“Our people had special ones among them, those who remembered old stories—old ways. My mother died when I was a baby and she told me nothing. But from my father, even though he was a Dutchman, I learned that Indian people must take whatever is useful from the whitemen. It is just, because they have taken everything from us. Many of our people died with secrets locked in their heads. Now it is good for us to learn how to read and write so we may know how we make useful things, how our grandfathers lived. That is why we learn to read—so we can remember.”
