I Forgot Who I am

I know this may sound funny to some people but I forgot who I am. At least momentarily. This happens from time to time, and most times I don't even realize that it happened until I remember who I am.

I don't look like the majority of Americans today. As a matter of fact my race makes up maybe 1 percent of the population of this land we call home. When I say home I really mean home. My people were the first ones to occupy this territory. For thousands of years my people thrived on this land. My ancestors are buried all over this continent. I guess you can say my roots are buried real deep. So deep at times that others forget they are there.

Pow-wow season has started for us in my little family of six. For several months now we had gone back to the grind of daily living. We put our roots behind us and blended into the rest of society. It was time to put away our feathers and hang up our regalia. The season started a little later for us this year. But no bother, because we don't realize what we are missing until we attend our first pow-wow of the year.

That is when the reality of who we, my children and I sets in. I am full blood native, my husband is white, Scottish to be exact. Our children of course are mixed. Growing up on the reservation enabled me to always remember who I am. But I didn't always like what I saw going on in our own little Indian world. Things were not perky and rosy. We didn't live in teepees, we didn't ride horses. We spoke English as well as anybody else, and we attended the same schools as children of other races, only we were treated differently from the start.

I attended my first year, kindergarten in public school. I don't remember much about it. First thru fourth were spent in parochial school. My mother was fed up with the little credit we were given in the public schools. Those years were fun because my family was kind of the token Indian for the school, without the stereotypical myth that we were academically challenged because we were Native. It is in this school that I learned to love every race. Yet at the same time my race was still being viewed in the history books as the inferior race.

My best years were in the Indian run school. Chief Leschi elementary. It actually started out as a summer program to bring the Native youth back to our roots. It went so well they decided to make it full time school. That was in the seventies, a real tough time for the Indian people of Washington State. While being taught about who we were and why we were there, the rest of society was trying to take away every once of respect we had left. It was here I learned about the true tragedy of the American Indian people. It was here I learned about racial hate and how hard it can be, yet at the same time received the teaching I would need. My roots were planted real deep here. Later I would have to dig them up just to be happy. I think our elders and parents knew that, that is why they put us in this school.

Seventh through twelfth saw me through public school again. Only this time it was harder because now I knew what society really thought about Indian children. My mother was up at the school on a daily basis to straighten out differences between my brothers and their teachers. Because the tribes on coast of Puget Sound were fish eaters, my mother had to get in the face of a teacher one day when he made a comment to my brother that he should drop out of school like the rest of the Indians and go fish on the river. While fishing was not a bad thing, what upset my mom was the fact that this teacher wasn't giving my brother credit for having the ability to do anything else but fish. My Indian brother that gave these teachers so much trouble now runs the Swinomish Indian Casino on our home reservation. Does he fish? No. Does he have an education? Yes. He is a graduate of the University of Washington along with his Native wife whom he met in college. Stereotypes can't hinder us if we don't let them.

In high school I didn't want to be Indian anymore. Too much bad medicine going on as far as I was concerned. Too much drinking, too much drugs, too much death. By the time I hit high school there was so much death under the Native bridge I didn't want to be apart of it any more. There seemed to be no way out of this cycle of death on the reservation unless you immersed yourself into white society completely. Which I pretty much did. All my friends were white by the time I graduated. I remember going out with my white friends one night to cruz for guys. We were hanging out at the waterfront the popular spot when a car of good-looking boys pulled up to talk to my friend. When I walked over to see what was going on they looked at me and asked if I was Indian. When I said yes, they pulled away without one more word. How embarrassing that moment was. Not even my group of friends could disguise the color of my skin and the color of my hair.

I knew well the hate people had for my people, and it was easier to pretend I was someone else than it would have been to try and change society’s view on my people. I guess what hurt the most was the fact that my people were proving to be what society had claimed they were. A bunch of drunken Indians, with nowhere to go but the river. By now those real Native roots were way down under ground and I didn't want to pull them up. I guess it's because it wasn't time for them to sprout yet.

Not long after high school I fell in love and got married, to a white man. I didn’t marry him because he was white but I did by this time forget I was Indian. Although he knew I was Indian. He said he had always wanted to marry an Indian woman. From the time he was a little boy. I guess it mattered to him, yet I still couldn’t figure out why. Today I look at our children and can see his reasoning.

We stayed on the inner city reservation for about 4 years. Struggling to survive the day-to-day grind. I held a couple of jobs, mostly food restaurants. My favorite was Jc Penneys. I had gotten the job in 88. I was so proud that I had made it to the big time. I was in women’s clothing sales!

I was there for 21 days when they let me go. I cried and was so upset that I couldn’t even talk to my husband when I called him to come and pick me up at the store. When he got there he asked me why I had been fired. I told him I didn’t know why, they just said I wasn’t working out. Just a day before several of the woman who work there had told me I was the best hire they had seen in a long time. My husband was so outraged he drove me back to the store, walked me into the office and made me ask for the personnel manager, the man who fired me. When we got into his office I asked him who had made the decision I was no good. He stammered for a second or two then pointed to a chart on the wall listing about 20 floor supervisors. I looked at the chart and did not recognize a name on the wall except for one, and even I new she hadn’t been on the floor with me to see me work. I asked if he had talked with the people I had worked with in the past 21 days. He again pointed at the chart. I said “ I know none but one of those people, I want to know that you have talked to someone that has worked with me”. I told him I was a good worker and I knew it and that he was making a big mistake. He said he would go and personally check with these people but felt he was in the right and would get back with me in a day or two. In the mean time he told me that if I was as good as I said I was then I should have no problem getting a job at another department store and that would prove him wrong. I said I didn’t want to work at another store, that I liked this store and that if things didn’t go that way I would be seeing an attorney real soon.

The next day I received a call from the store telling me I got my job back and I could come back to work on my regular schedule. I never received an apology but I did receive hoorays from other employees for having the guts to stand up to the big guys. My husband has always been convinced this was racially motivated, and actually is the one that wanted to bring a lawsuit against the store for the hurt they had inflicted on me. But I wasn’t about to go crying about injustice because that would only rip out the roots before I was ready to deal with them.

I worked at this job for seven months when I received “customer service award” for the month of February. That is for the district, not just the store. I had done it, I had proved him wrong and in his own store. But I honestly believe had I not been with a man that was so proud of his own heritage as well as his wife’s I would not have had the guts to do what I did.

In August of 1990 we had our first child, a beautiful baby girl. Things were still going rough for us financially so in May of 1992 we uprooted and moved to Acworth Georgia. In August of that year we had our first son.

I remained home with the kids in our single wide two-bedroom trailer while my husband went to work at a local rv dealership. The money still was not good but at least he had a job and we had a place to live. It was real easy to not be Indian at this time because there were so few around to remind me of who I was.

I became very active in a local Christian fellowship. Became part of the worship team and was active in children’s ministry. I had the opportunity to attend some college level seminary courses while attending church. I thought I had a pretty good set up going on. I even had held two jobs at local daycares during this time. Believing my ministry was to children. Later I would realize that all this wanting to do good for others was hurting my own children. A lesson well learned, and sure to not be repeated again.

The church broke up after six years and everyone kind of went their own way. I was a little hurt over the fact because now I was left with out a family again. At least a church family.

Just shortly before the breakup I noticed some roots popping up in my life. And these roots held much pain. Not just for me but for the Native American Indian. I had always been one that didn’t believe in crying over spilt milk figuring it was in the past. Why cry over something you can’t change. So when I started to get choked up watching Geronimo on TV. And The Native Americans by TBS I was shocked. What is going on here?

I had also run into what I felt was a rode block in my relationship with God. I was at a dead-end and couldn’t seem to get anywhere. One day while I was praying I heard this little voice in my heart say “ You through away your heritage and your culture, I never asked you to do that. Ask for it back” I knew at that moment that God wanted me to be Indian. That is what He had made me and this is what I had to be.

That one brief moment in time changed everything I thought was important and what I thought was expendable. I was Indian and it was time to pull up the roots and replant them in a spot they would flourish and reflect the beauty God had intended them too.

Over the next few years things took off for me in my personal and emotional life. I went through some counseling to help me deal with life issues that I think we all face no matter the color of skin. And then I had to deal with issues that only Native people have to deal with. God put in me a heart to love my people and enabled me to experience the pain and sorrow that still lives within Native people today. My attitude of “get over it and get on” now is “ I know it hurts I can feel the pain. What can we do together to make this better? Let’s heal the pain!”

I was given the chance to feel the hearts of a wounded people, my people. But it took a lot of running before I would face up to it.

Through all this I started dancing at pow-wows. I’ll never forget my first grand-entry. This is the beginning ceremony in a pow-wow. Where all the dancers make entry into the dance circle. I had tears in my eyes as I watched everyone line up. I knew deep within my heart that the only reason we were here to do this is because the extermination process had failed. And that we had a Creator that loved us.

We now have 4 children and each one is going to know the heritage that they carry. Scottish as well as Native. In the Georgia area Natives are few because of the Cherokee removal in the 1830’s. History is not one to be proud of in this part of the country. I suppose that is why so few people want to talk about what really happened here. Yet at the same time about every person you meet claims to have Cherokee blood somewhere down the ancestral tree. It is usually the great, great, great grandmother. While some of these claims are real I can’t help but wonder if some of it is just wishful thinking on the part of someone that glamorizes what it means to be Indian.

I know what it means to be Indian and I tried to run from it. I know many others that have done the same thing. So it strikes me as funny when I see someone trying to claim something I despised much of my life. Today I don’t despise being Indian anymore because today I have seen my peoples plite from all sides. Only by Gods grace have I been blessed to see and understand so much.

I once went to see a production called “Spirit” put on by Peter Buffet and Native performers and traditional dancers. I was so moved by the production because I felt it was so much of what I was about. Being Indian, forgetting who I am, and struggling to find a way home to happiness. We were given wonderful balcony seats so we could see the show from above. I was so excited until we got to our seats. I got in and sat down with my husband, his mother and our children. As the show was beginning I noticed that the people seated to our left and to our right as well as in front and back of us some how knew eachother. They were all as white as can be but had feathers in there hair. I found myself becoming annoyed at these people and at their presumption at dressing Indian, made them Indian. By the time we left the show I was so disgusted at the whole thing I just wanted to go home.

Later I would understand my disgust. I realized that my anger was not at these people. But at myself for being Indian. All my life I tried to be someone else, not wanting to be a Native or associated with the Native American Indian. And here was a bunch of people doing all they could to be what I was. I remember thinking if they really understood the things the Native people had to endure just to exist they wouldn’t be putting those feathers in their hair. I realized that the problem was not with these white people wanting to be Indian, it was about me not wanting to be Indian once again.

How could I after all this time still have self-hate welling up inside of me? Why did I once again have to face the issue of color, my color? Or was I experiencing the shame of generations past? Something that was burrowed into my hereditary memory. All the pain of my people came back to my own heart. I felt the cry of the peace chiefs as they were betrayed into horrid concentration type camps along with their dying people, helpless to relieve them of their pain and hunger. I felt the agony of the alcoholic brother and sister as they struggled to hide their unimagined pain in a bottle. The whimpers of a sexually abused child in the government funded boarding schools that housed only Indian children. The cry of the mothers as they watched all hopes for their little babies crushed at Wounded Knee and Sandcreek. The hidden pain and sorrow, shame and regret at being an Indian woman would surface in my soul once again.

Sometimes it’s just easier to put all these things aside and pretend like they never happened. It’s easy to say, “That was long time ago, that has nothing to do with me.” It’s so much easier to forget who you are when faced with these memories. I know they may not be my direct memories, but somewhere in my soul cries a distant ancestor. Pain was so real for this person. This person could have been me. Because I am my father’s child. I am the child of an Indian man and woman. I look like that mother that lost her child at Sandcreek. My father looks like that Chief that was betrayed at the treaty table. My mother was the alcoholic woman in agony. All of these things I am because this is the blood that I carry in my veins. I am a reproduction of generations past.

My mother has a saying that goes like this “We are not responsible for what happened to us, but we are responsible for making ourselves well”. This saying I carry with me now. I am responsible for making myself well. So when I find myself in times of shame over my identity I remember that these things that happened to my people were not their fault. But now I must do what I can to heal the pain.

Someday my children will not feel the pain that I feel. That pain will be replaced with dignity. In and of itself Dignity restored to my people from Creator Himself. Dignity as we walk in the fullness of who God made us to be.

Yesterday I forgot who I was. Today I grasp onto who I am. I am Indian, I am whole.

Jacqueline L Gordon

Swinochip7@aol.com