Midwestern values mean a lot to us Midwesterners of course, but it's hard to get a conversation going about what anyone values until we're about to lose it. There is the inevitable conflict for lack of communication and soon things escalate into language about how someone "just doesn't get it", or "what we value here" and "that 's not the way we do things!"

There's usually a measure of pain involved in talking about what we really value. It's not that any of us can leave that way of understanding behind. Wherever we go it plagues us like a long drought, keeping us from standing too close to really good-looking people or laughing too loudly, or staying too long at a really good party. It has to do with early to bed and early to rise, getting enough fiber and washing our hands before every meal.

There's something so wholesome ingrained in us that after a certain number of years of faux rebellion, we begin to wipe our shoes, hold doors for people, and shovel the nighbors' drive. Or if we don't, we get gloomy and wonder why. It doesn't take long to realize it's because the dominant culture doesn't seem to care about what we care about.

My Great Aunt Almeda prided herself on making her bed in the morning even though she'd been retired forty years from being a "Missionary" on the Ft. Berthold Reservation. As a child, I had been curious about what she had done for a living. I knew it had been a tough life for her and her sister. I thought how regrettable that scenario must have become for her later in life.

In spite of a child's lack of understanding, I remember the stories told by that generation and the lives they lived, grounded in real times, places, people and deeds, so that when I married and was whisked away to Europe, I knew that I wanted to be a kind person, to tolerate differences, to 'do unto others', to have a clean place to welcome guests and be faithful to promises and friends.

Midwestern values involvea serious regard for small things as well as for momentous issues. It is how we live our lives, day to day and whether we can get along with each other in the details that matters. And even when we can't get along, we have an intuitive awareness that something is wrong if it's not fair and balanced.

But there is something tight-lipped about Midwesterners that keeps us from easily talking about our values. We don't broadcast them to just anyone. I don't mean the big obvious ones like war and peace, but those little values that are so important to us that we squirrel them away in closets, shelves and back rooms, old envelopes and pockets and drawers. We hoard our big ideas, pictures we love, old letters full of words we will never forget, but don't want to lose. We don't trust that dominant culture to value us.


A value I grew up with in West Central Minnesota was trust. I trusted everyone in town, from the editor of the paper to the woman behind the counter at the creamery. I was comfortable at five or six years old running up those steps, barefoot, and asking for two pounds of butter to put on our farmers co-op account. I trusted the person who stood behind that counter or at that desk. That value brings us back together. The trust that extends fairness in relationships with everyone, big and small.

Not long ago, I made my way out to visit what was left of Ft. Berthold and discovered that my great aunts had been beloved teachers. They simply valued individuals and expected to be valued for themselves. That's how I was raised and I'm willing to bet most of you were raised that way too.