Miss Kittye

Everyone calls Kittye Ellis "Miss Kittye." She's a short, wiry, and doesn't mince words. She's affectionate, stern, and sometimes she seems like she's ready to explode. She won't change her New Orleans ways for Omaha, and her overflowing hospitality seems almost abrupt in the middle of the Great Plains.

In August 2006, one of the evacuees' case workers told me, "If you want to know the story of these evacuees, you have to talk to Miss Kittye." I only met her on this trip, and I still haven't sat down with her to get her whole story. But you can get a real good sense of it out of this mp3, recorded at Native Omaha Days.