They wanted to make sure that the Indians behaved

Another time I went to another gathering – I went to four or five of them. One of them was put on by the Minnesota American Indian Women’s Resource Center. That was in a more developed setting, like a camp of some sort. But I learned a lot there, just because of the people who came there and presented. They were all Native and everybody who attended was Native. I just thought: gosh, all these people were so like me because they had similar backgrounds, where they came from. Some of them didn’t have family members who went to government school and I couldn’t understand that because I always thought everybody went to government school – and some didn’t. And so I wondered why they didn’t. I never found out, but I suppose it all depended on where they lived. Where they lived, where the reservations were, depended on whether white people wanted to live there or not. Because if they were going to live there or be around there, they wanted to make sure that the Indians behaved, I suppose, and so that’s why they sent everybody off to government school. My mother’s sister, she was sent clear down to Ohio. And it must have been awful for her there because she just drank her whole life.