By: Kathryn Pentiuk | Southfield Sun | Published November 1, 2024
SOUTHFIELD — The Southfield Public Library honored Indigenous People’s Day with a presentation by Darla Van Hoey, the president of the Southfield Historical Society, the day after the holiday, Oct. 15.
With National Native American Heritage Month just around the corner, the library has more Native American educational programming coming up, including Deborah Choate Shepherd’s presentation, “Stories from a Native American Woman,” which will be held at 6 p.m. Nov. 14 at the Southfield Public Library, 26300 Evergreen Road; and Rosebud Schneider’s presentation, “Agriculture and Food Security Among the Anishinaabe Tribes of Michigan,” which is part of the library’s Gardening Guru series and will be held at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 25.
Van Hoey’s presentation, “The Potawatomi of Southfield and the People of the Three Fires,” focused on the traditions and culture of the Potawatomi people.
Van Hoey shared that the four compass points are significant in Potawatomi prayer, ceremonies and throughout daily life. Since the east is the direction in which light comes, it represents birth and rebirth. It is considered the direction of guidance and leadership, and gives way to new understanding and open-mindedness. South is the direction of the sun at its highest point. It represents preparing for the future, as well as loyalty and sensitivity toward others. West represents self-acceptance and a spiritual connection with nature. The north is considered the place of winter and represents the wisdom of the elders and survival.
Van Hoey’s presentation also explained the Seven Grandfather Teachings, “Which is their philosophy of living, and what guides them through life,” she said. The teachings include humility, truth, wisdom, love, bravery, respect and honesty.
Van Hoey added that in 2018, Barbara Talley helped secure a $500 grant from the Michigan Humanities Council that the Southfield Historical Society raised money to match the grant and create a permanent exhibit on the Potawatomi in the Southfield Historical Museum, 26080 Berg Road.
“Where did this group of Potawatomi end up? Because in 1827, the Treaty of St Joseph said, just remove them all,’ she said. “Some, we believe, probably went and joined other Potawatomi bands. They may have joined up with some other Odawa bands or Ojibwe bands, and then part of our program talks about the 12 sovereign nations with federally recognized sovereign nations in the state of Michigan.”
“We talk about a lot of things, of how they contributed to what we have, where did they come from? They are still here, and that’s the topic of the November talk, because Deb Shepherd is the granddaughter of an Ojibwe woman and a Cherokee man, and she’s very active in her Anishinaabe beliefs.”
Van Hoey expressed the importance of learning about Southfield’s Native American history and emphasized that they are still here.
“I think it’s important to come to Deb’s program because she has a more personal viewpoint and expresses it so well.”
“I worked at that library, so it’s kind of a little homecoming for me to come there and do it,” Shepherd said. Shepherd’s storytelling will focus on her experience growing up as a Native American in Detroit and the negative impact that residential schools had on Native Americans. Shepherd is a Madison Heights resident and does Native American-centered storytelling throughout metro Detroit at churches, schools and libraries. While studying library science at Wayne State University, Shepherd discovered how empowered she felt when she shared the stories of her Native family.
“One of the classes I took was storytelling, but before that, I was already visiting schools and talking to kids, but I had to construct a story, and so I ended up putting together not only the story of the people but the story of my grandmother into one big story,” she said. “And so I’ve been doing it for groups ever since then.”
Shepherd said that growing up, neither the histories of the Cherokee nor the Ojibwe were taught to her in school. It wasn’t until she was an adult that she began to learn about the history of her heritage. She expressed that she didn’t learn about the Trail of Tears until she was an adult and moved to Georgia.
“I do feel a lot of emotion around it, but when I’m doing the story itself, I just feel very pleased and honored that I get to tell this story. I am surprised how many people don’t know about the boarding schools.”
She added how, through decades of learning more about the history and culture of the Cherokee and Ojibwe, she gets choked up sometimes thinking about what was lost through assimilation. “I just want people to feel connected to the story and realize, I always say, ‘I want you to remember the people of this place who are still here, and they still call their grandmothers Nokomis. They still call the earth Mackinac, and they still have voices that sound like a song.’ Because there’s a very lilting cadence to the spoken Ojibwe language. So that’s what I thought my grandmother’s voice sounded like. I always thought she sounds like she’s singing when she talks.”
Schneider’s talk will focus on her work as a farmer and advocacy promoting Indigenous food and farming practices in Detroit to encourage Indigenous people and minority groups to embrace a seed-to-table and localized diet. Schneider is an enrolled Citizen of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians and a recognized descendant of the Lac Du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewas and Eastern Shawnee Tribe of OK and Purepecha peoples. She is also the co-Director of education and engagement at Keep Growing Detroit, whose mission is “to cultivate a food sovereign city where the majority of fruits and vegetables consumed by Detroiters are grown by residents within the city’s limits.”
“Another really big piece of work that I am involved in is getting our Indigenous foods into the hands of Indigenous people and supporting small food businesses and food production around our foods that we want to eat, like corn, maple products and wild rice, and having more access to our traditional Indigenous foods that our bodies very much need to eat.” She added that, similarly to Shepherd, she feels connected to her heritage when she partakes in practices such as farming traditional foods. “From an indigenous standpoint, we have suffered at the hands of colonization and assimilation, and we’ve lost all of these ways. So when Native people are reclaiming these things and reclaiming spaces and land and knowledge and language and culture, it’s huge.”
For more information on the Southfield Public Library’s upcoming events, visit Southfieldlibrary.org.
To schedule a tour of the Potawatomi exhibit in the Southfield Historical Museum, contact Darla Van Hoey at (248) 219-6963.
To learn more about Keep Growing Detroit, visit www.detroitagriculture.net.