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BT: So how long did you do this with them?

FS: Work with them?

BT: Uh-huh.

FS: About three years. Three, three and a half years, I don't recall. Mostly, you know, I really, I guess people felt I contributed because I've got some letters that only did workshops, meaning they'd have a whole big conference of educators, and I'd do a film show or something that I put together and talk about it. And they really related to it and I feel, yeah, I'm more proud of this one letter that I got, that kind of stuff, that I don't need trophies. I feel like maybe I did a little bit, right? But there was a limit, and the limit became apparent after I spent more, well, I spent time in Harlem, Roxbury, all these kind of areas that were blighted, but also on a Native American reservation. Yeah, that kind of disturbed me that I couldn't, there was nothing I could do. I got to give up family, whatever, and go there and live there, or I can't contribute anything. You know, you don't need too many more observers of this damn situation. It wasn't changed is the sad part, the reservation. Because we visited a few years back. And I just, I don't know, what can I say? I'm fortunate to have witnessed all this stuff. And so I guess I've been encouraged to talk about it.

BN: I was actually going to ask if your memories of camp, if you saw parallels or reminders when you visited the reservations?

FS: Well, the only thing that occurred to me, and I've mentioned it somehow, and the Rafu picked up just a little blip of it, was I felt that when I visited in the Dakotas, and my friend Leslie Williams showed me all over the area, she took me to this one city that, it was a small town, actually. It's a fairly new typical tract development, but now with all the trees, it's just barren. And that was a town of Native American Indians in that area. And it's one of those that were ninety to ninety-nine percent alcoholic. This is the whole community, you didn't see anybody out there, desolate. And I think my connection to camp would have been only if the government had taken away our culture, I think, we had the potential... of course, we were only a small community, but of having, going that way. Where the men would give up, right? It would only be because... you know, and that potential was there, of course, in camp, but not, I don't think it was long enough to have made that happen. The Native Americans were killed over a long period of time. So I tried to bring that out. It was too much for anybody to rally around my flag, and it just went over everybody's head. So when I witnessed later, like the Wounded Knee incident, and yeah, the government shootout and all that stuff, I still can relate to that. Because I saw the church where I saw that, in fact, it was within aa few years of my not being there. And we did revisit the church, it's no longer there, and there's only a little monument, dome kind of building with one sign nearby that says this is where the massacre site was. Yeah, that's how our history moves on. Well, you're more of a historian than I am, but I'm just, I feel very fortunate that I saw a lot of that.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.