Words from Boye Ladd about always trying

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In faith, your God and my God are the same. There is no difference. No matter what race there is throughout the world, we all believe in the same God. There is just the names and the language that varies from one region to another.

Sometimes you are charged with responsibilities... I'm honored, as a warrior, as a powwow man, as a traditionalist, to travel, to be given tobacco. It's an honor. Not too many people truly understand, you know, to receive that and to be honored. Even to speak like this is a high honor. And I hope that there are people out there that will have listened. Will go on and say, I learned something.

Now when I have my children, I hope they will carry what I'm going to teach... Most importantly try. Everything in life is to try... I always tell my students 'You can. You're an Indian. Work harder. Train harder. You will achieve it. You can make that.'

Some people accomplish something. They climb one mountain, and they sit there and rest on their laurels for the rest of their life. 'Yeah, I did that. I won that gold medal. I did this way back. Write the same speech for 50 years.' I say, 'That guy is wasting his talents when he can be achieving, climbing other mountains. Because the lessons you learn in climbing that first mountain, that first mountain is the hardest one of all. Once you've climbed that first mountain, it makes it a little easier to climb the second one, the third one. Pretty soon you are able to jump from one mountain top to the other. And you can sit back and look at your accomplishments, and think 'Wow, what happened. Did I do that?' And you pinch yourself. 'Did I really do that?'... That's what life is, climbing mountains and giving that to your children.

For some champions, in powwow especially, they feel bad. They win for awhile, then all at once they go down. They start losing. Well, pick up the pieces. Start again. Train a little harder. Instead of running five miles, 'well, this week I'm going to run 20 miles.' There are some dancers out there that run 50 miles a week to be a champion. Yes, people do train, practice to become a champion. You have to. It isn't something that is just given to you. No, you have to train.

As physical as it is, you've got to train. You've got to work at it. Just like life, everything else you see, you've got to train for it. It's a very physical sport, profession, or way of life... I have to say in our Indian way, it's a way of life, something you believe in seven days a week, 24 hours a day, even in your dreams.

Some people will go to church and put in that money in the plate, collection, put in $50, $100, and the next day go back to sinning again and say 'Well, I've paid my dues...' In Indian way, we don't do that. Indian way teaches the love of God. We don't teach the fear of God. In our true traditional teachings there is no so-called devil. I've read the Bible a few times, and even the devil was a fallen angel. It came from the same source...We have tricksters in our legends, in our stories and our ceremonies. But we always teach the love of God.

We have a beautiful story among our people... that when a warrior has lived a good life, always giving and sharing, always honors the enemy, the people that are with him, every once and a while he takes one of these guys, [Boye puts his hand behind his head indicating the enemies he has touched and are with him] and he gives it to somebody who wants a feather, or somebody who wants a whistle, somebody who wants a right, he gives one of them away. They always warn us you keep the best story for yourself. Don't tell that story in public. Don't give it away. That's your story. You keep that enemy with you all the time. You can give these other ones.

That's what I warn these people that give rights away, be very, very careful. When you give a right away, you are giving a human life. These so-called medicine men, these Elders, be very careful in what you are giving when youcome to the area of powwow and tradition. Because if you don't have that power, you don't have those rights, those spirits, it's going to come back on you... When a warrior has faced the enemy, taken these, it gives him blessings. And so, in the hereafter... there is a place where someone will wait for you. And among our stories of the warrior people, there is a grandmother that waits for you. She guides you...There are two roads that go out of there. One goes to where all your ancestors are, the people before you. One road goes to a gray area, nebulous, nowhere. Those are the ones who have so-called sinned [against] the laws of man. Done something wrong. Disrespectful. Depending how grave it is, they are going to go this road.

But there is a word we found among our people called forgiveness. It is up to the people of the future generations to pay the price tag of the one person that is in the gray area. Maybe his children, grandchildren are going to pay the price tag, 'cause there is a bridge that goes from there, over to the place of the ancestors. That bridge, one word called forgiveness... Sometime it may take a lot of giving. It may take generations of giving to give that person a chance to go back.