side, this is my biological grandmother wearing her dress. The young men with the baby is her first husband. Her husband kept dying from disease so she was married three times and had chosen from each. This is a very typical lakota family of that. Grandmother, grandfather, a mother, a father, a baby and either a missionary or enough apologists. She began learning the language of indiana and continue to learn because that was one of the prerequisites. If she was going to be a lakota wife in a lakota hice lakota household, she had to learn to speak a language, she wanted to, she did. She became something of an interpreter. Her daughters were sometimes criticized when they were youngsters attending the local day school for the local convent school. Criticized by their age mates. Those Standing Bear girls, this book lakota with a german accent. That didnt pass on to their children. Standing bear insisted that the lakota language be spoken in the home. Louise never taught german to anybody. She did speak english because that was the language of the school. So it was that the house hold prospered and the daughters grew to maturity. The grandmothers first husband was a full blood. But coming after that, the daughters all married next blogs, that was something of the tradition if you are that class thatople, they recognized they were mixed bloods, they were half breeds. It was appropriate for them to marry other mixed bloods or other half breeds. Is the way it happened and time that the the daughters each time they married, the parents set them up with a new log house and a new stove and new beds and heads of cattle in other words, they endowed their daughters with a find out rate gallery dowry of household goods. Each of the daughters had 10 children. That came in light of the 1900 national senses. The official National Census in 1900 revealed that, this is all over the united states, their only georgia 50,000 indian people left. I am of the mind that of course, some of them were not counted. Thehe other hand, traditional lakota family was for that. Hadding bear and louise three daughters and one son but son died in infancy. In light of the dying population, they encouraged their daughters to have children. One of the interviews done of Standing Bear about the battle of the little bighorn, he makes the reason we fought the way we did at the little bighorn was because we thought if we were wiped out, there would be no more indian people in the country. They got the message was they found out about the senses. They were encouraged to have more children so they would not disappear. There is Standing Bears work, here he is in 1930. In his regalia as a leader of the community. And here are two of his daughters, the one on the far right is my grandmother and the one on the far left is her sister. Thatave got to believe those lakota genes must be really powerful. I do see anything very vietnamese about these ladies. The one on the left that looks like her father, she was a tomboy. She was a cowgirl. Skirt, kind oft like Barbara Stanwyck in a big valley. She had a whip and she went out and rounded up cattle. When she did marry, each of the daughters had their own buggy and their own horses and their own cattle. Independent, she was a horrible cook. She you always hated to go to emily aunt lilys house because you knew you would be tortured. Here is my grandmother passed away in 1985. It is from her that all of these and thee traditions of the household. Even though it was a halfbreed household, it was Standing Bears wish and it became the Family Tradition to carry on all of the traditions. The sacred traditions of the sundance division quest. Children, the burial rituals, the keeping of the spirits, those were all done by my family. That the waysct was a white woman, she totally louise was a white woman, she totally embraced it. He never joined a christian denomination, their children did. Part of the way that he contributed to the wealth of the household was through his painting on muslim. Here are examples of his style of painting and he did scenes of and he caught the and hereg and sundance is the totality of one of his it was nine feet by three inches. There are other works of his and for those of you who are not familiar with his work, i want to inform you that the work of prodigy thomas, running out of long hair, this is another story of the little bighorn. He extensively covers the work of Standing Bear. Visions of the people, a 1992 publication features another painted mosaic by Standing Bear. In 2004. Published catalogued byull christian feast features the painted one that is in this museum in germany. Then of course, the illustrations from the book blackhawk speaks. Louise insisted on being paid 300 and they thought that was outrageous and she said take it or leave it. Somebody else will buy it. He bought it and that is what illustrates that book. There is another portfolio that is housed at the museum. In 1997, i received the lila wallace Arts International fellowship. Reside at his residence for four months and take advantage of paris and i thought this is grandson going home. My fathers people were french mixed bloods, they arrived in the new world in 1637 in montreal and quebec. Generation to receive the grant from one of the charleses in montreal. Anyway, i was going home on two fronts, one was to go back and that myce something greatgrandfather had been through, the stories that i heard as a child. I packed up all of my collage materials, my historic photos, and and pieces of brochures newspaper articles, historic newspaper articles, i packed it all up, i looked at photos of my greatgrandfather and all of these people, you will see them coming up here. Are going tos, we go and replay history. I took them with me to europe and proceeded to produce a series of collages celebrating reminiscences of them in europe. That is Claude Monets residence. That is where i resided, in a place behind it. To the gardens, there were two other artists and residents and believe me, you would never believe the things garden. Did in monets we took our lunch and never wine and our beer and we sat on the japanese bridge and put our feet in the water and drank wine and celebrated those lilies. This shows Standing Bear. , they woulderformed hang pictures of us over there. Monet, money. Y is his name is monet. Among artists, there is a saying , you are baroque if you dont have monet. [laughter] arthur i adopted the vehicle. The oldfashioned car. They certainly encountered that in the auspices of buffalo bill. Those wonderful photos of him driving the car with us in the back. It became a symbol of the cultural changes that the lakota to ride in over in order to survive. Religion, all of those forces that indian people were expected to adopt once they got on the reservation, to change them into nonindian people. The car that shows up in these that thesymbolizes trip to europe was one more of those things. Well take them abroad and expose them to what the world is really like and that will be one more burden for them to bear and to adapt to. We are going to make them civilized. This is the first collage i did in the series when i was there in 1970. It says we really like the one with flowers on it. The idea of purchasing fabric embroidered with flowers, european or spanish shawls. They adored those, they loved those. They bought them and they brought them back for relatives. Some of those people came to that place on boats from a river in the city. The riverboat for rising there. People embarking from it and coming on and here is a poster of buffalo bill, there is one there. They said at that time, we saw give their children she is giving her children whine. They thought that was horrendous. On the other hand, considering thattatus of the water existed at that time, it was better to give your children wind then let them drink water. This one says those women had deformed lower bodies. They wondered what that was. Of course, when i was growing up, louise would explain that that was a fabrication. It was made of well bone. Whyindians always wondered would they want their butts to stick up . Of course, there were those nasty old guys that said monet consorted with horses. I dont know if i can take that. This is people in paris and this sofrom a poster from 1889 that was going backandforth and takingd to paris visitors to the paris exposition. The story we know from pine ridge, it is that he had an english girlfriend and he told her that i will go first and i will come after you. Of course, he did not come after her. The other version is that he lived with a French Family in paris. Arrived, he bill rejoined and got his ticket back to the united states. That was in 89. Just recently, i was talking to his greatgranddaughter. Did you know that when i was born, nicholas came saidand he told my dad, he i want you to name this baby charlotte. Charlotte was the name of my girlfriend when i lived in france. Had this black girl and his white girlfriend. This was the time where they came back to is unable from grandmother englands homeplace. He left his girlfriend over there. This says that a man is buried here. His name means the bones are all a part. This was painted around that tent that goes around and around. Themselves talked about when they were taking photographs and the children of the french people would come up to them and want to touch those indians. Those little children. Those mothers would remind her dont get close to those. They are dangerous. They might steal you and take you away. Running upittle girl to the Indian Ladies and wanting to touch them and feel them. This comes from the oral tradition. Then there is the visiting of cities in the background. This is in the village next to me. It says the backs of their houses were sometimes pitiful. The facade look nice but you get into the alleys and you actually returned to medieval architecture. It has not been written about but one of the oral traditions andhat people were taken checked out of the wild west show. And norons are people one has ever traced this down but the indian people talking about it, going with different people to their homes like for overnight or two or three days. They would take them by carriage and then into the teams before 1913. Sometimes they went by automobile. The also went by train. They would take them home for the weekend to the country states. They would invite their friends over, guess whos coming to dinner. The indian people would sit there and eat. They were talking about that tv show. Downton abbey. Cases in germany and france were indian people took indian people home for the weekend. They were afraid to sleep on those really high beds. They might fall off and injure themselves. Other times they felt that they and a little clean fireplaces in their rooms, they would pull out loose bricks that were there and put them in a basin and rearrange the furniture and take the bedspread off, cover them and they would make forts. They would have a sweat lodge. I traveled the countryside and just imagine what my ancestors must have been going through. The churches and the bridges and landmarks had not changed that much in a hundred years. I thought i must be experiencing some of the things they experienced. Then i am going to stop here and the title of this one was that no one was there. His is a combination of scenes one of the things the indian people reminded us about was the prevalence they were so impressed by the europeans, how much they loved flowers and there were flowers all over. I mentioned that but here they are in the village at midday. From 1 00 until five. Sometimes the whole village close down and they were still doing this when i was there in 97. He would go right through the countryside. These villages were all closed up. There was no people around. I was very good at learning the french language. Tutor if youench could bring some books french anthropology. You can learn what these people were going through, what they were about. I had my contemporary french anthropology book and i was reading statistics. 95 of all frenchmen have Extramarital Affairs and 75 percent of french women do. I thought i know when it there is bennis. Photo that i took, over the years i made it a mission to go to all of the places where the wild west show had performed so that i could see it as it is now. I also gathered historic photos and timely things. Here they are. Its as we went into those boats. Beads and lots of collars. Lots of shawls and flowers. It says the whole town must have flooded. They still live there. [laughter] said they should like to see us, we went to every place and they looked at us. And then home again. The infatuation with Queen Victoria i will close here. I want to say that a blackout with these all guys all guys would surround. They would talk about Queen Victoria and how she wrote out in her carriage and it was so shiny and all the people were shouting jubilee, jubilee. Blackout and one of the other guys said that she was just glowing. She just looked delicious. This to understand was not an effort at chemicals an expression of cannibalism. The traditional foods of the people of the plans the bison has very little fat. Elk and deer had very little fat. That is a very precious commodity. It was highly prized. They either break the bones open whent the marrow out they caught Queen Victoria writing her carriage, just glistening, they said she looks like a delicious piece of fat. This was the other collages, they continue to celebrate life on the reservation. People visiting from other reservations. My grandmother and her two sisters in traditional garments, here they are standing in front of an automobile. , hisare standing there wife, my grandmother, heres another photograph. The veterans from little bighorn, he did travel in 9026 1926 for0th reunion the 50th reunion. It has been a remarkable journey. Is fory that the catalog sale in the bookstore. There are more and more images of the collages. Talk about a hybrid life, and ,ou start hybridizing media historical photos, paintings that you have done previously, paintings that your greatgrandfather did