We will turn to the business of building the memorial next week. So, were glad that youre here and were excited to be talking about the memorial and lets get right to it is with me is harvey pratt with. Hes a citizen of the tribes of oklahoma. He is a piece chief and has been a career Law Enforcement official. He is a working artist and he is a marine and vietnam veteran. Please greet for harvey pratt applause what caused you to submit a proposal, a proposed designed for the memorial . Our veterans director just kept after me. I had no i really had no hope that i would even come closer, submit a design. He just kept after me and said, do it for the tribe and i said let me dream on it and i said i have to dream. Some of my best creativity is done early in the morning in that dream period and so thats what i did. I went home and i dreamed about it and i got my big chief tablet out and got some sketches and it just came to me all of a sudden that morning. In order to touch they 576 federally recognized tribes, how difficult that was to try to tie them altogether. I though, the way to do that spiritually and i said native people, were the same but were different. We have the same concept but we do them a little different. Thats what i thought about being a cheyenne chief im involved in a lot of ceremonies and ceremonies are important and i thought thats the way to approach this. Its spirituality through ceremonies rather than through a piece of art. I wanted to do something that you could walk into and that you could walk into and be involved in it like if you walked into a chiefs lodge or a sweat lodge. That was my concept i saw things about being around forever and i thought of the circle and in just a short time i had the idea and thats what i am supposed to do. Im supposed to do something about spirituality and ceremony rather than a statue. But you had done other art project before . Im in the process of working of the Capitol Grounds in denver and ive been an artist before for a long time and i was born before he was going to be achieve and i was born in a little houses, not in a hospital and my mothers and they said he wants to be a chief and i felt like that is Something Special for me. I always admired my school teachers. My First Grade School teacher, never forgot her name. There was mrs. Jones, and mrs. Wyatt, another school teacher. And mrs. Hurdy. And they always said you had some skill and i often thought about that and i thought everybody could draw as a child and i thought everybody could do something but adults have to tell children that theyre special or that you sing pretty or you dance pretty or whatever it is. Folks never tell children that so they recognize that. It impacted me enough that i would tell my children those things if they had a skill, i would try to reinforce that and the other children i would meet so the art i went to and indian school, st. Patricks Indian Mission and i was drawing one day and thats in oklahoma. Yes, and a priest came by and saw what i was doing and said youve got talent and he bought me pencils, paper, paint and i painted a picture and i painted a painting and i did it about the crucifixion and made everyone indians. And i sold it i sold it in 61 and i sold for 90 dollars in 1961. And the light bulb went off. laughs the light bulb went off and said oh my gosh, i can do this. I can sell some art and from that point on my art i used to try to paint all kinds of indian art and they would say thats all wrong and someone would say we dont do that, so i concentrated on plains indians, my tribes. That brings us to youre a school age artist who is doing all right it sounds like and how did you become marine . Well, i got out of school and went to college and i didnt have a car so i hitchhiked every day to school and back and hitchhiked to work and i was tired of being broke and i felt like it was a struggle, so ive always admired my uncle who was a marine in the Second World War and served on several campaigns in iwo jima and he had been wounded and part of his foot was gone in part of his face was gone and had shrapnel all over his body and was our family hero. He was a gunnery sergeant, and he was a marine and said im going to join the marine corps. I never told my mother. I just went out and did it and i came in one day and was sitting across the table from me i said mom, im going to tell you something, i joined the marine corps yesterday. She looked at me and her mouth flew open and i called the silvent scream. I never expected that reaction from her until i got a little older and i thought about it that she was thinking of her brother who was wounded numerous times and missing an action. She relived that for me through her brother and i got hurt in boot camp and i pinched a nerve in my arm from the slaying and i was paralyzed in my left arm and i was devastated because im lefthanded and im an artist. I thought on never sell another painting again. They put me back to the basement and they put me in a catchers truck and a wire cage in the back and put my see bag in there and sitting on my seat bag and its raining and im soaking wet and cars are passing me and i was so depressed and i had my oils and i opened up that bag i pulled it out and it said my drill instructor said harvey pratte will be a good marine and it saved me. Telling me because they called you a lot of other things but they didnt call you a marine and i said, you know what, im going to make it and from that point on unless i had healed when i went to the rifle range i qualified for the am one and i got hurt and i came back and gave me an empty m14 to i qualified as an and m14 soldier i was one of the first guys need to use a m14 and they made me a military Police Officer and while i was there lieutenant came by and it didnt tell us what we were going to volunteer for but he volunteered and not supposed to volunteer but i did. They sent me to guerrilla Warfare School for two weeks and i trained with the recon unit and we still didnt know where were we thought we were going going to the philippines. They sent us to South Vietnam in 1963 and thats why served seven months there what the recon unit and we guarded the base and the assets and we picked up shot down pilots and helicopter pilots and spotter planes so when they got shot down we went to go get them and bring them home. So to me, that meant a great deal to Indian Culture to do those kinds of things and to save people and save your brothers and that was one of the biggest things you can do to risk one of your mates that was wounded or in battle so i thought about those things about being the first and it was important to our culture and was important to me. Ill tell you a story that my mother had three daughters and four sons and three daughters are the oldest, they were complaining that they didnt get treated equally with the brothers. They said you treat my brothers better than you treat us and you give them everything. My aunt laura said, those boys are going to die for you someday. They will have to protect you and protect the camp in the village and theyre going to have to die for you if they have to and he said thats why we do that to our men because theyre going to have to give up their life for the rest of us and thats why we treat them special and my sisters realize that and we dont think about going to war or protecting or dying for anybody but thats what the old people said. Keep your shoes right there by the bed you might have to get up and run. I didnt understand that why, would have to get up and running in the middle of the night because they were attacked and i was raised by people that were born in 18 seventies. They had had to witness those kinds of things and keep your shoes right there you may have to run. Call your spirit in at night time and my and would call us and call in the names and say im right here and she said i know but your spirit is still out there running around and im going to bring it in. Things like that that took me awhile to realize how valuable those things were to us that my aunt laura would consider and our spirits and soul rather than just the physical being to keep your shoes there and carry a rock in your pocket so you can put in your mouth and make your own water. Just things like that that made us who we were. I think a lot of life history and lessons made me a better person. The spirituality of who we are you get up in the morning and you try to be a better person today than you were yesterday and thats the way i tried to be and one of the chiefs would say is that you have to make sacrifices and thats the way i approach life is to try to be a better person today than i was yesterday. How do these things that you learned like being a marine inform your work and creating this memorial design . I think that i had always been somewhat creative but it taught me to adapt and to overcome and you think about things and not just except it and when something happens if, you can change it, change it and i think that helped me throughout my career and even in Law Enforcement when issues came up i didnt just accept them. I thought about them, i could make it better i would try to make it better. I think the marine corps taught me that and some of the history that i picked up from my family which taught me to be a man and some of the expectations that you we expect of you will have to live under those things. They were important to me and we were extremely poor and i never owned toys. We had clay, we made our toys, like horses and people and cards and animals, as will be played with. That had always helped me to be creative about what i did and how i entertained myself. Turning back to the ceremonial elements of the memorial could, you describe those for every wooded how you think about it and how you speak from experience. Yes, you know, i have the ceremonial memorial itself that comes off the welcoming center and it goes along the north side of the west and it curves around and play thought of that pathway as it goes and that pathway is what some people call the red road and we call the path of life. Its preparation for veterans men, and women, mothers, uncles, relatives that if you want to honor somebody you prepare yourself as you walked this path and thats what i wanted on this path for you to become prepared as you come to the path and the memorial that the memorial is 50 feet across and 14 feet high. It is a horizontal circle and circles are important and the memorial is called a warrior circle, so you have an outer circle and as you walk your path to prepare yourself to go in to pray for your veteran or pray for somebody you love in your family or someone thats passed on you go there and pray and you make preparation and the circle in an outer circle is rocked and you can walk in counter clockwise or clockwise whichever your tribe does so you have that opportunity to be who you are and be a completely different person and it has entryways that are north, south, east or west so. You can enter in any direction that you choose and the power that comes from any direction and into that direction and want to come into that direction from those openings you come in through harmony or where you have prepared yourself for someone and you get within that inner circle and thats harmony and harmony with the elements and with the fire, the wind and the earth. You are in harmony with those things and those are all elements that people use and they use sacred fires and every morning with water and say my morning prayers and not only indians use water to purify themselves and on the inner circle we call it the drum and it was symbolic but it has water that comes out and flows across the top and down the sides and thats the water that is there so in the middle is a 12 foot stainless steel circle and at the base of that is a fire so you can use that fire to have your sweet grass or things that you use and you can touch the water and use the fire. We call that the drum. The water pulses out and goes down the sides and the design in the granite is rhythmic and goes out like that and goes off to the ground and goes down the mall and all the way to virginia and western parts and calls the indian people to come to this sacred place. We are going to make it sacred by your prayers and will sit down on this granite and youre going to pray for your loved ones and youre gonna pray for your ancestors and its timeless, the circle is timeless. When i say its timeless, we think about our ancestors and we asked them to pray for us. We think about our young men and women better in the service right now and for the president and then for the future and its for our grandchildren and as for their grandchildren that this memorial is timeless and is not dated. Its going to be the same as it is now as it was hundreds and thousands of years ago and hundreds of thousands of years into the future. It will mean the same thing and there is sacredness in cardinal points and the cardinal points are the southeast and thats when i say that when you get up you can pray every morning you look at the sun coming up and he say im going to be a better person today. It is a new beginning and southwest is red and storms and things coming out of the southwest which shows you his power and remembering as our father, god, and the northwest is yellow and thats mother earth. She gives us everything and animals and the plants and gives us the dominion of those things and thats what we pray about. Northwest is color black of our ancestors. We always invite our ancestors before ceremonies we feed our ancestors a give them food and tobacco and ask them to come watch to make sure you are doing the ceremonies away that we should and we dont change and try to maintain the sacredness of those old ceremonies. God gave people a written language and indians ceremonies and thats what we try to protect is our ceremonies. Those things to me were very important and we consider all these things the lances have eagle feathers on them and battle ribbon that hangs down the side that has a certain catch to it and its the sacred colors. We have prayer cloths onto the lances so when you say a prayer for one of your loved ones thats overseas are in the military or has been getting ready to go or has come back and you make a prayer forum where the wind blows and that prayer goes out that person, i love that. We have the prayer cloths all over our property with my wife gina and when i think about it i tear something up and i say a prayer on it and i say to i try to touch all of those things spiritually about us, about indian people because i think that were a very spiritual people and i think about this land and people asked me a lot of times, why do you indians fight for this country when they treated you so poorly . There is a lot of reasons, you fight for the man to the left of you, the right of you and you fight for your country and the for human beings on this American Continent which is just animals and the garden of eden and who did god give it to . Gave it to the indians. He gave this land to the indians. So ill say, look, we are fighting for this land and its always been our land and god gave it to us so we fight for this land. Native blood is all over this land and soaked into this earth, the earth is precious to us and now, we become universal and our blood is soaked all over this continent in all over this world. Mative blood is everywhere defending this land. It is precious to us and thats why we respect it and we do the right thing and care for it. One of the things we think about and thinking about after the memorial opens is sort of protocols around how people use the memorial and we know that native people will know what a prayer tie is and how the proper how to offer sweetgrass and cedar. How do you think we ought to advise our nominated guess to experience the memorial you know. I think most people are very aware of religions, the freedom to have a religion the way you want and you see that in our culture, we have all different types of religions and i think that people will see these people making these ceremonies, doing ceremonies and theymay wonder and i thought about that and you could have a dosa there and it doesnt have to tell you everything, like he is blessed in his relatives and with his son or is daughter which is creative and protecting and thats what we dont know the exact medicine that you have and ive always carried this my whole life and ive something right now which will help me and protect me. We think about those kinds of things first people are respectful and i think thats what we want to have at this memorial is respect. We want to have respect from the different cultures, and i was reading some statistics and it said that 40 of the American Population believed that indians were dying race and no longer existed. 40 of the people think that indian people ceased to exist when we turned into the 20th century. That shocked me. I also hear people say that they respect the indian people thats whats happening. People see us doing something and they have to be respectful and ive had people say, can you smoke us off too . I was in the investigation one time and some of these investigators saw me and i was Walking Around the cedar and when i picked cedar i picked some off of every direction, north, south and east and west and i pray and i went to the fire and these investigators are saying harvey, what are you doing . I know youre doing something and we see you doing something. Well, im just going to smoke myself off, i said, i need to approach this with a a good heart and do the right thing. They said, could you do that for us too . Could you do that for us too . I was surprised that they really didnt know but wanted that same thing and i thought about that a lot and people see you doing Something Special, they want some of that too. They want when you pray when you give something something and ive learned that and you see that a lot when we do ceremonies and people come say. Would you smoke off my brother over here, he wants some of that too. He wants some of that too. He sees how it makes you feel, how makes your people feel about of ceremony. So i would love to have people watch and be respectful you know. And maybe say, could you do that for me . I think thats what is really important, that you do those things for people. Regardless of who they are. Is there anything people should not do in the memorial . Many things, i know. Theres a lot of things, you know when we do ceremonies we would not let you you carry water at the sundance. You cant run and shout. You cant be disrespectful. Like even at the tomb of the unknown soldier. They will chastise you if you get loud, be disrespectful. I think to me that would be disrespectful to us if someone went in there and was doing something that was disrespectful. I would hate to see that. So would i. I would hate to see i think thats as good