Terra Trevor is an essayist and memoirist, a contributor to fifteen books, and the author of We Who Walk the Seven Ways (University of Nebraska Press). Her essays appear widely in anthologies and literary journals, including Tending the Fire: Native Voices and Portraits (University of New Mexico Press), Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education (The University of Arizona Press), The People Who Stayed: Southeastern Indian Writing After Removal (University of Oklahoma Press), Unpapered: Writers Consider Native American Identity and Cultural Belonging (University of Nebraska Press), Voices Confronting Pediatric Brain Tumors (Johns Hopkins University Press), Take A Stand: Art Against Hate (A Raven Chronicles Anthology), and Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art, and Thought. 

She is the granddaughter of Oklahoma sharecroppers, born in the early 1950s and raised in a large extended family in a banjo and fiddle tradition, rich with storytelling and music. She grew up on the border between Compton and Paramount, California, where her childhood was divided between city life and camping in the Sierra Nevada mountains, pulling dinner from a lake. Of mixed descent, including Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, German, her stories are steeped in themes of place and belonging, and are shaped and infused by her identity as a mixed-blood, and her connection to the landscape. 

You Who Are In My Stories

Photo by Paul Wellman

Tomorrow they will hold a memorial service for you in the beautiful grove where we celebrated your 80th birthday. I’m sad I can’t travel to hold space for you, to celebrate your life on earth with all of our friends. Some of our other friends also cannot travel to be there. And yet in the ways of our ancestors, and all things that never die, we will be there, we will all be there together holding space for you, not in flesh and blood, but of souls and songs. 

You who are in my stories, today you are making your transition, walking on. As you know, my stories are not only about me, they are also about you, and our friends whose lives are braided with mine, defining it, and shaping me. 

In my stories I've offered a measure of privacy with some name changes. But what has not changed is the love and time you gave. I’m holding the love and the gift of your time, helping me give to others. 

 

This morning the ocean is reflecting the sunlight and is shining like thousands of diamonds. My grandson and I walked for 2 miles along the sand, exploring, looking for seashells rounded smooth by the waves. It was a good day for collecting driftwood too. In my mind I brought you along with us on our walk. The bits and pieces of shells we picked up would delight you, perfect for art projects. You will be also be happy to know I’m wearing the beaded medicine pouch you made for me twenty-five years ago. So please know I am protected. If I forget to put it on in the morning I hear your voice, reminding me. Your beadwork lets me feel close to you, and reminds me of all our years and great times together, the lessons you gave, and the way you believed I could, and taught me how. 

 

Sage down, and prayer up. The sunrise singers have come for you. A high sweet trill of voices, abalone beads swaying, carrying songs from the ancestors. I'm pretty sure the sunrise ceremony now rides in my heart, and is carrying me. 

 

I love you my friend, auntie and sister. 

 

Donadagohvi. Until we meet again. 

 

Gratitude, Respect, Caring, Compassion, Honesty, Generosity, Wisdom.

Copyright © Terra Trevor. All rights reserved. 

Craft, Community and the Art of the Essay

Patrice Gopo, author of Autumn Song: Essays on Absence, and Terra Trevor, author of We Who Walk the Seven Ways: A Memoir, share a candid conversation on craft, community and the art of the essay. 

 

Two University of Nebraska Press authors, two essayists, two books on different journeys but walking the same path.

Craft, Community and the Art of the Essay

We Who Walk the Seven Ways: A Memoir (University of Nebraska Press)

We Who Walk the Seven Ways is Terra Trevor’s memoir about seeking healing and finding belonging. After she endured a difficult loss, a circle of Native women elders embraced and guided Trevor (mixed-blood Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, and German) through the seven cycles of life in their Indigenous ways. Over three decades, these women lifted her from grief, instructed her in living, and showed her how to age from youth into beauty. 

With tender honesty, Trevor explores how the end is always a beginning. Her reflections on the deep power of women’s friendship, losing a child, reconciling complicated roots, and finding richness in every stage of life show that being an American Indian with a complex lineage is not about being part something, but about being part of something. 

Read an excerp

University of Nebraska Press

Native American And Indigenous Studies | Memoir

Birchbark Books, Harvard Book Store, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop, Amazon

Dancing to Remember

I am gathered with friends and family under a bead blue California sky. Powwow weekend. Santa Ynez Chumash Inter-Tribal. My shawl is folded over my arm. I listen to the wind, spilling through the tree leaves. 

Time merges with timelessness. Memories circle and carry me to a day forty years ago, when I stood on this good land, near the oak tree for the first time, with my young children gathered about. The same tree I am standing under today. 

I lean my back against this oak. This tree, giver of life. She has raised a community with song, dance and prayer. We return to this land, to this tree, in October every year. Laughter, flirting and romance in lives young and old take place all around her. 

She stands sentry. Her autumn softened leaves, swept up from a cool mountain breeze, fall gently on American Indian fathers holding sleeping babies. Mothers trading stories, their shiny cut beads reflecting light while braiding their children’s hair, with feathers in the colors of the earth, trailing. 

There were difficult times too for this oak tree, when she witnessed wild fires raging, drought years with dust rising against the clear sky. The times when her branches sheltered human arguments and angry outbursts, but mostly she is surrounded by love and caring. 

I stand high upon a flat rock, my eyes roaming, taking in the day, the years. Filling my lungs with sweet fragrances of the damp Mother Earth. Feeling my body grow light, like the feathers of the red tail hawk touching the soft clouds. 

For the record I am not California Indian. I'm mixed-blood Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, and for forty-three years I lived in an area that makes up the traditional Chumash homeland. I spent those years walking gently, a guest on this good land and I hold the culture, traditions and history of the Chumash people in my heart. For my Chumash friends this is their landscape of time. 

I remember the words of my aunties and my grandmothers, about how each person is a connection to history and when we gather around the area and form a circle around the drums, singers and dancers we are all connected, and it's our way of saying that American Indian people are still here. This is our celebration of life past, present and future. 

Dancing to Remember was first published in News from Native California, a quarterly magazine devoted to California's Indian peoples published by Heyday Books. 

Dancing to Remember also appears in We Who Walk the Seven Ways: A Memoir by Terra Trevor (University of Nebraska Press).

Copyright © Terra Trevor. All rights reserved. Photo courtesy of the author.

Tomol Evening: California's Indigenous Peoples

When I return from Limuw—Santa Cruz Island, at first I only want natural light. It is past ten when I rinse the salt water from my hair. Moonlight falls from the open window, a flood of light from above. I am still under the influence of sea tides springing strong. 

I came to spend four days and nights on the island, to let come what may. I want to be helpful to my friend, eighty now and a deeply loved and respected, elder. Sometimes she needs a tiny bit of help fetching things and getting from here to there. I’m learning as she teaches me how to be helpful and grow old in a beautify way. 

Used to be, when you walked on the island of Santa Cruz and looked around, all the land you could see was Chumash Indian land. The island was once home to the largest population of island Chumash with a highly developed complex society and life ways. 

Marine harvest and trade with the mainland. Island Chumash produced shells beads used as currency. Grasses and roots for making baskets and other necessities for living were there for the taking. And so, apparently was the land. 

Historical records show that by 1853 a large herd of sheep was brought to the island. The Civil War significantly increased the demand for wool and by 1864 some 24,000 sheep over grazed the hills and valleys of Santa Cruz Island. Some of the early buildings from sheep ranching still stand. Now, instead of sheep for the next four days the island is again filled with Indians. 

We have come to honor the Chumash peoples' annual channel crossing from the mainland to the Channel Islands. A camp village is put up, where basket making, cordage making, song, prayer and storytelling take place. On day one we are about fifty Indians gathered. By Saturday, the day the Tomol arrives, there will be nearly two hundred of us, and the quote “a single bracelet does not jangle alone” describes us. The connectedness we have to each other is so much a part of our lives, it can’t be distinguished from our lives. 

For the record, I am not Chumash. I’m of mixed-blood Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, German descent. Yet for 40 years I lived in an area that made up the traditional Chumash homeland. I hold the culture, traditions and history of the Chumash people in my heart. For my Chumash friends this is their heritage, their landscape of time. 

There’s real power here. When we leave the campsite village and walk to the rim of the island first there is silence. Raven and Sea Gulls at the waters edge dip and wheel and dive. Under a sky turned pink we go for a sunset swim. With much island and ocean and so few people there is the lazy wag of space. I float in the sea with my head surrounded by gulls and fledglings. 

At dawn we wake to sunrise singers. A high sweet trill of voices, abalone beads swaying, carrying songs from the ancestors. The singers are letting us know it is time to gather for sunrise ceremony.  

Next we wait for the paddlers to arrive. I stand with others on the shore and feel the sun rise from my heart. I’ve known two of the paddlers, a male and a female crewmember, since they were babies, and I’ve watched them grow to strong, beautiful, kind and responsible, young adults. Now I’m a sixty three year old grandmother, moving toward elderhood and I know the world that I will one day leave behind is in good hands. 

If only in my mind I am again back in 1997, back when these two young paddlers where small kids and the Santa Barbara County American Indian Education Project began the series “Tomol Trek.” After much hard work, the project put together an academy with federal (Title V) funding and the year’s final outcome produced a modern-day recreation of a tomol. Our modern-day tomol was built by the children under the guidance of Peter Howorth, in his backyard tomol building workshop. 

There was a perfect balance between master and apprentice as the children sanded pieces of the vessel throughout construction. A dozen hands move slowly across the handle, moving towards the paddle end of an oar. Small hands, young hands, skin so smooth and maroon, peach-colored hands, muted brown, every child with a tribal memory circling her or his heart. 

Remembrance weighs heavy on my mind, as it does for most Native people seeking to affirm cultural identity in a high-tech world. There is a comfort in being with those who understand. Our kids did not have to trade in their Indian values for education; the project carried ancient memory and cultural knowledge into their lives today. 

And now two of those children—now grown, are making the crossing. The paddlers leave the mainland at three a.m. There will be a careful change of crew three times. The moment the paddlers in the Tomol come into view my heart breaks open and I’m ageless and timeless and feel the welcome arms of the ancestors. The Tomol is brought forth from the sea and there is song and prayer. 

Photos courtesy of the author

Back at camp we prepare dinner, while island fox keep a steady eye trained on us. A near Harvest moon rises. We eat, talk, joke, and tell stories of past crossings to the island, and “the old ways” moving through our evening together like dancers, stirring to the same rhythm. All of the people, the paddlers and those that help make the crossing and camp village possible, are honored. 

The day fades into liquid dusk and moonlight. Time is a continuous loop until our stay on the island comes to a full circle closure. Thankful for what I have been given, yet reluctant to let go, I prepare to leave and make the rounds to say goodbye to everybody who welcomed me. 

On the boat ride to the mainland we are soaking wet, laughing. A Humpback whale is sighted in the ocean navy blue. In the Chumash language my friends sing in the whale, and she surfaces. 

At home in earthen shadows, rinsing off the salt water and sand, I feel the light from the moon, full and wan. I braid a pungent memory and fill my lungs and my heart with it, knowing it will permeate my body and cling to my soul as a reminder of what I can feel when we are all together on the Island. 

Tomol Evening was first appeared in News from Native California, a quarterly magazine devoted to California's Indian peoples published by Heyday Books. This essays is included in We Who Walk the Seven Ways: A Memoir by Terra Trevor (University of Nebraska Press).

Copyright © Terra Trevor. All rights reserved. 

Tomol Trek: California's Indigenous Peoples

Photo courtesy of author

Our classes are held outdoors under a bead-blue California sky. We work on a patch of green grass, an occasional hawk sweeping over with light shining through her rust red tail. Back in 1997, when there was money available to be used for education, the Santa Barbara County American Indian Education Project began the series “Tomol Trek.”

After much hard work, the project put together an academy with federal (Title V) funding. Each year the academy had a different focus. In 1997 the year’s final outcome was aimed at producing a modern-day recreation of a traditional Chumash tomol. The children and teenagers attending ranged from elementary through high school. Many were Chumash, but the kids represented a variety of tribes, all with a common bond: every one of these kid’s lives in an area that made up the traditional Chumash homeland. We all hold the culture, traditions, and history of the Chumash people in our hands and in our hearts.

The tomol, a type of plank canoe, is unique to the Chumash. Tomols were used for trips between the islands and Chumash settlements. Originally they were about thirty feet long, and could hold four thousand pounds. Usually they carried six people but could hold up to twelve.

Our modern-day tomol was built by the children under the guidance of Peter Howorth, in his backyard tomol building workshop. There is a perfect balance between master and apprentice as the children sand pieces of the vessel throughout construction. A dozen hands move slowly across the handle, moving towards the paddle end of an oar. Small hands, young hands, skin so smooth and maroon, peach-colored hands, muted brown, every child with a tribal memory circling her or his heart.

A kind of palpable energy surrounds the tomol project. People seem to want to be a part of what’s going on. American Indian students from Cal Poly and UCLA arrive to volunteer support. Before I know it, I’m one of those helping out. The more I sand, the closer I am to the tomol. Sometimes I stop in the middle of the day and am silent in respect to the ancient peoples who left the witness of their lives, their visions, the strength of their faith for us to ponder.

My son is one of those kids helping out. He knows about the pleasure found in working hard, and seeing the good results of that work. As he sands the pieces of wood I watch him find his relationship with the plank canoe he is helping to create.

Our real goal is not only the finished tomol; it is also the season long process of working together. Still, everyone eagerly waits the day the vessel will be launched. When the maiden voyage takes place, within the harbor, there is only a small gathering of people. Before the “official” crewmembers begin their training we get to know the tomol. Her name is Alolkoy—dolphin in Chumash. She is twenty-five feet long, and made of redwood. Conditions in the harbor are ideal. The sun is warm; a soft, steady sea breeze blows at our backs. We fill sandbags for ballast, and then one at a time, we each have a turn sitting inside the tomol.

Photo courtesy of author

My son finding his relationship with the Tomol he helped build.

Alolkoy is much lighter than I ever imagined. Slowly I become one with her. I only have to “think” of shifting my weight left, and she responds almost before I even move. By the end of the day I understand we should not take photographs while we are with her, not yet anyway. First I watch someone drop a camera into the ocean, and then the back of my camera opens, exposing my film.

Remembrance weighs heavy on my mind, as it does for most Native people seeking to affirm cultural identity in a high-tech world. There is a comfort in being with those who understand. Our kids do not have to trade in their Indian values for education; the project carried ancient memory and cultural knowledge into their lives today.

First Published in the winter 1997 issue of News from Native California, a quarterly magazine devoted to California's Indian peoples. 

Postscript
A number of the children who participated in the Tomol backyard building workshop have grown up to become crewmembers making the crossings from the mainland to Limuw - Santa Cruz Island. 

Copyright © Terra Trevor. All rights reserved. 

My Journey Toward Less

Driving home from the department store I thought about my problem. I wanted to own less clothing. To have only what I loved and needed. 

My desire for a moderately minimalistic wardrobe began six months after my fifteen-year-old son on died. It was 1999, and I was doing laundry. I walked past my son's bedroom, a room that was immortalized with everything in place exactly as it had been when he was alive. 

 

I felt a tiny wave of strength surface, a glimmer of faith bringing me to understand I was ready to begin the process of letting go of his things. But I needed to do it in baby steps. I cleared out a stack of his outgrown clothes. It was the only way my mother’s heart could manage the task. He was fifteen years old when he left this earth, and I let go first of what no longer would have fit him. Slowly, over a period of time, I gave away all of my son’s clothes, keeping only his sweatshirt for me to breath in the scent of him, to bury my face in long nights of remembering.

Next I began tossing things from my own well-stocked closet, giving away good quality clothes that I seldom wore—clothing that no longer fit the newly evolving me. Each month I eyeballed my closet and convinced myself to part with more and more. At the time it didn’t occur to me that I was beginning to walk toward a stress-free lifestyle of owning less. Back then I wondered if maybe my grief and sorrow had taken a dangerous turn. My family also worried about me.

I was forty-six years old, and the gentle, generous part of me that cheers for myself wanted me to have a plentiful wardrobe. But I wanted it to be small, no excess, and only what I loved and needed. At the end of each season I edited my closet, took stock of what needed to be replaced. I removed any neglected items to give to thrift stores or to friends. I was getting to know myself with a new identity. I was a mother without her son, and I craved simplicity, to own less, to be surrounded with beauty and find my rhythm without a lot of clutter.

In addition to my work as a freelance writer, I also worked in a corporate office environment and the majority of my wardrobe centered on work clothes. There was a strict dress code requiring a tailored look with structured jackets. In following the guidelines somewhere along the way I lost my sense of personal style. I had no idea what would be in my ideal wardrobe, so even if I could have tossed everything out and begin anew I didn’t know what I wanted other than for my wardrobe to be smaller and more workable, with everything worn often and loved. But other than that I hadn’t a clue. With frequent editing, although my closet was not bare, it had a forlorn look. My family members encouraged me to shop for new clothes, and I did.

To map out a new me I gathered purples, reds, earth tones, and hues of tan and green. I searched for travel friendly clothes that hinted of a well-used passport and would not wrinkle, versatile clothes that could be accessorized for work, yet casual enough to wear on the weekend. Most of all I wanted clothing I’d feel happy wearing. With my husband and daughter urging me, I began the process of updating my wardrobe. But I always stayed within a careful budget, and never had credit card debit. 

At home I dumped the contents of my shopping bag on my bed—a steel gray sweater to glide over a jersey skirt or to pair with jeans. I cut the tags off, and a few minutes later I tied them back on with a piece of clear plastic thread.

Jenny-dog curled by the door, gave a low growl and the red-brown fur on her neck stood up. Outside I could hear weeds rustling and I grabbed onto the dog’s collar so that she wouldn't move. And that’s when I saw the coyote, young and lean sprint off down towards the creek bed. I scratched my dog’s neck and raked my fingers through her fur and found a flea, and then another. Usually I never forgot to give the dog her medication, but this time I had procrastinated. Without a doubt I knew I must get back in the car and go to the vet’s office and buy what we needed to rid the dog of fleas. And while I was out I could return the sweater.

That afternoon was a marker moment. I didn’t know what, but I could feel something take root within me—an awakening. I was moving further and further away from what I wanted most—to own less. 

From a rocker by the open window I spent the rest of the day watching Scrub Jays dart from branch to branch, until the afternoon shadows melted into liquid dusk, and the wind turned wild. Then I removed the tag and pulled on the new gray sweater, feeling its silky texture against my skin, and I said a vow to keep the sweater, to wear it on any ordinary day, instead of saving it for good, because my life is now.

I sat while the stars, one by one, began to light the sky, and let the chill air of mother earth embrace me. It would take me a few more years to break the habit of saving clothes for good, and to find Project 333 and learn about a community of good people who embrace the concept of living with less, and to reach the good place where I am now— but that afternoon was a beginning.

© 2014 Terra Trevor. All rights reserved. Photo © Santa Fe Daily Photo. 

Thank you to Courtney Carver, founder of Be More With Less for featuring a link to this essay on her website. 

Moderately Minimal

Follow my stories while I stumble along with simplicity,

downsizing, and journey moderately minimal.

Race, Ethnicity and My Face

As a woman of Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, German descent, I came of age understanding that I'm not totally Native nor am I totally white. I'm a border woman dwelling between the boundaries. 

I have light skin, light enough that some people think I’m a white person. My dad is Native and my mother is white and I was born when they were teenagers in the early 1950s.

I grew up in Compton, California, a mixed race suburb of Los Angeles. The family next door was Bolivian and they loved me like a daughter. My best friend was Japanese and Mexican. Still, when I was 10 years-old, my dad sat me down to have “the talk” with me about race. He told me about how to navigate the streets, about how to stay safe. He also wanted to make sure I understood that in order to be accepted by certain white people it mattered who your friends were. 

By that point, however, I already knew. 

I had discovered that when I went to play at the houses of my white friends after school I needed to be aware of how I was holding myself at all times. I learned to stay alert and watch for clues: sometimes there might be an older brother who pulled his eyes in an upward slant and said something mean about Chinese people; or a father that casually spouted racial slurs at people of color or made fun of Indians. When this happened, I knew I had to make an excuse to go home and I’d never go back. Sometimes I’d make up stories when asked about my darker skinned, mixed-race family in order to protect them. But if the mothers of my white friends didn’t feel satisfied with my answers, I wouldn’t be allowed to stay at their houses for long. 

Things would be different when I went over to the houses of my friends of color. Their mothers would always take me in without hesitation. And if there was a grandmother at home who spoke English with an accent, or didn’t speak English at all I could usually be certain they wouldn’t ask me if my daddy had a job. In their homes, I felt safe. 

 

As a child I had things all figured out. But when I reached my late teens and early twenties it became more complicated. 

Hanging out with my friends of color meant witnessing them get treated poorly and face multiple instances of discrimination by white people. Being out with my white friends, however, meant that we could expect to be given preferential treatment no matter where we went. When I began dating and went out with Native boys or other boys of color in my community, I was considered “white trash” by white America. I could even expect to have a white man point to my date and ask me what I thought I was doing being with the likes of someone like him. But when I dated the first guy that was white, I was allowed to be white by association and had access to the privileges of white America because of that. In stores or restaurants, we were always served or seated first, before people of color. When we acted up or got into mischief in public, it was laughed off as opposed to being taken seriously with the assumption that we were up to no good like it had been for other teens of color. 

 

My early adulthood was charged with decisions to make: Should I mention my Native identity? Should I let white people I don’t know well and may not ever want to become close friends with, assume I’m white? Keep my racial identity private from employers and others who would discriminate against me if they knew I’m a mixed-blood Native American woman? With dark skinned family members and dark skin friends? With strong ties to Native America and rooted within a community of color? 

When people look at my face, what they also can not see is that my mother, who was born white, is a member of a mixed-race family. With white and Black mixed with white, and Mexican mixed with white, with family members from Mexico.

 

Then, at age twenty-three, I suddenly found myself employed full-time in a company that was predominantly white. So white, that my intuition told me if my boss had known I was anything other than white, I would have probably not been hired. My white co-workers seemed to only accept people of color who adhered to white social norms and didn’t challenge their biases. They could not accept how vastly different the culture values, thought processes, and social norms of ethnic people were from white America. 

I wear the face of a woman with light skin privilege. While keenly aware of the advantage it has given me over my friends and family who are not able to pass, I always make the decision to disclose my Native identity. I never try to pass. Passing would mean turning my back on my Native family, my family and friends of color, and my community. Following my experiences working in a predominantly-white company at 23, I began to make sure that at each interview I had for a new job, I’d take a “racial temperature check” to ensure that people of color who looked like my friends and family were always welcomed. And I’d proudly list all the positions I’ve held within American Indian and Asian-American organizations on my resume. 

 

Later on in my life, I married a man who was white and we had a daughter together, before adopting two Korean children. Two of our kids had apparent ethnic features and their black hair and darker skin often caused people to mistakenly assume they were Native American. I knew that blending into white society would never be an option for them. So it was always a toss on whether they would be able to ride on the wings of my white privilege, or be subject to the racism that ruled America when they were out on their own. In turn, I did my best to connect them with their Korean roots by becoming deeply involved with the Korean community in our town. For thirty years, my heart and my soul was shaped by my connection to this community for which I am grateful to be a part of. 

 

Now, in my 70s, my gray hair and wrinkled face reveal the many years I have lived. Yet what has not changed is what most cannot see: I am still a border woman. Borders are set up to define or to separate, but I am neither part white, nor part Native. My blood is a mix between two worlds, Native and white merging together to form a third: a woman dwelling between the boundaries. 

A border woman—that is me.

First published in Santa Clara Review, vol 108 / issue 01.

Copyright © Terra Trevor. All rights reserved.