Changing of Names

Edwin Benson
Mandan-Hidatsa

I guess we had enough knowledge and education in our minds, to slightly be ashamed, you might say. Of our Indian names, of what we were called, so we'll change it to, you know, similar to white man's names. So some of them were changed from Bad Gun to Matthews, Bull's Neck was changed to Martin. This made a big change among Indian people, and I went over quite fast because before the Garrison Dam a lot of the young people were forced to learn how to speak English language. So we lost that, and then we also lost our names and the culture and the language along with it.