As I may or may not have mentioned here or there from time to time, I'm brown. I don't know that I ever really specified how or why. It doesn't come up a lot, actually, and even less when I live in a state that is something like 90% brown.
However, I was more in touch with this when I was a kid, both growing up in Texas, especially in Nebraska where no one is brown (though I hear that's changed since IBP moved in - the other day I saw Nebraska listed as 23rd in the nation for Spanish speaking states. The fact that it wasn't in the bottom 5 and was in the top half kind of stunned me, because that doesn't reflect the Nebraska I knew at all.) and my mother supported my brownness. She even made a big deal out of me, insisting that it was what made me, in her words, so stunningly beautiful as a kid. I was self-conscious and not at all pleased with being called beautiful. I have spent my life wishing I'd seen myself that way because it would have saved a lot of time and learning process when I hit my teens. In the meantime, since we were separated from the part of my family that dominated my looks genetically, my mother spent a lot of time educating me on how I came to be so and of the history of my brown fore-bearers. Eventually, the buzz-word "native" took place. I found that word highly offensive when I was in my teens - when it hit - because I felt that people who had been here 16 generations had a right to call themselves native. Period. I mean, frankly, that and the combined ideas I held in my head of the word native (hand in hand with savage) bothered me. I'd read too much about the subjugation of the natives to find the word appealing. Savage, native, barbarian. Etc..
In the end it all put me off.
So, being the typical American, I had "an interesting confluence of genes" as my Grandma Cele pointed out. She marveled that she could have come from Prussia to some how kismetly run smack into a family line that led us here.
When I was a kid I took a lot of flack for being a Jewish-Indian. I think that just mentally fizzled the circuits in other kids' brains. When I had one person shout it at me, insisting it was both impossible and sick, and wrong, and just not okay with nature I asked them how Christian-Indians made any more sense. At all. I mean one way or the other the religion was adopted at some point, so why did it matter which religion or when?
In reality, I've been told by many a historian that the Cherokee would do anything to keep warm in the winter, even adopting an entire Dutch colony. Which explains that weird blonde recessive gene and the fact that when I was growing up my maiden name started with Von.
This weird link, is an example of weird links you will pull up if you google Jewish and Cherokee.
I have a friend who likes to tell the story about me that when we were little and other friends would ask why I was dark I'd say because I'm a half-breed. Which half - they'd inevitably ask. To which I'd answer "my top half" and show them my tan lines.
Then, life takes another turn, and I was in a time and place in my life when I just didn't have time to focus on heritage. It came time to pick and choose and religion won really. I moved to England, married British and being native American means literally nothing over there. You're just another offense to the xenophobic senses. I mean at the end of the day, there is equality in bigotry. I didn't have a community to blend with and neither did my children. To the end that when I moved back here, it had literally slipped my mind.
I unpacked boxes from my storage unit to discover all my books on my heritage - and the heritage now of my children. I wasn't sure what to do next, other than leave the books lying around the house. Plus, the area we're in isn't big on my type of native, they're all Pueblos here, very very out of touch with my folks.
So, when the kids went to public school and they (the school) approached me directly about being dark, explaining that if I fessed up and gave them a CIB that they - the school - would get all kinds of lovely funding. I contemplated what to do next. The fact was, by that juncture I felt like a fraud. I was so out of touch with the "native" realities. Still, I had a hard time saying no to the pleas for funding. Then, when I did fill out the forms, all these lovely benefits started flooding towards my children. Again, I felt like a fraud and now a thief, taking these lovely things. We get first choice of tutoring options (which I never took because Leif had already been offered a reading tutor and he didn't need anything else). We got offered free dental (which I didn't take because we had insurance) and so on. It trickled down to the end that my youngest son gets pulled out of his class every so often, for mild tutoring, to make sure he's on track. All the youngest ones from the tribes do, it isn't just us. He loves his class and he's actually learned to read in that class.
Then, we got offered another class, on Mondays, for the kids. This class teaches the basics of being native. The class is in a stark juxtaposition from the reality of our current education system. The kids welcome the spirits, and their ancestors. They feed the spirits to appease them, they burn sage and smudge themselves (which sometimes I honestly feel like I need to get by). They introduce themselves by their given Tribal names and their clans if they have them. I have Raindrop and Firewalker. You could guess which is which by their personalities. I didn't name them, they got them at the beginning of the class.
All that is a build-up to say that the kids - as one of the components to their extra class - were taken to The Gathering of Nations. The Gathering of Nations boasts itself as America's biggest powwow. I wanted to take the kids last year but I was both intimidated by the size and we realized we just couldn't afford the tickets for all 6 of us. I couldn't deal with leaving anyone behind, so we just didn't go. When I was asked if I wanted to chaperon this field trip it became very happy and exciting for all of us. Then, Brian said he'd take the day off, because he figured the more adults on the ground in a massive crowd setting the better.
Part 2.
However, I was more in touch with this when I was a kid, both growing up in Texas, especially in Nebraska where no one is brown (though I hear that's changed since IBP moved in - the other day I saw Nebraska listed as 23rd in the nation for Spanish speaking states. The fact that it wasn't in the bottom 5 and was in the top half kind of stunned me, because that doesn't reflect the Nebraska I knew at all.) and my mother supported my brownness. She even made a big deal out of me, insisting that it was what made me, in her words, so stunningly beautiful as a kid. I was self-conscious and not at all pleased with being called beautiful. I have spent my life wishing I'd seen myself that way because it would have saved a lot of time and learning process when I hit my teens. In the meantime, since we were separated from the part of my family that dominated my looks genetically, my mother spent a lot of time educating me on how I came to be so and of the history of my brown fore-bearers. Eventually, the buzz-word "native" took place. I found that word highly offensive when I was in my teens - when it hit - because I felt that people who had been here 16 generations had a right to call themselves native. Period. I mean, frankly, that and the combined ideas I held in my head of the word native (hand in hand with savage) bothered me. I'd read too much about the subjugation of the natives to find the word appealing. Savage, native, barbarian. Etc..
In the end it all put me off.
So, being the typical American, I had "an interesting confluence of genes" as my Grandma Cele pointed out. She marveled that she could have come from Prussia to some how kismetly run smack into a family line that led us here.
When I was a kid I took a lot of flack for being a Jewish-Indian. I think that just mentally fizzled the circuits in other kids' brains. When I had one person shout it at me, insisting it was both impossible and sick, and wrong, and just not okay with nature I asked them how Christian-Indians made any more sense. At all. I mean one way or the other the religion was adopted at some point, so why did it matter which religion or when?
In reality, I've been told by many a historian that the Cherokee would do anything to keep warm in the winter, even adopting an entire Dutch colony. Which explains that weird blonde recessive gene and the fact that when I was growing up my maiden name started with Von.
This weird link, is an example of weird links you will pull up if you google Jewish and Cherokee.
I have a friend who likes to tell the story about me that when we were little and other friends would ask why I was dark I'd say because I'm a half-breed. Which half - they'd inevitably ask. To which I'd answer "my top half" and show them my tan lines.
Then, life takes another turn, and I was in a time and place in my life when I just didn't have time to focus on heritage. It came time to pick and choose and religion won really. I moved to England, married British and being native American means literally nothing over there. You're just another offense to the xenophobic senses. I mean at the end of the day, there is equality in bigotry. I didn't have a community to blend with and neither did my children. To the end that when I moved back here, it had literally slipped my mind.
I unpacked boxes from my storage unit to discover all my books on my heritage - and the heritage now of my children. I wasn't sure what to do next, other than leave the books lying around the house. Plus, the area we're in isn't big on my type of native, they're all Pueblos here, very very out of touch with my folks.
So, when the kids went to public school and they (the school) approached me directly about being dark, explaining that if I fessed up and gave them a CIB that they - the school - would get all kinds of lovely funding. I contemplated what to do next. The fact was, by that juncture I felt like a fraud. I was so out of touch with the "native" realities. Still, I had a hard time saying no to the pleas for funding. Then, when I did fill out the forms, all these lovely benefits started flooding towards my children. Again, I felt like a fraud and now a thief, taking these lovely things. We get first choice of tutoring options (which I never took because Leif had already been offered a reading tutor and he didn't need anything else). We got offered free dental (which I didn't take because we had insurance) and so on. It trickled down to the end that my youngest son gets pulled out of his class every so often, for mild tutoring, to make sure he's on track. All the youngest ones from the tribes do, it isn't just us. He loves his class and he's actually learned to read in that class.
Then, we got offered another class, on Mondays, for the kids. This class teaches the basics of being native. The class is in a stark juxtaposition from the reality of our current education system. The kids welcome the spirits, and their ancestors. They feed the spirits to appease them, they burn sage and smudge themselves (which sometimes I honestly feel like I need to get by). They introduce themselves by their given Tribal names and their clans if they have them. I have Raindrop and Firewalker. You could guess which is which by their personalities. I didn't name them, they got them at the beginning of the class.
All that is a build-up to say that the kids - as one of the components to their extra class - were taken to The Gathering of Nations. The Gathering of Nations boasts itself as America's biggest powwow. I wanted to take the kids last year but I was both intimidated by the size and we realized we just couldn't afford the tickets for all 6 of us. I couldn't deal with leaving anyone behind, so we just didn't go. When I was asked if I wanted to chaperon this field trip it became very happy and exciting for all of us. Then, Brian said he'd take the day off, because he figured the more adults on the ground in a massive crowd setting the better.
Part 2.
Post a Comment