Nelda Goodman
Nelda Goodman
Grew up on the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin. Works at a battered women’s shelter in Minneapolis. Mentors First Nation women and girls. Grandmother and jingle dress maker.
Be proud of yourself. Honor yourself and respect who you are. Respect differences. Stay in school.
Nelda Goodman
Grew up on the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin. Works at a battered women’s shelter in Minneapolis. Mentors First Nation women and girls. Grandmother and jingle dress maker.
My name is Nelda Goodman. I was born in Keshena Wisconsin. My name before I was married was Kapishkowit, my father’s last name. I grew up on the Menominee Reservation. I grew up and learned the ways of my people from my mother. I learned to tan deer hides, do beadwork and make moccasins.
I went to school on the reservation until I was in the 8th grade. We didn’t have a high school on the reservation, so I had to be bused to a town 25 miles away. At that time we were affected by a federal government plan called termination. We were terminated from the Federal Government’s help, primarily because we had a lot of forest. We had timber and we had a lumber mill, so the government declared us self-sufficient. We were to take care of our own businesses and run our own schools, but that didn’t happen. Our country, our reservation became poor because we couldn’t operate without the extra money, which affected our buses. I had to drop out of school, because I could not walk 25 miles to get to school.
Then the government started to tax us. We lost our home, because we couldn’t pay our taxes. So our land eventually was taken by the white community. My cousin Ada-Deer and several elders went to Washington D.C. to lobby for our tribe. They called themselves “Drums.” They got the decision reversed and they reinstated our tribe once again. I belong to the Big Drum Society. We have celebrations in the fall, winter, spring and summer.
I grew up in an era where the elders couldn’t talk about our creation stories. We grew up in almost a secret society. It wasn’t until the Freedom of Religion Act of 1979 came into law, that we could tell our stories. It was even against the law to talk in our language. That’s why I only know what I can remember as a child, of four or five or six, because when I went to school, it was against the law to speak our Menominee language. The teachers were basically non-Indian. They wanted us to become like the white man.
I have been married to my husband Lee for over thirty years. Altogether I have 10 children. When my daughter was young, about your age, I started making her dresses. My mother died when I was young, 21, so my mother-in-law taught me how to make jingle dresses.
I work in a battered women’s shelter. I have worked there for ten years. I work there because I remember what it was like when I went off the reservation to go to high school. There were lots of fights and name calling. Now I do presentations in schools about name-calling and bullying, because I remember how it felt as a child and a young teenager and growing up, having to fight instead of learn.
In my spare time, on weekends, on vacations we travel around the United States and Canada. We go all over from the East Coast to the West Coast, here in Minnesota and Wisconsin and Michigan. We go as far south as Florida and Louisiana to dance at pow-wows. I am a traditional dancer. I wear a jingle dress when I dance. The jingles on my dress are healing coins. This comes from a story passed down from my ancestors. When we dance, we pray for healing.
The Menomenee Will Never Die
Honoring Nelda Goodman
The Menomenee Will Never Die
(Honoring Nelda Goodman)
I was born in Wisconsin on a reservation
In a little town, named Keshena
Kapishkowit, was my father’s name
Before the government changed it to George.
Then came termination,
no more reservation
Wanted timber to feed their lumber mills
So the money that they owed,
for the land that they stole
We never got,
so we could not pay our bills.
Hay-ya-hay-ya-hay-ya-hay-yo
Can you imagine walking twenty-five miles
To school every day
That’s how it was when I was young
So I dropped out in the 9th grade
To learn from my mother and from one another
Where it is that I come from
As Menomonee I still believe
In the ways of the Big Drum
Hay-ya-hay-ya-hay-ya-hay-yo
I learned how to bead and to tan deer hides
From my mother who showed me how
To watch and to listen as a jingle dancer
Each year at the Pow Wow
Black, blue, yellow and red are the colors
Of the outfits the women wear
While dancing to the drum
to heal the ones we love
The jingles of the dress fill the air
Hay-ya-hay-ya-hay-ya-hay-yo
From picking strawberries and blackberries
All the way to maple sugar time
To fish and to hunt in the winter months
Feasting on the meat we had dried
Harvesting wild rice that gives my people life
To the stories I’m telling you today
When the snow falls the spirit calls
And I hear my ancestors say
Hay-ya-hay-ya-hay-ya-hay-yo
When looking back at those two room shacks
We lived in when I was young
What was concealed is now revealed
And healed through the Big Drum
Bullied, abused, called names, misused
It’s a miracle we have survived
If you honor yourself, respect who you are
The Menomenee will never die
Hay-ya-hay-ya-hay-ya-hay-yo
Words & music by Larry Long with Lynn Pyfferoen’s 3rd Grade Class of Hiawatha Elementary School, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
© Larry Long Publishing 2012