MANKATO — The storytelling was done in soft voices, sometimes hesitantly, and not just because of problems with the sound system at the Blue Earth County Historical Society Saturday morning.

“Am I doing OK?” asked Joe Whitehawk, speaking to an almost exclusively white audience at the first of 12 monthly events aimed at helping southern Minnesota learn about Dakota culture.

Whitehawk, a Dakota who lives in Granite Falls, and Dave Larsen, a Dakota from Morton, were last-minute fill-ins when scheduled storyteller Carrie Schommer — an elderly Dakota woman from Granite Falls — had to cancel due to illness.

Larsen said he, like many American Indians, struggled much of his life to speak publicly about his culture because so much of the heritage and spirituality of his people had been systematically suppressed by government policy and laws.

“We were really lost beings,” Larsen said of American Indians after they were put on reservations and educated in boarding schools where traditional prayer, ceremonies, language and dance was prohibited.

The monthly seminars, being conducted in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of the Dakota Conflict, are aimed at educating and building relationships in the wake of “pain that has rippled through generations,” said Sara Brave Heart of Mankato, one of the organizers.

Larsen, in an invocation to the “holy grandfathers,” asked that the painful past be used as an opportunity to learn and that the idea of revenge “is something that should be taken from all of our hearts and minds.”

The Dakota Conflict of 1862 resulted in the deaths of hundreds of white settlers and Dakota, ending with the execution of 38 Dakota in a mass hanging in Mankato. But the war against American Indian culture was still being waged as late as 1978 when a federal law finally ended official prohibitions against native religious practices.

Larsen, a Navy veteran who served during the Vietnam War, described himself as a violent alcoholic in the post-war years. He said his vague understanding of what it meant to be a warrior centered on fighting, something he used alcohol to fuel.

He credited uncles and other elders for helping him find pride in his heritage and awakening his spirituality. Larsen told stories of learning what it truly meant to be a Dakota warrior, including a four-day vision quest led by an uncle.

Larsen also recalled an elder’s response to his excuse that he couldn’t participate in prayers because he wasn’t fluent in the Dakota language.

“He said, ‘Who do you think you are, that you can speak a language the creator doesn’t understand?’”

Larsen and Whitehawk told traditional stories about the creation of the sun and the earth, of the origin of their ceremonies as gifts from White Buffalo Calf Woman, of the symbolism of water, fire, wood and rock.

But they tossed in humor — some of it self-deprecating — as well.

Larsen, before pulling out some books and sage and sweet grass, noted the brown paper grocery bag the items were carried in.

“We used to call this Indian Samsonite,” he said.

Whitehawk, talking about the sanctity of marriage in Dakota culture, said too many people — particularly in Hollywood — treat a spouse like a stick of chewing gum.

“They chew it until all the sweetness is gone, throw it away and get another one,” he said.

Grabbing a drum, Whitehawk ended his talk and the program with a question: “You want to hear a song?”

After people in the audience said they did, Whitehawk smiled: “I think I know ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb.’”

He actually went with one about a different pale mammal, “The White Buffalo Song.”

Next month’s event — at 10 a.m. Feb. 4, at the Historical Society, 415 Cherry St. — is on Dakota Language: Spoken and Sign. More information about the entire educational series is available on-line at www.bechshistory.com or by calling 345-5566.