Collin Wesaw

Be strong. Don’t run around pecking up everybody’s scraps. Create your own. This is your life! Be powerful and be strong about it. And that’s the story of the eagles.

They say if you want respect when you become an elder, you must give respect to your elders today. The way you talk to your parents, to your teacher, to the older ones in your life is the exact same way when you get older those young ones are gonna be talking to you. If you can’t handle it, don’t do it. Change it.

If you know it’s right, do it. But if you know it’s wrong, leave it alone. Your friends will not be there later on. When you grow up in life, you’re gonna be there by yourself.

Collin Wesaw

My name is Collin Wesaw. I’ve been on this Earth for 56 years. I was born in Chicago in a basement.
My parents were too poor to afford a hospital so they paid a midwife five dollars to bring me into this world.

I lived in that neighborhood where I was born for probably five years. I think I was in second grade when we moved neighborhoods. We were the first brown people in that neighborhood. And we paid dearly for coming into that neighborhood. We were harassed. We were threatened. We fought most of our life or most of our school life in that school. We were the first Native Americans or Indians in that school and I didn’t even know.

I am Potawatomi on my father’s side. Mohawk on my mother’s side. So when we were growing up, they didn’t want us to know about being an Indian because when they were going to school, they were beaten when they talked their language. They didn’t want us to go through this same thing. So they never let us know that we were Indian.

So we grew up there and when we came home and told my parents what had happened to us in school they found a place called an Indian Social Club. After this social club fell, we went to a place called the American Indian Center in Chicago. My dad and mother were both involved in that place. Ended up sitting on the Board of Directors when I was 14.

Back in those days, there was a lot of stuff going on in the world. Civil rights was there. Changes. People were fighting for their rights to be in this country and to be who we are. To voice our opinion and what we want in this country. And that’s what I got into. I went to all the takeovers I could go to and I learned as much as I could about American Indians rights and about American Indian justice and what we need to in this world to move ahead.

I ended up getting in trouble before then. And I went to prison and after I went to prison, I came out and I decided that I would never go back there again. And I fought for two years to stay out of trouble. From there I started to raise my family. I had a little girl, a little daughter that I raised. I fought very hard to have the life that I have right now.

When I was 18 years old, I heard my father for the first time tell stories. And that’s what I loved to do. I’m a storyteller. I tell Native American stories to classes like this. I tell them to college students, to bigger audiences, but that’s what I love to do. That’s where I learned it from: my father.

The reason why I took up storytelling from my father is because there’s so many lessons in life to learn and we never hear them. I thought or I feel that storytelling is a gentle way of bringing out a story to people about life. Don’t lie. If you tell a lie, somebody might not believe you when you tell the truth. I was taught to listen, to listen to every word in the story. I was taught to learn how to listen.

I wanted to show them that there was a whole different side to Indian people that they know nothing about. Our culture is very, very beautiful. The lessons that our people used to teach are very good to learn if you learn to use them. And they’re very nice and they’re very gentle.