Terra Trevor: Stories With Indigenous Themes

Showing posts with label Stories With Indigenous Themes. Show all posts

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.

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).

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).

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.

An Afternoon with Wilma Mankiller

This morning my thoughts center on a day back in 2006, when I was among those who gathered with Wilma Mankiller, former principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. We had lunch together followed by an afternoon of conversation, outside on the grass, with the trees and birds, gathered with Native people from my community, and I was comforted with our common Indigenous bond, our shared essence.

I've been thinking about how lucky I am. When I least expect it I've had teachers, always showing up at the right time, exactly when I need them. For every success we have I believe it's important to remember how we got there. I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish all that I have without the steadfast guidance from good people who gave their time to me, mentoring, shepherding and guiding me along, and I am deeply thankful.

"When people cease waiting for great leaders or prophets to solve entrenched problems and look, instead, within themselves, trusting their own thinking, believing in their own power, and to their families and communities for solutions, change will follow. In traditional indigenous communities, there is an understanding that our lives play themselves out within a set of reciprocal relationships. If each human being in the world could fully understand that we all are interdependent and responsible for one another, it would save the world." —Wilma Mankiller

From: all-employees-bounces@lists.cherokee.org

[mailto:all-employees-bounces@lists.cherokee.org] On Behalf Of Chad Smith
Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2010 11:13 AM
To: All Employees (mailing list)
Subject: Wilma Mankiller

Dear Friends,
Our personal and national hearts are heavy with sorrow and sadness with the passing this morning of Wilma Mankiller, our former Principal Chief. We feel overwhelmed and lost when we realize she has left us but we should reflect on what legacy she leaves us. We are better people and a stronger tribal nation because her example of Cherokee leadership, statesmanship, humility, grace, determination and decisiveness. When we become disheartened, we will be inspired by remembering how Wilma proceeded undaunted through so many trials and tribulations. Years ago, she and her husband Charlie Soap showed the world what Cherokee people can do when given the chance, when they organized the self-help water line in the Bell community She said Cherokees in that community learned that it was their choice, their lives, their community and their future. Her gift to us is the lesson that our lives and future are for us to decide. We can carry on that Cherokee legacy by teaching our children that lesson.

Wilma asked that any gifts in her honor be made as donations to One Fire Development Corporation, a non-profit dedicated to advancing Native American communities though economic development, and to valuing the wisdom that exists within each of the diverse tribal communities around the world. Tax deductible donations can be made at www.wilmamankiller.com as well as www.onefiredevelopment.org.

The Cherokee Word for Water

I grew up within in a large extended Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca family, with lots of cousins, grandparents and great-grandparents, with roots in Oklahoma. Great-grandma could fix a meal to feed fifteen of us and I loved to sit beside her coal black stove, listening to her stories. I’m the granddaughter of sharecroppers, and I was born to a teenage mother and father in 1953. When I was young, we were poor—but we had water.

Having water meant we always had plenty to eat. We had fresh running water to rinse, soak and simmer pots of pinto beans and black-eyed peas. In the summer when rainfall was not plentiful, since the water table was usually high, we could turn the hose on to soak the apple and peach tree and their fruit fed us in return.

There was water for pie baking, and when the sun seared overhead water to mix with Kool-Aid to freeze into popsicles. Home canned goods must be put up in hot, sterilized jars and we had water for boiling before we used them. We had water to wash our hands before pressing a tortilla on a hot skillet, and it was clean and safe to drink.

When no one else believed in them, they believed in each other.

Set in the early 1980s, the story of The Cherokee Word for Water begins in a small town in rural Oklahoma where many houses lack running water. The film tells the story of a tribal community joining together to build a waterline by using traditional Native values of reciprocity and interdependence and is told from the perspective of Wilma Mankiller and Charlie Soap, who join forces to battle opposition and build a 16-mile waterline system using a community of volunteers. In the process, they inspire the townspeople to trust each other, to trust their way of thinking, and to spark a reawakening of the universal indigenous values of reciprocity and interconnectedness. This project also inspired a self-help movement in Indian Country that continues to this day.

“The Cherokee Word for Water” is dedicated to Wilma Mankiller’s vision, compassion and incredible grace, and tells the story of the work that led her to become the Chief of the Cherokee Nation. The film was funded through the Wilma Mankiller Foundation to continue her legacy of social justice and community development in Indian Country.

10 of my favorite places in the US where you can experience Native American cultures responsibly

One of my earliest memories is watching Grandma sew beads on Uncle Elmer’s deer skin leggings. Listen to my grandmother and you’ll hear stories about me in diapers moving to the heartbeat of the drum.

Talk to me and I’ll tell you about my husband recalling how unfamiliar he felt when he first met me and found himself the only non-Indian person among American Indians. Blending our lives (and later raising our children) helped me gather opportunities where he could begin to understand and learn about Native lifeways.

Recently an editor invited me to contribute an article about friendly places to experience Native American cultures. While researching the piece I had fun traveling from my armchair revisiting some of my favorite places.

You will notice that the title of the original article says culture. It ought to read cultures, reflecting the fact that Native American people are of many tribes, Nations, cultures, languages and histories.

I greatly enjoyed researching and writing the article and I’m thankful for the invitation to take my readers into Native America to visit the thriving lifeways of a continuing land and people.

Read my article at Matador Network to see 10 of my favorite places to discover modern-day Indian life and to observe tribal descendants echo and give expression to cultural traditions.

What Thanksgiving Means To This Mixed-blood American Indian

On the day known as Thanksgiving I gather with some of the people I love best and we share a Friendsgiving feast. 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 family members and loved one who immigrated to the United States.

My loved ones tell me when they came to the US, 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 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 is 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.

It’s still important to challenge any recognition of Columbus Day

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

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.

It's A Very Dirty Job

I grew up in a large extended mixed-blood Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, German, family of storytellers, and I spent lots of time with my grandparents and great-grandparents.

Recently, my dad, well into his 80s now, pulled out a photograph of his grandmother. She lived in a log cabin in Oklahoma and told stories from a rocking chair. Two flat pewter braids hung down to her waist; deep valleys formed between her cheekbones and chin. My dad grew up listening to her stories.

"Do you still remember her stories?” I asked him. Dad shook his head,” Only one. We went to her house on Saturdays and when I was twelve, usually my mind was on the baseball games I missed playing in on account of those visits.”

My dad perked up. “She told me about the time four men rode onto her land and pulled a gun on her. ‘It happened fast,’ Grandma said. ‘Shootin’ began, one guy shot the heads of two of my chickens. Never saw a better shot in my life. Them fellers weren’t interested in me. They wanted me to cook them a chicken dinner,’ Grandma explained.

I chuckled and looked at the photograph again. She was short, brown and sturdy, with boot moccasins on her feet. And from what I've heard, she was an excellent shot too.

“Grandma told me she cooked a real fine meal,” Dad said. “Then she let out a hardy roar and put her nose right up to mine and said, “Bobby, it was Frank and Jesse James.”

Then my dad’s face grew serious and he said, "Grandma gave birth to eleven babies. The first died at four months, the second at age eight. It went on like that for years—grandma giving birth and grandpa making babyboards, digging holes and lowering those dead babies into the ground. It was a time of measles and smallpox epidemics.”

My mind glimpsed my great-grandma. I felt a distant memory pulling me back, and I could hear her wailing like wind coming up—crying and swaying. I thought about how her cries probably drifted into the cabins of nearby white settlers, and I wondered if they knew the high, shrill sounds pressing against the night came from an American Indian mother mourning her dead baby.

And I thought about my own son, diagnosed with a brain tumor at age seven, but growing well and strong again following radiation and chemo, and then dying at age fifteen when the cancer recurred.

As we walked back, with the lights of the cabin glowing from the dark mist of trees, I felt the boundary of time fall away, as if my great-great-grandma and I had lived side by side.

“Well, six of Grandma’s children somehow managed to survive to adulthood.” I added.

Dad nodded. “The family slept on deer hides, Grandma shelled corn, ground it into meal and picked dandelions for their greens.”

I let my heart drift all the way back to great grandma and I felt her spirit and imagination become my own.

“Do you suppose Grandma really cooked chickens for the James brothers?” I asked.

Dad stared at me with wide brown eyes brimming with question marks.

“It’s hard to say,” he answered. "Maybe what she knew was how to get a twelve-year-old boy to listen.”

Freefall Home

It was a long time ago in the early 1950s, and I was visiting great-grandma in Freefall. I watched her peel and slice apples. I must have been pretty small; I stood on a stool to see what she was making.

She nodded at me; her eyes were quick behind the thick lenses of her glasses. Grandma rolled out dough, filled it with apples, and put it in the oven to bake.

Then I went out back on the porch to watch an orange-black garden spider, her web a zigzag of silk, right above my head. The cousins gave me more reasons to notice spiders. My legs were long and thin, and they called me Spider Web. I imagined myself a spider sitting in my parlor awaiting visitors.

In the little town, Freefall, on the edge of the reservation, laughter comes in handy.

Every Sunday went spent the whole day at my grandparents house, and often we stayed until way past my bedtime. I loved being in a house filled with relatives. It meant cousins to play with, lots of cousins. The uncles talked politics, shouting out their rock bottom opinions, while the aunties gossiped and the kids played together like a pack of wild pups.

Although I didn't know what it was called when I was young, I was raised in what is now known as the mixedblood fiddle tradition. The uncles played fiddle and grandma took out her teeth, dropped them into her apron pocket, and played the harmonica. She could step dance too and do the Bluegrass Clog. Often the kitchen was alive with fiddle music, banjo and guitar playing and grandma’s feet tapping.

Grandma was actually my great-grandma. But I didn't know this when I was a kid. She was just grandma to me. I also had two other grandmas, my dad's mother and my mom's mother. I had three grandpa's too, my dad's father, my mother's father and great-grandpa.

Sometimes instead of music, we watched westerns on television. Since grandma and grandpa and dad and I, and all of the aunties and uncles and cousins were all Indians, I thought it was rather funny that the black and white movies on television showed Indians sitting on horses at the rise of a hill, with their faces painted and living in tipis. All of the Indians we knew drove trucks or cars and lived in houses, like we did.

After dinner, a sweetness of cinnamon and steaming apples brought the uncles into the kitchen. “Grandma’s making apple pie.” Somebody said. I’d never tasted apple pie, but felt positive it would be the best dessert ever.

A few minutes later more relatives arrived. Nobody ever went away without eating. The aunties, apron-bound, brought out platters of fried chicken, biscuits crusty on the outside and soft inside and broiled cracked corn, and everyone gathered around the big table. So much food was pushed onto my plate. Afternoon sun poured through the window onto the table. Tiny dust particles were floating in the sunlight.

“Child, you eat like a bird.” Grandma said. “If you don’t eat more than that you’ll never get fat.” My older, round-faced cousins always cleaned their plates. My family thought it was necessary to eat lots of food to grow up the right way. But I couldn’t eat more, so I plainly could never hope to be normal and healthy.

Finally the pies were brought out.

“There won’t be enough pie to go around.” Someone hollered.

I smelled sweet, browned piecrust. My heart pounded. I wondered since I hadn’t eaten very much, maybe I would not get a piece of pie.

A clatter of plates was passed, with a bunch of forks, sugar and cream stirred into coffee. I grabbed my napkin by two corners and shook it out onto my lap and sat on the edge of my chair, my back bony, my elbows sharp, waiting.

Before anyone else, Grandma, all smiles, lifted a large triangle sized piece of apple pie onto my plate, I took a bite, tasted its warm crusty apple goodness, and I felt lucky and special.

First published in Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers Native Realities

Terra Trevor