"That's the first thing we ever knew, our Indian language," says Leland, 77, a retired heavy-equipment operator and auto-body worker who lives north of Brigham City.

Two of the last language speakers among the Northwestern Shoshone, the siblings spent a year teaching it at the University of Utah. They also are among the few in the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation who are full-blooded Shoshone.

But like other tribal members, they have lived fully as a part of the white man's world.

Leland saw combat in Korea and was hit by shrapnel.

Helen, 79, was married in the LDS Temple, raised five children and, after her husband died, traveled from her Brigham City home to Ogden to volunteer in the temple there.

The memory of the Bear River massacre was ever-present during their childhood in Washakie, where the Northwestern Shoshone lived and worked on an LDS Church farm.

Tribal elders would warn the children about white men, Helen says. " 'Run and hide! The white man is coming and he's going to get you!' "

The Northwestern Shoshone left Washakie for defense jobs in the 1940s and 1950s, but would often return to their former homes, where they stored personal papers, animal hides and other possessions.

In the 1960s, the church torched the homes to prepare the farm for sale.

Leland says he was in the Washakie Cemetery that day, cleaning graves. He saw the smoke. "To me, it was just like a bad dream."

Two decades later, the church helped the band secure 184 acres at Washakie so they would have the trust land necessary for federal recognition as a tribe.

- Kristen Moulton