DIVISION STREET REVISITED EPISODE 4: BEN BEARSKIN: Learning the Ropes [THE WHOOSH OF THE WIND/ A WIND-CHIME/ ROAD SOUNDS/THEN HONKING AND CITY NOISE] The road from the Winnebago Reservation begins in the rolling hills of Nebraska, out where the wind rustles the tall grass and you can drive for miles without seeing a skyscraper or a shopping mall. Then it heads east, across the Missouri River, on through Iowa, into Illinois. Until, there, on the horizon: the skyscraping, electrified, honking metropolis of Chicago. This is a story about those two very different worlds — the city and the reservation — and of a man who learned to live in both. STUDS TERKEL: What's your feeling about living in a city the size of Chicago? BEN BEARSKIN: I like this term ‘getting urbanized.’ It means that you have to learn the ropes. Just like a person moving off from prairie country into the woods. This man’s name was Ben Bearskin. He was known as a humble, quiet, devoted family man. For many years, he was also among the most influential Native Americans in Chicago. One day in 1965, Ben sat down for an interview. He was 45 years old. In photos from that era, he has a long, lean face, black hair and dark, piercing eyes. STUDS: Sitting in the inner office, you might say, of the American Indian Center, talking to a man I met, oh, some years ago, an American Indian, Benny Bearskin… The man interviewing him that day was Studs Terkel. Studs was a popular Chicago radio host who’d recently set out on a new project. He was quizzing so-called ordinary Chicagoans about their hopes and fears, and recording their answers on his big reel-to-reel tape recorder. In 1967, a collection of Studs’ interviews was published in a book called Division Street: America. It became a surprise bestseller. But what happened to the people in Division Street? To their descendants? And their dreams? What can their lives teach us about the past and the present? I’m Mary Schmich and this is Division Street Revisited, a show in which we set out to answer those questions — with the help of Studs Terkel’s original recordings, many of which have never been made public. Today, Ben Bearskin. A man who believed it was vital to adapt to whatever world he found himself in — but who never forgot — who wanted to make sure the rest of us never forget — that long before there was a city called Chicago, or a country called America, this land was the land of the Winnebago. Of the Ojibwe and the Oneida. Of the Potawatomi and the Menominee and the Sac and the Fox and the Kickapoo and the Sioux. Of all the peoples who were here before the Europeans arrived. BEN: We enjoy a distinction that no other person has. We are at home while everyone else came here from somewhere else. [PAUSE/MUSIC] As I was learning about Ben Bearskin’s life, I heard him described in lots of ways. Leader, teacher, activist, dancer, singer, photographer. But one description, in particular, struck me. It came from a Native American woman who knew him for a long time. She called him “a brave explorer into a new era.” That word – explorer – snapped Ben’s life into focus for me. An explorer is someone who goes boldly into unfamiliar territory and opens the way so others can follow. That’s exactly what Ben did, only his territory wasn’t a jungle or an ocean or a mountain range. It was a big city in the middle of the 20th century, when life for Native Americans was shifting fast. [PAUSE/MUSIC] When Ben was a boy, he lived on the Winnebago reservation with a brother, a sister, a mother from the Dakota Sioux tribe and a Winnebago father. This was in the 1920s, and by that time the country's original peoples had been shoved off their homelands and boxed into areas of land called reservations. On the reservations, the native tribes lived under federal rules, trapped in federal bureaucracies. BEN: My father was a farmer. And…he decided to get off the reservation. I think basically his frustration was the lack of freedom on the reservation under the reservation system. In those days, Native American children were routinely taken from their families and forced into boarding schools run by the government or religious groups. Children were forbidden to speak their native languages. Or practice their native religions. or sing their native songs. Disobey school rules and you could be beaten, or worse. Ben was spared the trauma of boarding school life. Even so, as his father moved the family from place to place in search of work, Ben faced his own challenges. BEN: The one thing that stands out in my mind was that every new school we attended, we had to go through an ordeal. The toughest fellas wanted to see how tough we were. And if we could whip the toughest kid, well, then we had it made from then on. All that moving around taught young Ben how to live in diverse cultures. He made friends with black kids, white kids, Greeks and Mexicans. BEN: When we were in Minnesota, my brother and I used to play the fiddle and guitar for square dances. STUDS: How did you become acquainted with the fiddle and guitar? BEN: Through listening to the Grand Ole Opry on radio on these long winter nights… [laughs] [APPALACHIAN MUSIC] In 1947, in his late 20s, Ben made his way to Chicago. He got a job as a welder, then sent for his wife and daughter, who were still on the Winnebago reservation. BEN: I could at least feel confident that there’d be perhaps 50 paychecks a year here. And you can’t always get that, even though it might be more pleasant to be back home. He worked his way up to a job as a union boilermaker, then a pipe fitter. He and his wife — Fredeline — had three more daughters, and a son. Ben worried about his kids. And not just his kids. So many Indian children were growing up detached from their traditions. In the city and on the reservations. BEN: And it is this type of young Indian who, uh, sometimes is ashamed that he's an Indian because he doesn't realize–there's nobody, nobody's ever told him that his ancestors were a noble race of men who, uh, developed over a period of many centuries, a way of life. Ben was determined to make sure his children – and other kids – knew who and where they came from. BEN: There’s definitely a need for a basic pride in order to have something upon which to build character. If you don’t have that pride, why then you have no identity. [MUSIC/PAUSE] So in the early 1950s, he helped to establish the American Indian Center in Chicago, a refuge where Indians could hold on to their Native cultures while adjusting to city life. He earned a good reputation. In 1960, he was the city’s nominee for the national title “Outstanding American Indian of the Year.” Then one night, Ben and his family came home to their new rental apartment. It was a dilapidated place they’d spent two weeks repairing and decorating. But now every window facing the street had been smashed. The attack made national news, in part, because – as one report put it – Ben was Chicago’s “leading Indian.” One newspaper headline said, “Bigots shatter Ben Bearskin’s dream.” His dreams were not shattered. For one thing, it wasn’t clear who did it, or why. BEN: They evidently thought we were Mexicans. Well, when the press asked me about this, I said I was sorry to disappoint anybody. As much as I admire Mexicans, I’m not a Mexican. I’m an American Indian. And even if they had been targeted for being Indian? An Indian - as Ben told one reporter - “An Indian is not afraid of anything that walks, crawls or flies.” He turned the attack into just one more lesson in learning the ropes. BEN: It was kind of enlightening, really, after it was all over with…I think that bigots are people who do not use their rational powers, they’re simply run by their emotions….and it’s all based on fear. Fear and ignorance. If you can open your mind and learn something, then your fear will dissipate. He did, however, move his family to a new neighborhood. [PAUSE/MUSIC] A few years after Ben settled in Chicago, Indians began flocking to the city from the reservations. The same government that put them there now wanted them off. In some cases, the government wanted the land. It also wanted to disband the tribes. The polite term was assimilation. Another term? Eradication. A Chicago TV broadcast from the period made it all sound rosy. TV BROADCASTER: The Department of the Interior launched a relocation program. It encourages Indian families to leave the poverty of reservations and to come to cities where work is to be had… The TV cameras went inside the new American Indian Center, which Ben had helped create. TV BROADCASTER: To these migrants the center is a club, a recreation area, a school, and a place to secure help with problems…. The show features Ben, dancing in a feather headdress. There are children making crafts and playing checkers. TV: There are books for the asking. Television. The teepee was never like this. [PAUSE/MUSIC] And there was opportunity in the city. To earn money. Get educated. But jobs weren’t that easy to find. Food was pricey. So were the rundown apartments where many Indians lived. Their problems went beyond money. So many of the newcomers felt lost. BEN: What we try to do here at the center is to get people actively involved, committed to anything that implies a future. We help them to take that one step upward. [MUSIC TO INDICATE SLIGHT SHIFT] It’s worth noting that during this period — the 1950s and ‘60s — American culture thrived on Indian stereotypes. Kids played cowboys and Indians. [KID SOUNDS HERE] TV was full of Westerns — Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel — starring cowboy heroes. [TV SHOW SOUNDS] On TV, the Indians weren’t always the bad guys, but they were always the other. And they were almost always depicted as people from the past. It was rare in pop culture to see an Indian like Ben Bearskin. Modern. Multi-faceted. At a pow-wow at the American Indian Center — adorned in silver and beads and feathers — Ben did resemble the Indians from myths and movies. But he wasn’t impersonating Indians from the past. His clothes, those songs — they were part of who he and his tribe still were. When he put on his Boy Scout leader’s uniform, he looked like any other all-American troop leader — though he could see a certain irony in that. BEN: Basically this scouting program comes from Indian lore—camping and cooking out and scout craft, skills and such things. And when he put on a gray suit and a tie — like that time he helped organize a conference on Native Americans at the University of Chicago — he could have passed for a professor. Ben seemed bemused by how fully he’d adapted to city life. BEN: Some years back, we went home to Nebraska, to my wife’s parents’ place. And for 3 or 4 nights in a row, I’d wake up in the middle of the night feeling that there was something drastically wrong. And it puzzled me until I began to realize—it was quiet. That was what was wrong. Ben wanted his children to experience his two worlds, so he took them to reservations for summer vacations. He wanted them to learn the native songs and dances and stories — just as he wanted them to read books and the Chicago newspapers. BEN: My feeling is that the only true investment that I can make, in my responsibilities to my family, is to encourage and help my children to get as much education as they possibly can, because that’s the only thing that no one can take away from them. Ben never made it past eighth grade. All five of his kids enrolled in college. And then one by one, over a period of years, all of them made the same choice. To go live on the Winnebago reservation. So we’re going there too. We’ll be right back. [BREAK] I’m Mary Schmich and you’re listening to Division Street Revisited. A show exploring the lives of 7 people featured in Studs Terkel’s 1967 book Division Street: America. One spring day, when the hills are lush and green, my colleague Melissa and I drive north from Omaha to the place Ben Bearskin was born. MARY AND MELISSA: Oh, here we go, entering Winnebago Indian Reservation. We park outside a small white house. Then walk up a ramp to the wooden porch – where we’re greeted by three generations of Bearskin women. MARY: We brought you a couple copies of the book. RONA: Oh nice. Oh thank you. NORMA: I remember this: Studs Terkel. This home belongs to Norma Bearskin, Ben’s oldest child. She moved to the reservation in 1979, shortly after her sister Mona came. They were among the most educated people on the reservation. They became tribal leaders. Norma’s in her 80s now and she’s had several strokes. So today she sits quietly on the sofa as we talk with her daughter, Rona Bearskin Stealer. MARY: Just tell us where we are. Situate us in space. RONA: Okay. We're in Northeast Nebraska on the Winnebago Indian Reservation. The Winnebago Tribe has been here since 1868. We are part of the Ho-Chunk Tribe. We're called the Ho-Chungira. “The People of the Big Voice.” Women have a lot more authority on the reservation than they once did, and Rona’s one example. She’s in her mid-50s and she’s the tribe’s elected treasurer, meaning she manages the money. Today she’s wearing a red t-shirt that says “Live Generously." Rona was in third grade when she moved here. She vividly remembers Chicago, and her Choka Ben. Choka is the Ho-Chunk word for grandfather. RONA: He always used to tell us, get an education, read, learn every day. Because you'll need to learn how to live in two worlds… Two worlds. I heard that phrase over and over as I talked to people about Ben. It sums up an essential tension in the lives of many Native Americans. [PAUSE/MUSIC] When Rona’s family arrived, the reservation was really poor. There was a grocery store. A gas station. A bar. All, Rona says, owned by white people. People often couldn’t afford to pay their utility bills, so the lights and telephones would get cut off. Today? Signs of progress are everywhere. RONA: So when we first moved in here, there was no trees at all, just plain lots…and then everybody started planting trees. Rona’s taking us on a driving tour. RONA: So here's our school…it's really grown. MARY: Wow. RONA: I’d say it's five times bigger than when I was growing up… We drive on, toward the Ho-Chunk village. It’s a small, tidy collection of modern houses and apartments surrounded by sweeping fields. There’s a nice playground. Sidewalks and street lights. A cafe that serves a good cappuccino. These days, Native American tribes have way more power to govern their reservations than they did when Ben was a kid. The Winnebago Tribe is particularly well-known for its robust economic development. Which isn’t to say there aren’t problems. Poverty is down, but a lot of people still struggle. The rates of diabetes and obesity are high. Even so, there’s a sense here of movement, improvement. MARY: If your grandfather were here today to see what's happening to the tribe and on the reservation, what do you think he'd think? It’s after lunch, and we’re back in the living room. Rona leans back into the gray couch pillows. Her voice grows soft. RONA: I think he'd be proud of where we're going and where we're heading. Self-sufficiency, our resiliency, and preserving all that we are. When Rona was growing up, she didn’t learn the Ho-Chunk language. Her grandmother worried what would happen to her and her siblings if they spoke it in Chicago. Today, kids on the reservation learn Ho-Chunk in school. Rona’s taken lessons too–though it’s not always easy. RONA: Let me see if I can do this…(speaks Ho-Chunk)….Greetings all, my name is Rona Stealer and my Ho-Chunk name is Good Star Woman. [LAUGHTER] One of the people laughing with Rona is her daughter. Angelica Solomon. Angelica made the two-hour drive from Lincoln, Nebraska today. She lives there with her husband and kids and works as a civil engineer, designing bridges.
 The reservation is home for Angelica. She spent a lot of time away when she was in school, but often came back. Having lived off and on the reservation, she knows the pressures of communicating in both worlds. One example? ANGELICA: We don't make eye contact while we're talking. Sure, we will sometimes, but when I’m not home, I have to make eye contact with people, because it's a sign of respect, that I'm listening, that I'm understanding, and that I'm paying attention to you, but in our culture, that's not a thing, so I had to practice that quite a bit. I ask Rona and Angelica a question Studs Terkel loved to ask: What are you afraid of? ANGELICA: Government control. RONA: [LAUGH] Government control. Yeah. Losing our sovereignty as a tribe. Losing control of ourself and our identity, which we fight for every day. Rona looks at Angelica. RONA: How about you? ANGELICA: Losing rights to vote and having an opinion. Turning back time. So their fear is not just of losing autonomy, land, culture, a voice The fear is of losing it all again. [PAUSE/MUSIC] I ask Rona and Angelica one more question Studs Terkel liked to ask. MARY: If you were God, what would you change about the world? ANGELICA: I would change money. Money never existed. Go back to trading, trading for resources. I feel like money made people greedy. As Rona thinks about the question — about God — she closes her eyes. Talks almost as if she’s praying. RONA: I can't even think like that. We're just part of the circle of life. It's just how you react to it, what happens. And remain positive in what comes. There's always a lesson to learn from everything that happens. And the very word - God - it’s not in her spiritual vocabulary. RONA: We don’t say God. It’s the creator, Mauna, gave us life. Mother Earth gave us life. And we go back to Earth. [PAUSE/MUSIC] When it was Ben Bearskin’s time to go back to earth, he did it on the land where he was born. He stayed in Chicago long after his children left the city, to be near a grandson who’d been born with a disability and lived in a care facility. When his grandson died, Ben returned to the reservation. His wife Fredeline was already there. He lived in one of the new housing units for the elderly. Was active in the Native American church. Taught the Winnebago language to young people. He liked to hand out sugar-free gum to the kids. And he still sang and drummed for pow-wows, passing down artistic and spiritual traditions to younger Bearskins who to this day keep them alive in the tribe. [PAUSE] Both Fredeline and Ben were sick during their final years. He told his children he couldn’t die before Freddie did, though, because he’d promised he would always take care of her. In June of the year 2000, Fredeline Bearskin died. Two months later, Ben Bearskin — husband, father, singer, leader, explorer — also died, in his home, on his homeland. And now we come back to Ben Bearskin’s other world. To big, noisy Chicago. The reality is that most Native Americans now live in urban areas . Keeping the collective memory alive is still hard. And yet, in this city, Ben’s work to preserve his culture carries on… [POW-WOW MUSIC RISES SOMEWHERE IN HERE] On a summer night not long ago, I went to a pow-wow. It was put on by the American Indian Center — that place Ben helped to found 75 years ago. The pow-wow is being held on a big, green lawn on the edge of the blue waters of Lake Michigan. The Native people who gather on this warm evening range from little kids to a few elders who remember Ben. Some wear beads and feathers and exquisitely hand-sewn dresses. Some wear shorts and jeans. As the sun settles toward the horizon — out past the cars buzzing along Lake Shore Drive — bicyclists, joggers and walkers stop to listen to the singing and the drums. Or to join in a dance. To join with the spirits of the people who lived here first. [POW-WOW MUSIC/SOUND] Division Street Revisited is the brainchild of Executive Producer Melissa Harris. Bill Healy produced this podcast. Cate Cahan and Mark Jacob were our editors. Sound Design and Mixing by Libby Lussenhop. Our Associate Producer is Chijioke Williams. The show features original music by Chris Walz. Additional music from Sophie Tucker and Epidemic Sound. Special thanks to Dorene Wiese, for her time and wisdom. Thanks also to Colette Yellow Robe, Jaxon Bearskin and Jessica Stealer, as well as to The Field Museum, the Newberry Library, and the University of Chicago Library and Special Collections. Major funding for this podcast comes from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional funders include M. Harris & Co., the Field Foundation of Illinois, the Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, the Susan H. Schwartz Charitable Trust, Debra Schwartz, and Julia Stasch. Archival audio comes from the Studs Terkel Radio Archive at WFMT, and the Chicago History Museum. It was digitized by the Library of Congress. Special thanks to WBEZ Chicago. Division Street Revisited is distributed by PRX. Our theme song is “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”. I’m Mary Schmich.