"Now, we have Elders in our community and when we talk about Elders it might be a little bit different from what white people talk about Elders but when we talk about Elders we have to consider our way of life and our ceremonies and how we validate critical information or people for that fact. So, we might say in the old days it's OK to hear information about ceremonies and bundles and how the community runs. All that is what you might call 'Evidence Information'. Now why make a parallel today would be like somebody that is going to school. Before he goes to school he doesn't know about the school but he can tell generally from hearing the community what school is all about and maybe he would want to go to school and that's how becoming an Elder starts that way. You hear about ceremonies and things practices happening in our community and you want to become part of them.

The next step would be approaching those organizations in the community, those traditional organizations and asking for a membership. Once you're giving a membership to that organization then you practice, it's like someone applying to school and all of a sudden they get accepted and then they are learning. They learn and the listen to Instructer. In our culture we're accepted into a society and the society you'll learn within in that society well others come and talk to the society and then after a certain amount of time, you leave that society and when you leave that society the way you leave it is you take that membership you got for that society and you pass it to somebody new, OK. Once you pass it to somebody new then you're a former society member or organization member and once you become a former member to that society then you're considered an Elder to that group of people, OK. It's like a student can be accepted to go to school and the desk that he's given to sit in is a place that he looks after because that's where he learns from, but once he graduates that desk somebody else takes and whoever takes that desk then the one that graduated becomes an Elder to that student and by all means the one that graduated can be probably the instructor. The instructor can be innovative and teach but while you're a student you have to learn and follow the instructor. So in our culture if you join a society you have to follow the society rules and learn but once you've graduated then you give another member your seat and then you become an Elder therefore you can become innovative and you can instruct that society because you're a grand parent to that society. So in a cultural system, to become an Elder is finding out evidence based information and then becoming a member of an organization and then once you give that membership to somebody then you become, you're validated as an Elder within our culture. So that's the process we go through to becoming an Elder."