This is Mr. Funky Teacher with BeAFunkyTeacher.com. I'm coming to you with another Be a Funky Teacher podcast. This episode is going to be focusing on understanding historical trauma, lessons for teachers from the Winnebago Tribe. That’s going to be my focus here. But before I get into that topic, I want to talk about three things I'm thankful for. First off, I'm thankful for thrift shops, because you never know what treasures you'll find. It is sometimes hard for me to pay full price for stuff anymore. I work hard for my money, and if you can find some deals at a thrift shop, that is a win. My wife and I enjoy going to thrift shops sometimes to find treasures. Last weekend we were able to find a couple of pieces of clothing and a few things I brought into my classroom to use. You just never know what you're going to find. Thrift shops—check them out. Next thing: books, both fiction and nonfiction. I'm so thankful for books. They open up worlds and give fresh perspectives. I just love books. The third thing is my ability to problem solve. It has saved me in the classroom and outside of the classroom more times than I can count. Being able to work through and problem solve, to try to figure things out, is huge. There’s a phrase that goes something like this: “Everything is figureoutable.” I find that to be true. You can figure out anything if you work through it, try possible solutions, and stay patient. I do have an ability to problem solve. It might not be rapid or instant, but once I work through a problem and look at it from different perspectives, I can figure out quite a bit. All right, so let's get into the focus of this episode. At the beginning of the school year, as a new teacher in the Winnebago school district, I had an opportunity to learn from an elder in the community, a woman named Sarah Snake. She graduated from Winnebago Public Schools back in the 1970s—I believe she said 1974. Her Ho Chunk name means “Lightning Woman.” Sarah talked about her early childhood, her journey, and how she came to be someone who is deeply involved in sharing, promoting, and protecting the culture and history of the Winnebago Tribe. She is a steward of the tribe in many ways, celebrating the culture and talking about how the tribe came to be here on the reservation. As I reflect on my notes and think about what she shared, I know I'm going to get some things wrong or incomplete. I’m going to do the best I can, but I’m not an expert on the Winnebago Tribe. I’m a teacher here who wants to learn as much as I can so I can uplift and support the tribe, the culture, the community, and the heritage. That’s what I’m aiming to do with this episode: to honor the tribe and culture by giving a little bit of exposure to it, while knowing I’m not doing it full justice. I ask for some grace if I don’t get everything exactly right. Sarah talked about the Trail of Tears for the Winnebago people going back to the 1830s, around 1836. They were moved between Minnesota and Iowa, to Fort Thompson in South Dakota, and then eventually onto the Missouri River area, where the Winnebago Tribe is now in Winnebago, Nebraska. She explained that the Winnebago are part of the Woodland Indians. She said they lost around 20,000 tribal members during their Trail of Tears, where they were forced to move. Because they were woodland people being moved into more prairie-type land, it was a very different environment. They weren’t used to the land, the food sources, the climate. That alone was deeply traumatic. With my fifth graders in the past, I’ve talked about how that was part of the injustice of what happened to Native Americans: land stripped away and people forced onto reservations or into land they were not familiar with. You can’t take hundreds or thousands of years of knowledge of one place and then suddenly say, “Here’s a completely different place. Figure it out.” It is not that easy, and the Winnebago Tribe was not spared from that fate. Sarah talked about historical trauma—the trauma their people faced and still face. She said anyone who is born a member of the Winnebago Tribe carries that generational, historical trauma as part of who they are. Their ancestors had everything taken from them. They were treated horribly: shot, hung, abused, stripped of language and culture. She made a point that really stuck with me. She wondered why the Winnebago way of life was such a threat to the white people of the time. Whatever that perceived threat was, it created misunderstanding, fear, and hatred. As a result, the Winnebago Tribe was heavily marginalized and mistreated over generations. Every child born as Ho Chunk—every child born into the tribe—is shaped in some way by that historical trauma, from birth all the way to the elders. Sarah told a story about her grandmother. Her grandmother’s tongue was literally burned because she spoke the Ho Chunk language in a boarding school here on the reservation. Her grandmother spoke Ho Chunk to a cousin, and some of the nuns burned her tongue as punishment. That is trauma, and it becomes part of the generational story. The boarding school she referenced was St. Augustine Boarding School, a K–8 school here. Just being forced to attend a boarding school like that was confusing and traumatic, especially when it came with harsh punishment for practicing your own culture and language. She also talked about how Winnebago Public Schools, at one time, had a lot of non-Native kids, particularly white farm kids from the country. Because it’s a public school, you don’t have to be Native to attend. Over time, there were boarding schools for Native children, and public schools that included both Native and non-Native kids. That shift created more layers of complexity and confusion for Native children trying to navigate identity and schooling.