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Lakota Language Transcript:

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English Language Transcript:

Iktomi.  Children I’m going to tell you all about Iktomi…who he is…what he does…what he won’t do…and how he tricks you.  But you must always remember one thing that is most important of all.  Iktomi is not always a mythical character of fairy tale.  Iktomi is real.  Iktomi lives in me.  Iktomi lives in you.

A little short story about one of my daughters one time.  I live way out in the country, and so on snowy days my oldest boy goes to one school way over here.  The second boy goes to school in town here and a youngest daughter, she goes to school in Rosebud.  So there are three different Suburbans that come to the house. 

Well, one snowy day the oldest boy is peaking out the window watching for a vehicle.   He’s looking up and down the road, and he sees one coming.  He’s watching it pull into the yard. 

“Little sister it's your ride!”

So the youngest girl goes out, and then just as quickly she comes back in, and with a very straight face she looks at her brother and says,

“That's not my ride.  It's your ride.”

The brother quickly grabs his books and his sports bag and he runs out the door, and little sister lets out a big smile, and she says,

“That was my ride.  I forgot something in my room.”

When she comes back out, he comes back in.  He ran out and he jumped in that suburban and there were just little children all in that van. When he comes in he's very angry and he wants to bop his little sister one.

I said, “Don't you touch her.”

That evening at dinner, I tell my little daughter,

“Today, my girl you were Iktomi.”

“Huh uh.”

“Yes you were.  Iktomi likes to trick people.  And when he makes them look foolish, Iktomi likes to laugh.  So today, this morning, you tricked your brother.  You tricked your brother.  When he felt like he was made a fool of, you just laughed.  So Iktomi was in you.  You were Iktomi today.” S

So people will tell you things.  People always tell you things, and you have to think about this.  Is he telling me… is she telling me the truth or are they trying to fool me?  You must always think about these things.  Iktomi will try to trick you.  Someone's going to try to trick you.  Is Iktomi with this person…in my friend trying to get me in trouble…make it sound so nice and so good but I could get in trouble for it?

Iktomi will.  He plays many roles.  He can be nice and call you little sister.   He’ll call you little brother. Iktomi can be a girl.  Iktomi can be a grandma, a grandpa.  Iktomi is everywhere. Iktomi’s just not a make-believe character.  Iktomi lives in all of us.  Iktomi teaches us by these stories on things that we know we must learn from them…what is right and what is wrong.  So these Iktomi stories…when I talk to you about these stories, you think about them and say, “What do I learn from this Iktomi story?”