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Show Utah ' s Indians 40 W E S H A L L R E M A I N : U TA H I N D I A N C U R R I C U L U M G U I D E ELLA CANTRELL AND CANDACE BEAR INTERVIE WS, WE SHALL REMAIN : THE GOSHUTE Cantrell: I'm 85 years old. I take great pleasure in telling about my life as it has been. Well all I can say is that the Goshutes have come a long way from the time that they were I'd say interned on that reservation like they were some kind of prisoners. The way my elders told me, the reason why we were there on the reservation was that the white men put us there within that barbed wire fence, and if we ever found out that we were outside that line, that we'd get taken off to jail. And, we came to fear the white people, for that reason, because I'd say every time we see a white person we'd think that they're coming, coming to take us off the reservation and put us somewhere else, or make us a slave of some sort. I was 16 years old. I realized that I needed to learn this new language. We were told at school not to speak our language, and if we did we, we'd get extra duties; we'd have to clean toilet bowls and washbasins and mop floors and scrub floors, and this and that. So that's how it, our life has been and it, it hasn't been easy. Ella Cantrell and Candance Bear, interviews, We Shall Remain: The Goshute, transcript of the documentary, We Shall Remain, KUED Public Television, http://www.kued.org/productions/weshallremain/pdfs/GoshuteScript.pdf. Bear: Growing up in Skull Valley really has been a joy; I feel my life is truly blessed. I would never say that I've had a bad life. I'm very happy [laughs]. As a teenager and Native American I suppose the biggest struggle is just that constant deci-sion "Do I modernize or do I stay?" Well the real question is do we go forward or back. That thinking, that we have to fit the stereotype, we really don't. I think that as far as Goshutes go, Skull Valley band of Goshutes, for us the biggest thing is to survive. Tradition of course, even if we didn't practice it in government or economy we would still practice it at home. That's our way of preserving it, keeping it close to the family. |