Terra Trevor

Tomol Evening: California's Indigenous Peoples

When I return from Limuw—Santa Cruz Island—at first, I only wanted natural light. It was past ten when I rinsed the salt water from my hair. Moonlight fell from the open window, a flood of light from above. I was 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 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

Winter Solstice and Becoming Indigenous to Place

For forty-three years I lived near the ocean in an area that made up the traditional Chumash homeland. In those beautiful days our solstice celebrations were rooted in the traditional ways of the Chumash. For the record, I am not California Indian. I’m a mixed-blood, of 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. Three 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 coast of Northern California. Everything is new for me, unfamiliar. I'm walking gently while this Indigenous California landscape teaches me who I am.

Tonight, as we near Winter Solstice, with a December cold 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.

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.

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.

My Journey Toward Less: Essays and Insights Archive

Follow my stories while I stumble along with simplicity, downsizing, and journey moderately minimal.

Race, Ethnicity and My Face

As a mixed-blood woman of Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, and German descent, I came of age understanding that I'm not totally a Native person, and I’m not a white person. I'm a border woman dwelling between the boundaries.

I have light skin, light enough that some people think I’m white. My dad, a Native man, and my mother, a white woman, had me when they were teenagers in 1953.

I grew up in Compton, California. 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 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, and 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 many white Americans. 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 is for 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, and with strong ties to Native America and firmly 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 and Mexican family members.

At age twenty-three, I 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 and my identity.

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 more than four decades my heart and my soul was shaped by my connection to the Korean 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 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 mixed-blood dwelling between the boundaries.

First published in a slightly different form in Santa Clara Review, vol 108 / issue 01.

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.

River, Blood, And Corn Literary Journal: A Community of Voices

As a writer with more than four decades of writing and publishing behind me, I spend a great deal of time working to make sure the diversity in writing I find important will continue. In 2010 River, Blood, And Corn Literary Journal was established and I began collaborating with writers, storytellers and artists, promoting community and strengthening cultures with storytelling, poetry and prose. Our starting point, and our goal, is to honor and continue the work of Lee Francis III, and Geary Hobson, founders of Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers, working to ensure the voices of Native writers and storytellers past, present and future, are heard throughout the world. A variety of writers, backgrounds, communities and viewpoints are presented. Included in our themes are the Elders whose lives informed, instructed, shaped and changed ours.

While our primary focus is Indigenous writers, we have woven writers and artists from a variety of ethnicities and communities into our pages. Perhaps people of many ethnicities, including recent immigrants from throughout the Americas as well as other parts of the world will find something in this collection that will speak to them with respect to issues of race, identity, culture, community, and representation.

Follow along with us.

Terra Trevor, Founding Editor

River, Blood, And Corn Literary Journal: A Community of Voices

Memoir, Migration and This Wilderness in My Blood

My bags were packed and the boxes stacked. We were moving from the city where we lived for forty-three years. We didn’t have a new house to move into, not yet. While we searched for another home we would live in a 26-foot travel trailer on loan to us and parked on land a family member owns in the redwoods in Northern California.

The morning our belongings were loaded into the truck, I walked through the empty house thanking the space, saying goodbye to the home that sheltered my family for three decades. And before I got into my car to make the long drive, I checked my email. The editor at the University of Nebraska Press, sent an email saying she liked the manuscript for my new memoir, We Who Walk the Seven Ways. They were interested in publishing, and asked for revisions.

Oh, for joy. Happiness. And crazy-making. Take on the task of revising my book manuscript when I was in the process of uprooting my life?

Time driving alone in the car settled my thoughts.

When I arrived at sunset I was filled with calm, strength, trust.

The trailer was parked by the barn, in a meadow with other homes nearby. Still, it was more off grid than I expected.

Multiple times each day I walked uphill to the houses where our families live, downhill to the car, up again with groceries, to do laundry, to take a shower. We didn’t have trailer hookups and needed to be mindful of gray and black water waste. But we had electricity, internet, and plenty of cold well water running from the tap. I gained respect for my privileges and felt positive I would become a better person, and I have.

Every day and most nights are bookended with writing. Writing backed against hiking hills with my grandkids and the dogs, or house hunting. I reached wide to be tender, loving, with my husband, and my family. When I write, I go deep. It’s not easy to move between my mind-world and the outer world.

After a day of writing my daughter’s kitchen is the place to be. Not all of our meals are complicated. Yet the days when we cook from scratch, gives us time to focus on gratitude. The dogs are at our feet, watchful, my grandkids help chop, mix, stir, then dash off, lost in play, then return to the kitchen. We clear the day’s clutter off the table, sit down and savor every bite.

Some people sit and meditate in silence. Others climb Kilimanjaro. Along with my 2-mile morning walk in the redwoods, I hiked to and from the trailer often. When we first arrived, the ground was muddy with rain water. Soon yellow, white and purple flowers dotted the earth and my footsteps formed a path. The flower season was short, the weather warmed. Green foxtails appeared, and quickly dried, sticking in my socks. At first, I grumbled about daily supply hikes in the rain or heat, my arms loaded, and then it became my mediation. I enjoyed the journey, paying attention to the earth, sky. Walking mindfully, stepping carefully.

I am thankful for love and shelter, but we are too crowded in the trailer. We brought too much stuff and it's packed into a too small space. I'd planned to bring only what we needed into the trailer. But instead we included all of the things we "might need" but never did need. My friend Stacy referred to this as a “soul polishing” experience. On my low days I cling to her beautiful words. Stripping off the old expectations, shedding, growing, reaching. I look up and see the trees, the beautiful trees all around me.

Eventually we found a tiny place near the ocean, and for the last few days we lived in the trailer, I worked on my memoir.

On my last day writing in the trailer, I opened the window wide. The wind played in the trees and the air was heavy with the scent of mountains and earth. I had the window open to keep me company. I was lonely.

I love being with the people I love, and I am also happy alone, and I am never lonely. Yet for the past week I felt like poor me, I must sit down all alone and write.

Then I started thinking about how the characters in my favorite books are my friends. Relationships I remember long after I finish reading the book. My most loved books leave me feeling the author invited me over for a long chat at her kitchen table. I favor memoirs so intimate I feel myself leaning over the shoulder of the writer, feeling her thoughts and sneaking into her life.

Thinking about the characters in my favorite books opened the window wider for me, and I found the root cause of my loneliness. With revisions nearly completed, already I missed the characters in my memoir.

While writing I had intimate chats, wandering back over time with Marie, Ann, Mary Lou and Irene. Dancing with Irene long after the moon was full, wearing moccasins beaded in colors of sunrise, clouds and blue skies, her buckskin dress swaying. Irene danced the powwow competitions, Women’s Buckskin style, Northern, in the Golden Age category. At seventy-five with her tight jeans, blue-black hair and flirty personality, Irene reminded me so much of my aunt Jo, I had to keep reminding myself that she wasn’t my aunt Josephine.

I missed the flow of these women, the ones with the grandmother faces, walking the seven ways. How they made me laugh, and told me the truth even when it was hard for me to listen. While writing, I brought them all back, made them come alive again. The women who over three decades, lifted me from grief, instructed me in living, and showed me how to age from youth into beauty.

First published in Women Writers, Women's Books

We Who Walk the Seven Ways: A Memoir by Terra Trevor (University of Nebraska Press).

Autumn in Dixon, New Mexico

The land and the places where I have lived have shaped me. It serves as elder and friend. I walk in its grace, feel its solace and hear the stories it tells me.

For many years my long-loved friend lived in Dixon, New Mexico. His door was always open to me. The land where he made his home by the river is an ongoing character in my life.

My friend has finished his walk on earth and has crossed over to the other side. From flesh and blood to souls and songs.

I feel the wind spilling through the red and yellow leaves, and the fine dust from this red earth on my skin, as I walk the good land of the home I carry within.

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.

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.

Native American And Indigenous Studies | Memoir

University of Nebraska Press

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

Pushing up the Sky: A Mother's Story

"Terra Trevor’s ‘Pushing up the Sky’ is a revelation of the struggles and triumphs packed into the hyphens between Korean and Native American and American. From her, we learn that adoption can best be mutual, that the adoptive parent needs acculturation in the child’s ways. With unflinching honesty and unfailing love, Trevor details the risks and heartaches of taking in, the bittersweetness of letting go, and the everlasting bonds that grow between them all. With ‘Pushing up the Sky’, the ‘literature of adoption’ comes of age as literature, worthy of an honored place in the human story."

—Robert Bensen, editor of Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education

New eBook Edition

Unpapered: Writers Consider Native American Identity and Cultural Belonging (University of Nebraska Press)

Edited by Diane Glancy and Linda Rodriguez

I'm honored to have my work included.

Unpapered: Writers Consider Native American Identity and Cultural Belonging is a collection of personal narratives by Indigenous writers exploring the meaning and limits of Native American identity beyond its legal margins. Native heritage is neither simple nor always clearly documented, and citizenship is a legal and political matter of sovereign nations determined by such criteria as blood quantum, tribal rolls, or community involvement. Those who claim a Native cultural identity often have family stories of tenuous ties dating back several generations. Given that tribal enrollment was part of a string of government programs and agreements calculated to quantify and dismiss Native populations, many writers who identify culturally and are recognized as Native Americans do not hold tribal citizenship.

Unpapered charts how current exclusionary tactics began as a response to “pretendians”—non-indigenous people assuming a Native identity for job benefits—and have expanded to an intense patrolling of identity that divides Native communities and has resulted in attacks on peoples’ professional, spiritual, emotional, and physical states. An essential addition to Native discourse, Unpapered shows how social and political ideologies have created barriers for Native people truthfully claiming identities while simultaneously upholding stereotypes.