You Who Are In My Stories
Photo Credit: Paul Wellman
You who are in my stories, you made your transition and have walked 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 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.
Gratitude, Respect, Caring, Compassion, Honesty, Generosity, Wisdom.
Donadagohvi. Until we meet again.
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 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 every ending 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.
Nominated for the 2023 Electa Quinney Award for Published Stories administered by the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures (ASAIL).
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“Terra Trevor’s memoir is a gentle invitation to journey with her across decades, an invitation to notice with her as she seeks healing and finds belonging. There were phrases and sentences I underlined, places where I wept, passages that will remain with me as they drew me to insights I’d previously struggled to name. I closed the final pages and knew that in reading this book, I had been the recipient of a generous and much-needed gift. While I can certainly finish a book in a day, I chose to move slowly through this one, letting each idea, each paragraph, each reflection gently spill over me, allowing the pages to alter me in some way.”
—Patrice Gopo, author of Autumn Song: Essays on Absence and editor of We Deserve to Heal
“In this personal history, Trevor considers what it has meant to navigate the world as a “mixed-blood” Native woman, whose light complexion belies her ancestors among the Cherokee, Lenape, and Seneca peoples. Born to a white mother and American Indian father in the early 1950s, Trevor delves into her relationship with her paternal grandparents and Auntie, who taught her about the heritage that felt more authentic than her white identity, as well as the elder Native women who welcomed her into their community and schooled her in the “seven ways” of being in tune with Native tradition. Moving back and forth across time, Trevor recounts the complexity of her relationships and experiences and how they were shaped by U.S. law and policies governing Native life and culture. Foreword Reviews calls We Who Walk the Seven Ways “a moving memoir about friendship and identity.”
A Winter Solstice Love Story
Four years ago, I moved away, away from the land and people who raised and shaped me. Now I’m living near my grandchildren on the Northern California Coast. Everything is still new for me, unfamiliar. I’m walking gently while this Indigenous California landscape in Ohlone territory teaches me who I am.
For the record, I’m not Chumash. I’m mixed-blood Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca and German descent, with ties to Korean. And I hold the culture, traditions, and history of the Chumash people in my heart. This is their heritage, their life blood, and their landscape of time. And for all Native people Solstice is a time to honor the connection to our ancestors, to the rhythm of nature and our continuing deepening ties.
In my bones I remember, and I can still hear and feel the slap of the wansaks’—a musical instrument made from the branch of an elderberry—beat out a steady rhythm and a mix of laughing voices of my friends gathered contrast with the drift of fog and the heavy surf pounding. Lanterns are lit against the darkening evening and a fire is built, where storytelling takes place. Salmon is on the grill, potatoes are roasting, and the picnic table is loaded with more food. We are honoring solstice, an astronomical phenomenon marking the shortest day and the longest night of the year. For people throughout the ages—from the ancient Egyptians and Celts to the Hopi—midwinter has been a time of ritual, reflection, and renewal.
Solstices happen twice a year, around June 21 and again around December 21. The date is not fixed, it varies; the December Solstice can take place on December 20, 21, 22, 23. While we usually think of the whole day as the Solstice, it actually takes place at a specific moment when the Sun is precisely overhead the Tropic of Capricorn. Solstice helps us cultivate a deeper connection to nature and to all of the things that matter most to us. It’s a time for feeding the spirit and nurturing the soul. Prayers and rituals set forth a plan of life for the coming year, ceremonially turning back the sun toward its summer path.
Throughout history, honoring the solstice has been a way to renew our connection with each other and with acts of goodwill, special rituals, and heightened awareness. Solstice is also reserved for feeding the spirit and nurturing the soul. It’s a period for quiet reflection, turning inward, slowing down and appreciating the day, the hour, and each moment.
While we don’t know how long people have been celebrating the solstice, we do know that ancient cultures built stone structures designed to align with the sun at specific times, and in ancient times the winter solstice was immensely important because the people were economically dependent on monitoring the progress of the seasons. There was an emphasis on the fall harvest and storing food for winter.
Remembrance weighs heavy on my mind. Tonight as we near Winter Solstice, with a December moon above me, and the only light I can see, I’m falling back in time. My memories are washing over me like a series of massive waves hitting hard, without warning. As soon as I catch my breath another beautiful memory pulls me back home. My mind floats back over the years. Memories surface—and feelings that remain untouched in my heart, in that place of perpetual remembering. All those Winter Solstice nights of long ago, when we were young, and our elders walked this good earth with us, when we gathered for a good meal together, with storytelling, laughter, conversation, dance, and songs from the ancestors. Fire offerings of chia seeds, acorn flour, and berries were made, followed by prayer and ceremony.
Now, I’m in my seventies, nearly the same age as the elder Native women who guided me, informed, instructed and shaped me into the woman I am today. I’m honoring my Indigenous community with gratitude for their love and the gift of their time they gave me, helping me give to others.
With the night sky, dark and beautiful above, I walk toward the sea and stand silent in respect to the ancient peoples who left the witness of their lives, visions, and the strength of their faith for me to ponder. The scent of sage hangs in the air. I fill my lungs with it, knowing it will permeate my body and cling to my soul as a reminder of what I can feel and remember when we were together long ago.
Dancing to Remember: Native California
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.
Copyright © Terra Trevor. All rights reserved. Photo courtesy of the author.
Tomol Evening: California's Indigenous Peoples
I came to spend four days and nights on the island, to let come what may. I wanted to be helpful to my friend, eighty now and a deeply loved and respected, elder. She was teaching Native children and adults basket weaving, beadwork and storytelling. She was still hearty but needed help fetching things and getting from here to there. I was learning as she taught 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 would again be filled with Indians. We had come to honor the Chumash peoples' annual channel crossing from the mainland to the Channel Islands.
A camp village was put up, where basket making, cordage making, song, prayer and storytelling take place. The first day there are about fifty Indians gathered. By Saturday, the day the tomol arrives, there would be nearly two hundred of us, and the adage “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.
Although I am not Chumash, I’m of mixed-blood Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, German descent, for forty-three 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 water’s 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.
The next morning at dawn, we woke to sunrise singers. A high sweet trill of voices, abalone beads swaying, carrying songs from the ancestors. The singers were letting us know it was time to gather for sunrise ceremony.
Later in the day we waited for the paddlers to arrive. I stood with others on the shore and felt the sun rise from my heart. I’d known two of the paddlers, a male and a female crewmember, since they were babies, and I’d watched them grow to strong, beautiful, kind and responsible, young adults. Now I was a grandmother, moving toward elderhood and I knew the world that I would one day leave behind is in good hands.
For a moment I was returned to 1994 when these two young paddlers where small kids and our community began American Indian Education Project began the series “Tomol Trek” with the goal of building a modern-day recreation of a tomol. Our tomol was built by the children under the guidance of a master, 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 moved 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 their heart.
Back in those days, my son and daughter were two of the kids helping out. They knew about the pleasure found in working hard and seeing the good results of that work. As they sanded the pieces of wood, I watched my kids find their relationship with the tomol they had helped build. Our kids did not have to exchange their Native values for education; the tomol carried ancient memory and cultural knowledge into their present lives.
Now two of those children where attended the academy were grown ups, and they were making the crossing in the tomol. The paddlers left the mainland at three a.m. There would be a careful change of crew three times. The moment the paddlers in the Tomol come into view my heart broke open and I was ageless and timeless and felt the welcome arms of the ancestors.
The tomol is brought forth from the sea and there was song and prayer.
Back at camp we prepared dinner, while island fox kept a steady eye trained on us. A near Harvest moon rose We ate, talked, joked, and told 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 helped make the crossing and camp village possible—those who brought and cooked food, the fire keepers, the elders who led prayer and ceremonies, the singers, the dancers, and the paddlers—were honored.
Time was a continuous loop until our stay on the island came to a full circle closure. Thankful for what I had been given, yet reluctant to let go, I prepared to leave and made the rounds to say goodbye to everybody who had welcomed me.
On the boat ride to the mainland, we were soaking wet, laughing. A Humpback whale was sighted in the ocean. In the Chumash language my friends sang in the whale, and she surfaced.
At home in earthen shadows, rinsing off the salt water and sand, I felt the light from the moon, full and wan. I braided a pungent memory and filled my lungs and my heart with it, knowing it would permeate my body and cling to my soul as a reminder of what I could feel when we were 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 essay is included in We Who Walk the Seven Ways: A Memoir by Terra Trevor (University of Nebraska Press).
Photo courtesy of the author
Copyright © Terra Trevor. All rights reserved.
Tomol Trek: California's Indigenous Peoples
Photo courtesy of author
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.
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| Photo courtesy of author My son finding his relationship with the Tomol he helped build. |
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.
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