Madwewegiizhig| “The Resounding Sky”
The English name that my parents gave me at birth was Robert John Sander. After the Kennedys that were assassinated, there were a whole rash of births of people who were named Robert Dallen in those years.
Everything about my life—from the time I was born to right now—I’ve always been involved in the same things. … When I was born, they brought me to my grandma’s house when I got out of the hospital. And my grandma looked at me, and she saw all the markings I have. And I have this one, with white hair in a spot here on my head, and it stayed there until I was about 12 years old. She looked at me and she said, “This is an old Indian man came back.” She said, “You’re got unfinished business; he’s here for something.”
I just always gravitated towards cultural things—you know, hunting, fishing. I grew up right in the Treaty Rights controversy. I graduated from high school in ’87. … I went to a pretty much all white school. It was real rough, controversial time, you know. The people there—even the adults, the teaching staff—held some anti-Treaty views and things like that. They felt that our Treaties were outdated, and that they should be abrogated and all these things. I grew up in all that. So I pretty much got chased on the school bus every night, and I fought every day at the school. I did that to protect my little brother.
I remember my shop teacher, and he told me one day, “Sander,” he said, “I’m violently opposed to anything that favors or gives one group of people rights and privileges over another.” I was 15 years old then. And I remember telling him, or I remember saying, “Oh, that’s good. It’s a pity that there weren’t more people like you here a hundred years ago.” It didn’t change his mind any, but I think it made him think a little.
I got into teaching school. I helped found the Boys and Girls Club here, and I was the first person to actually staff the club there, keep it open. After a number of years, somebody came from the Hayward School, and they asked if I would come there and share what I know with the people there. Because of who asked me, I agreed to do it. And so I stayed there for a time and taught our language and history to the students and staff at the Hayward School. I enjoyed a lot of success there. It wasn’t my success; it was the students.
Have fun while you’re young, because things don’t get any easier. So enjoy it while you can. Surround yourself with good people, and don’t be idle.
I’d like to see those kinds of divisions and stuff done away with. For me, I have a little different perspective on things because my family, my ancestors were signatories for the Treaties that granted the Americans these lands. My great-great grandfather was, he was murdered not too many miles from here. He was killed by a game warden and a sheriff, I don’t know, December 14, 1894. He was a hereditary chief. To me, that was a state-sanctioned killing because of his views. He knew the rights that we retain—that we reserved the right to hunt here, and to use these lands as we always have. He refused to move and to live on the reservation. He refused to adopt the Christian life, and he was an outspoken proponent of our rights. And that’s why I feel that he was killed, because he was made an example of. In the months previous to his death, there were a lot of newspaper accounts about things that he had said about hunting with his son in the places where his father took him, and that his son would take his sons and hunt in those same places. Not to kill just one deer on a license, but to live and to kill as many deer as it took to feed his family as we’ve always lived. Not to be regulated and ruled over by a foreign power or an immigrant power. I feel our Treaties were canceled by that act, by that killing, and I want my land back. I don’t want anything else; I just want our land back. The people can stay and all that … and we’ll take better care of them anyway.
