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Show Utah ' s Indians 4 4 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 TRAVIS PARASHONTS INTERVIE W, WE SHALL REMAIN : THE PAI UTE Parashonts: People look at me and they think that well, you know you're doing good, you know you've got a job and everything seems like it's going . . . but it's not true. Even I have imbalance in my life-in my spirit and my soul, and I think that's what that is say-ing that today there may be an imbalance in some people's lives. . . . You can have balance in the modern world, the white world, and you can have balance in the Indian world, and when I went to college I had this thing called marginalism for my people. We live in a world of marginalism-we walk the fence, and sometimes this fence is made up of all kinds of obstacles-the Mormon Church, religion, culture, tradition, white world, Indian world, white education, Indian education, you know it's . . . and the Indian person has to walk that. Where do they fall in at, you know? A lot of them get confused. Where am I in life? Who am I, you know? Because we live in a white world yet we want to be Indian. We want to be Indian, but we want all of the things that the white people have, so how do you find the balance? . . . Termination threw us way out of balance. Our tribe is way out of balance. When we got federally recognized in April 3, 1980, the pride just came back-to be able to own land again, you know, just the level of pride just shot up, and when we first started this powwow over here, we had very few people who were danc-ers, and now we have lots of people who are dancers, and you know you talked about Shanan earlier. She was just a little girl when termination happened, when restoration happened, and you know now she has been taught a lot of those things, and she brings that pride into that circle, into the powwow arena, as well as all of the other Paiutes who come and dance and sing, and to me that's very gratifying for me to see, you know, to see that happen because back in 1979 in the '70s, you never saw any of that, you know. It was all lost. It was all gone. . . . Travis Parashonts, interview, June 14, 2008, We Shall Remain, KUED Public Television, http://www.kued.org/productions/weshallremain/pdfs/TravisParashonts.pdf. |
