Oh, um, oh, oh, oh,

oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

ooh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Well, I'm Petu Wash Day. My name is Maibylpikot, chairwoman of Oak Lake Writers Society, and it's my honor and my great pleasure to introduce our next speaker, Lydia Whirlin Soldier.

Just a little bit about her background.

Lydia is a Chungu Lakota born at Bad Nation,

a community on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota.

Lydia, World Wind Soldier, has worked as an instructor in the Education Department of

Sinte Gleheska University and as an elementary teacher and Indian

Studies coordinator for Todd County School District in Mission South

Dakota. She has just finished a K-12 cultural curriculum for RST education, which is at the publishing house now,

and she is currently working on some language curriculum as well. In 1999, Lydia became the first society

member to publish a full-length book. In memory songs, she reimagined the oral tradition as poetry to

express what it means to have Lecholn, The Lakota Way of Being. Lydia's book paved the way for other society members to publish.

And welcome Lydia. Good morning. Can you all hear me? I'm not a loudspeaker so I have to have a mic. I don't know where to start here, but I guess I'm going to read you a poem that I wrote. And as a Lakota speaker I haven't really studied English

because of my background I took the minimum of English that I felt like I was being forced to take.

So that is the reason for that was because when I first entered school I was just a Lakota speaker and I went into a boarding school and you know how Bakota speakers were treated in those days.

So I was full of resentment and rebelled

and took a minimum of English that I could, that I had to.

And one time when I went home, I told my grandfather

the way that we were being treated.

And he said,

nigh alkota, do we any

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