Everett Kapayou: Transcript

Meskwaki tribal elder
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I have two names; my English name is Everett Kapayou; that is for the government. And for my people, my name was given to me when I was born. You pronounce it “OgataPEYya.”
There are ceremonies for everything that the Indian does. The Indian, when he is born or she is born, they have a ceremony for giving the little baby a name. And like during the summer when you plant and when some grows, then you have a ceremony before you partake of what you grew; you don’t partake of it before.

The songs I sing are called mood songs, m-o-o-d-s. If you’re sitting here, and you see a person that is feeling bad, you can sing him a song to kind of make him feel better. The mood songs are whatever mood a person you see is feeling like. As a matter of fact, about three nights ago, I was sitting outside by myself just singing these songs, you know, and my wife was inside watching TV; I was singing to the woods and the birds and whatever.

I am from Tama, Iowa. Originally, the tribe came from the East Coast. But, with the pilgrims coming in, we were moved gradually up this way. And then we ended up in Iowa. That was around 1857. The landowners of the land was the Meskwakies because they bought it with their own money.

The other Indians across the country, they are living on government land called reservations. I always say the reservations are like zoos, z-o-o, zoos where you keep monkeys and gorillas and all that. The government owns that land and to me they can chase the Indians out whenever they please. Whereas on our land, we call it the settlement, and we don’t want anybody saying it’s a reservation. But now the government, with its system, is turning the land into a reservation.
See, back home I’m kind of like a jokester: I’m humorous. But when I turn serious, I’m considered a radical. The original system was the hereditary chief with his people together everybody had a say-so with their clans; now it’s split up. That’s a problem with my people.

Each song has a word that has some meaning to it. Some are sad and some are fun and some are consoling. You can regulate your voice if you want to kind of make it shaky, that you’re almost crying kind-of-like sound that will make a person feel sad. I will change my voice a little bit and sing this song; it’s kind of like a sad person singing this song.

SINGING

The man singing this song is saying he is a real, lonely person; he is a real, lonely person. He says even the crickets make him feel worse.

(In 1993 Everett Kapayou was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.)