Terra Trevor

Birthed from Scorched Hearts: Women Respond to War

Author MariJo Moore contacted me about an anthology she was putting together, a gathering of women's voices steeped with themes of war, and asked if she could include a selection from my memoir Pushing up the Sky.

I'm honored to announce the chapter “Fall, 1998” in Pushing up the Sky, along with a new introduction, now shares company in Birthed from Scorched Hearts: Women Respond to War, which includes work by an impressive tapestry of women's voices.

Award-winning author MariJo Moore, asked women writers from around the world to consider the devastating nature of conflict—inner wars, outer wars, public battles, and personal losses and battles on the home front. Their answers, in the form of poignant poetry and essays, examine war in all its permutations, from Ireland to Iraq and everywhere in between. With contributions from well-known authors including Linda Hogan, Paula Gunn Allen, Carolyn Dunn, Kim Shuck, Terra Trevor, and numerous others, this moving anthology encompasses a wide range of voices.

A page from Birthed from Scorched Hearts: Women Respond to War by Terra Trevor

On a crisp December morning in 1984 under a bright blue sky in Seoul, Korea, a wide-eyed baby was readied to leave his homeland. Dressed in a pink bunting to keep out the winter chill, one-year-old Kook Yung was carried aboard Korean Airlines, and he set off for a new life; adoption in the United States. When the plane landed at Los Angeles International airport that boy was placed in my arms and he became my son.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. My story begins in 1953, shortly after I was born, when the end of the Korean War set the course of my life, because the ending of the war signaled the beginning of inter-country adoption of Korean-born children.

After the war everything changed. Within a country with a long-standing national tradition of pure blood lineage, shared ethnic identity and culture, suddenly there were mass numbers of orphaned children. Many of these babies and children were mixed race, and were introduced to a largely unwelcoming homogenous Korea. Single mothers were shunned. Crowded orphanages operating with scarce resources were unable to accommodate the high numbers of orphans. In response, South Korea turned to alternatives to find a solution and Korean adoption was born officially in 1954.

Today a growing number of families in Korea have begun to adopt and the country is hoping to eventually eliminate the need for adoption outside of Korea. Yes, the Korean people do adopt, I know this because I was invited to speak on a panel, and it was comprised of four American adoptive mothers and four Korean Nationals who are adoptive mothers, at the KAAN Conference in 2006, held in Seoul.

Yet in 1984, when I adopted my son, Korea was a nation still struggling to come into its own. I had a profound knowing-feeling when the telephone rang the day we received our adoption referral. I was outside watering sprouting morning glories, and before I answered the phone, I knew it would be the adoption agency telling me about my soon-to-be child.

The first time I held one-year old Kook Yung, immediately I understood something was far beyond ordinary about him. He was a calm and centered baby, in a way that let you know he possessed a great amount of wisdom. His presence made skeptics believe in angels.

I didn’t know that my son’s life would be short and that he would live to be only fifteen, and that I was being called for the highest motherhood duty. Yet if I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t change a thing. The amount of joy Kook Yung brought me outweighs anything else, and has made me whole.

What Thanksgiving Means To This Mixed-blood American Indian

Often in late November I gather with some of the people I love best for a Friendsgiving. And yet for me, it's important to honor and hold space for the fact that many Native American people do not participate in any of form of Thanksgiving. I find it ironic and sad that Native American Heritage month and Thanksgiving have been braided together in the month of November. Thanksgiving, as it has come to be observed in America, is a time of mourning for many Native people. It serves as a reminder of how a gift of generosity was rewarded by theft of land and seed corn, extermination of many Native people from disease, and near total elimination of many more from forced assimilation and as a reminder of 500 years of betrayal.

My family is mixed-race. I’m of Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, German descent, and my immediate family was formed through marriage, adoption, kinship care, love and community. We have loved ones who survived Nazi Germany, and aunties and uncles who lived under the Japanese occupation in Korea through the end of World War II. They left Korea to immigrate to America. Others in my blended family emigrated from Balikpapan.

My loved ones tell me when they came to the United States everything was new—the foods, the smells, the language and the people. They felt alone and out of place while learning to become fluent in English in those first early years. But most of all they were thankful for the privilege of gaining American citizenship. A sense of belonging began to take hold. They were encouraged to assimilate, but they were not forced to let go of their traditions, language and cultural heritage. From that deep place of thankfulness, a respect for the holiday known as Thanksgiving was born.

This is in great contrast to my American Indian ancestry, identity, mindset and Native community belonging. Thanksgiving and the myths associated with it have done damage and harm to the cultural self-esteem of generations of Americans by perpetuating cultural misappropriation and stereotyping that leave harmful images and lasting negative impressions in Native American and non-Native minds.

My immigrant family members and intimates know all too well the effects of assimilation. It gave way for thoughtful examination of cultural differences with emphasis on renewal and survival. Never having been washed in the American tradition of the First Thanksgiving falsehoods, there is no standard set linking it to a day in 1621. No myths carried about roasted meats and Indians sharing a table with Plymouth settlers.

I’m well into grandmotherhood now, doing my best to learn what I need in order to grow right as an elder and to do my part to make better for the next seven generations. I'm not opposed to the tradition of gathering for a Thanksgiving meal with family and friends, yet it must be done respectfully. I tell stories to the children and parents in my community. They ask me many questions about Native Americans and Thanksgiving. I tell them about the Wampanoag people. About this tribe of Southern Massachusetts and how their ancestors ensured the survival of the Pilgrims in New England, and how they lived to regret it, and that now the tribe is growing strong again.

I tell them Native people have a history largely untold and that gathering to give thanks for the harvest did not originate in America with the Pilgrims, it was always our way. I read books to the kids written by Native American authors who are working to make sure that Native lives and histories are portrayed with honesty and integrity.

And so the histories of Native People are painful to hear, still they need to be told and retold and never forgotten by generations of Americans.

But I tell this this story today for ALL people in America, with the hope that through truthful knowledge of the past we will not allow another group of people in America to have their life ways taken from them, to have their ethnicities and cultures erased, to be exterminated and reach near total elimination, even again.

This article was first published in a slightly different form in the Huffington Post and reprinted at Matador Network.

Why Native-inspired Halloween costumes devalue our Indigenous cultures

On Halloween I was sitting on the front porch watching Scrub Jays dart from branch to branch. The evening shadows melted into liquid dusk. Then I lit candles in the pumpkins we carved and waited for the parade of neighbor kids Trick-or-treating. There was a rush of footsteps and laughter. I chatted with parents, ooh and aah over the costumes. One kid was dressed as a purple dinosaur. Another was made to look like grapes wearing a green shirt covered with green balloons. And there was a tiny girl with two long black braids, wearing faux-leather, dressed as Pocahontas and her dad was wearing a headdress.

I love Halloween, but my thoughts are heavy saddlebags. It was unintentional, of course. This father was unaware that it is disrespectful to dress his daughter and himself as Native American. I could shrug it off as cultural borrowing and overlook cultural appropriation, after all, he means well. But I can’t. As Native American people we are a culture—not a costume. I understand that wearing a culture as costume is not intended to hurt most of the time. However, the fact of the matter is that it does.

Native social justice activists have been speaking out against Native American themed costumes for decades, yet companies still produce them, and stores still order and sell them. When I contacted a number of the costume supply stores in my city and state the owners I spoke with said that their Pocahontas, Indian Brave and Big Chief costumes are top sellers, and they would lose business if they didn’t stock and sell them. Some people buy and wear these costumes out of naiveté and others in a blatant disregard, disrespect and irreverence.

Our Native American regalia is a tradition for our Native people, and the wearing of it is a distinctly indigenous activity. It is imbued with spiritual meaning and an expression of culture and identity. For Native dancers, not only is the act of dancing that expression, but also the wearing of dance regalia is a visible manifestation of one's heritage. Often the beadwork contains personal motifs that reflect the dancer’s tribe and frequently beadwork is created by a family member and given as a gift to the dancer. Feathers receive utmost respect. Regalia is one of the most powerful symbols of Native identity and is considered sacred. This is one reason why it is inappropriate to refer to regalia as a "costume."

However we (by we, I mean American society) are stuck in a mode where too many people tolerate imitating American Indian people. These activities are indicative of an ignorant society that refuses to see American Indian people as people.

Most damaging is the Halloween " Pocahottie” and “Sexy Indian Girl” costumes which have gained popularity. I can begin by referencing statistics about how many Native women are sexually assaulted (one in three). The rate of sexual assault is more than twice the national average, stressing the point that dressing up and playing Indian is not a harmless activity.

When a costume or sexiness is based on race, ethnicity, or culture, human people are being extracted for the sake of making the wearer of the costume feel powerful, or exotic. There is also cultural appropriation. It involves members of a dominant group exploiting the culture of a less privileged group and equals belittling the lived experience and ethnicity of those who have birthright.

Native American people are one of the most underrepresented and misunderstood minorities in all of North America. Too often the First Americans are depicted as existing during colonization and western expansion, as if belonging only in the past, but not as people in todays world. No myth about Native people is as prevalent, or self-serving as the myth of the vanishing Native, also known as “the vanishing Indian” or “the vanishing race.” Therefore it’s no surprise so many feel that wearing Native American-alike regalia as costume isn’t offensive—because in their mind Indians no longer exist.

In my mind the problem stems from the fact that America has a long history of regarding its Native people as profoundly different and somehow not human. By traditional western values Native peoples are viewed as creatures of whimsy that have disappeared into history, making their images, cultures and manner of dress and regalia available for the taking.

First published at Matador Network

Author’s Note: As a writer of mixed descent, including Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, I neither presume to speak for any sovereign nation nor identify with the dominant culture.

Goodbye Columbus

In mixed-race America all of our individual histories and cultures matter, yet since 1937, on the second Monday in October, the day Congress named Columbus Day, Christopher Columbus was allowed to ride herd.

My son bounds from his classroom. Eyes filled with brown warmth, he peeks out from under a cap of shiny dark hair, holding a milk carton cutout fashioned into the shape of a boat, with two smaller makeshift vessels trailing behind. Out of the corner of my eye I see children clutching newspaper sailor hats and Columbus’ Ships coloring pages.

With his eyebrows curved in question marks my sons tells me that there is also a song about Columbus, sung to the tune of Oh, My Darling Clementine. And then we both laugh at the absurdity. It’s both funny, and not funny.

We are a mixed-race, mixed-blood Native American family. My son has older siblings and he knows there is controversy surrounding Columbus and his Day of recognition. But at age seven it’s not his job to carry the weight. As his mother that responsibility belongs to me.

Columbus Day first became a federal holiday in the United States in 1937. After strong lobbying from the Knights of Columbus, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed Oct. 12, 1937, as the first Columbus Day. Over the years the holiday celebration has become controversial: The arrival of Columbus to the Americas — followed by the European settlers — heralded the beginning of devastating movements against indigenous people and the demise of their histories and cultures.

As a European colonizer he set the genocide in motion. The story of Columbus’ discovery and the indigenous people he misnamed as “Indians” continues to affect us with a duel identity misunderstood by mainstream America.

For more than five hundred years Native peoples have been measured and have competed against a Columbus fantasy over which they have no control.

Others argue that Columbus should not be honored for discovering North America because he only went as far as some islands in the Caribbean and never got as far as mainland America. Yet for many Americans, the Columbus myth has become real and a preferred substitute for reality.

Aside from the fact that I’m of Cherokee, Delaware, Seneca descent, I am something else too — I am a woman. Rape of indigenous women of color became rampant and was tolerated by Columbus. A reported comrade, Michele de Cuneo — who wrote of a relation between himself and a Native female gifted to him by Columbus — supports this information. There are also reported accounts of Native infants being lifted from their mothers’ breasts by Spaniards and smashed by rocks. The further I dig into history more horrific acts are revealed. One account reports that he wrote in his journal on October 14, 1492, three days after being greeted with kindness by the Lucayan people (the original inhabitants of the Bahamas): “I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men and govern them as I please.” As I try to disentangle truth from history I wonder why we celebrate the man in such heroic terms if so much about him needed to be hidden.

Efforts to eliminate or rename Columbus Day in various states and cities have met strong resistance. In my hometown of Los Angeles, City Council voted to allow city employees to take Cesar Chavez Day as a paid holiday instead of Columbus Day, a move that prompted much objection. As a compromise, the council allowed city employees to celebrate either holiday. Finally the state eliminated the Columbus Day holiday as part of a budget-cutting measure, yet city and county offices still observe it. The Unified School District does not. Then in 2017 the Los Angeles City Council voted to eliminate Columbus Day from the city calendar, siding with those who view the explorer as a symbol of genocide for native peoples in North America and elsewhere in the world. Yet the day remains a paid holiday, regardless of the name.

In 1992, the city of Berkeley was the first to declare the day Indigenous Peoples Day. More recently Seattle, Minneapolis, Albuquerque, Portland, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Olympia, Washington followed suit. South Dakota celebrates Native American Day instead, and Hawaii and Alaska, which also have large indigenous populations, don’t recognize it at all.

Although alternatives exist, millions of Americans still prefer to celebrate Columbus Day and New York City’s Columbus Day Parade continues to thrive. To understand how deeply ingrained our U.S. collective modern fantasy of Christopher Columbus has become I turned to Google. A search for “Columbus activities for children” revealed 4,750,000 results (in 0.64 seconds) with lesson plans, songs, and teaching ideas. It is clear this compliant Columbus image, edited and embellished, is much preferred…and why not? His fantasy is colorful and brings something exotic to celebrate, like a visit to Frontierland.

First published at Matador Network, It’s still important to challenge any recognition of Columbus Day

Author’s Note

As a writer of mixed descent, including Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, I neither presume to speak for any sovereign nation, nor identify with the dominant culture.