YOUTUBE h_k-l7_xQQo
My late mother, I was born a half breed or mother was Dutch, Irish, and German, and very rooted to, and what can county in my grant? My great-grandfather William Bill's skink took care of the armory that was up there. It's on the hill there in south side. My mother's father. Who was billed Toby, his mother, Harriet, Courtney lived in south side, right there on 11th street and right next door to the library. My dad's my late dad's mother was a business woman, her and my late grandpa and my grandfather owned a per center called the New York. My name is Danita Washington. My Indian name is Celia. I am 65 can be 66 in April, and I am from the county. So easily. All these names and blazes are like in my DNA. There. What I am and who I am, and I've been blessed and to have witnessed many elders speaking over my years of growing up, I can see them in my mind's eye all the time and hear them. And I'm sharing with you these things, because they've been ridged the foundation for me of what I live by. There's cycle with check in on us. I don't know where we wouldn't see him for a long time, but all of a sudden there he'd be, he'd go out to the wood shed and he come back in with an arm full of wood. Cause we had a fire placement oil heater and he whittled down and make these curls and Cedar. The next thing we know. The house would just toasty. The fire was blazing. It was all nice and warm nine children and I'm eldest. And so my brother and I, the brother after me, we've grown up with lots of responsibility and expectation expectations that nowadays. Might look like child abuse, you know, to be driving a tractor at six years old, our son, Samuel. He has two children, Carolyn who just turned 13 and Nikaya when we call kitty. And she's nine, our daughter, Lena. Um, she has one daughter. And Sophia is now two and a half. Yeah. She's a busy one. She's very busy and very delightful. She is the model of what we've never got to be the playful spontaneous, and we're learning from her how to be somebody. Those things, life is being renewed in some ways, regenerating. Woken up again, you could say, and it feels fulfilling here. And I am, uh, I feel very blessed today for the abundance and I'm full of gratitude for many people that have worked through my life. Listening to the old people say, learn to page. I wish I had listened more in practice. Yeah. Because I would be better at it to do my diagnosis is polymyositis and inflammation of the muscles. It's that to be an audio immune, they don't really know how to treat it. So my history has been more than. More than 10 years, almost 15 and slow bitter of laws, strength, and still the jury have more pain. It's affected my swallowing. So now I'm tube fed. And so, you know, it's trying not to get too preoccupied. I sit and I started to cry. But my cry turns to the song and this song is my grandfather would say is my medicine and it stands me up. So I think once a days, sometimes, sometimes too lately, as a young person, when even I had this drink that wasn't doing it. But it is an older person. I see the value now of what my old people would print to tell me. Yeah, it's too bad. I waited so long for that part. D being an elder has nothing do with your age. To me, what it has to do with is what you've done in the way you went. The way my people would say worked amongst your people and nowadays the need is being anti Denita. So I've been earning my spot and I tried to, to be gracious to use my wisdom and my discretion wisely because my grandparents, my grandparents. The way you work amongst your people, those, it all.