That idea sounds straightforward until one considers how much had intervened between his grandparents’ generation and the young people listening to him in the late twentieth century.

Language use had declined under assimilation pressure.

Reservation economies had changed.

Television and national popular culture had transformed childhood.

Many Native families had experienced relocation to cities, boarding schools, military service, and outside employment.

Young Crow people could not simply reproduce the life of their great-grandparents.

Medicine Crow did not ask them to.

His own biography made such a demand impossible.

He had traveled, studied, served, worked for federal institutions, and operated comfortably in national public life.

The lesson he offered was not “return to the past.”