Native Bound Unbound

From the time he could listen, Estevan Rael-Gálvez was eager to absorb the stories passed along by family members.

"Stories were being shared with me by others around me, including my paternal great-grandmother, who we would go visit every year in Pueblo, Colo.," Rael-Gálvez recalled. "And she would tell the same story every time we visited, and that story was about a Pawnee woman who was my great-grandmother's ancestor."

Later, he found himself and a family member huddled around a car that had a cassette player, listening to a tape of his great-grandmother retelling the story. She told it slightly differently, this time.

She revealed the Pawnee woman was captured and enslaved.

This story is one of thousands now part of a first-of-its-kind project — founded and fr

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