I used to go to Pow Wows a lot while my father was still living. Every time I hear someone white, covered in dead animals, saying their grandmother was a Cherokee princess I just recoil. I realize they mean well and want to embrace a culture they may have some connection to but it rankles — and I am obviously not full-blood. Yes, I am aware I have blondish/red hair and greenish/blue eyes. But my father did not. He had hair so black it was almost blue and eyes so blue as to nearly be unbelievable. With his red skin personally I think he was unbeatable and I can certainly see why Mama fell for him. Having German and Choctaw ancestry, he “passed” unwittingly for white with his deep blue eyes and Germanic last name. Men said they envied his “golf course tan” even though he never played golf a day in his life. With Daddy gone I am not sure how much of his story he would want me to tell. But I will say this: my world changed at 15 when my grandmother died — and so did Daddy’s. I always knew Grandma spoke with broken English; I always knew she did not look white. But it was never talked about. Secrets came out at the funeral; stories of the family blood being Indian. I always wondered how Daddy felt, at 53, finding all this out. What a shock to his entire identity it must have been; how so many pieces of his early childhood’s puzzle must have finally fallen into place. American society made it so shameful to be an Indian my grandmother took it to her grave. NO other race of people has had to endure what Native Peoples have: forced sterilization of women even into the 1970’s, baby stealing, mass genocide, concentration camps called reservations, boarding schools where children were beaten if they spoke their native language. They had bounties placed on their their scalps, the U.S. government deliberately gave them small pox infected blankets, women and children were shot in the back and left to rot in piles, and their lands were stolen under the guise of “manifest destiny”. Treaties are still being broken, and now there is nuclear dumping and fracking on Indian land. When will it end?! As a young teenager I immersed myself in my newly discovered heritage and Daddy seemed relieved to be encouraged to do so as well. My mother loved us and embraced it with equal enthusiasm. And so we we were warmly welcomed home into the American Indian community. We learned together about Grand Entries and Flag Songs, and soon my father became a proud member of the American Indian veterans. It’s so funny, he never could pronounce any other language but Choctaw just sounded right on his tongue in a way my more-white-than-red self could not achieve. We learned about the Northern drum and the Southern drum; snake dances, corn dances, grass dances, and more. We ate fry bread and suddenly Daddy began opening up about a life he lived but did not fully understand until this came to light. He passed away when I was 28. Simply standing next to my father people knew I was legit. But now all I had was my tiny, red-haired, white, widowed mother who kept a love of her husband’s culture long after he had passed. So imagine poor Mr. Birmingham, who looked me in the eyes with a forthright steadiness as I told him my grandmother was Choctaw. (He was probably thinking at least I didn’t say Cherokee princess.) He never revealed his own heritage but seemed to be summing me up somehow. I asked if I could get my picture with him — something I had never done in my whole life. I do not read the “star” magazines or watch the celebrity “news” shows, but I confess I was giddy to see him unexpectedly at a local pow wow. I felt so embarrassed. Embarrassed that I did not look Indian and wondered how many “wanna-bes” he had endured. But I stood my ground and shared my heritage just the same. To not have done so would have dishonored my father, and all those who came before whom they tried to wipe away. I saw this picture in a time hop on Facebook and decided to write about it. I have had full blood friends who were Comanche, Apache, Navajo, Pueblo, Hopi, Zuni, Choctaw, Seminole, Kiowa, Chippewa, Sauk and Fox, Winnebago, Iroquois, Lakota, Salish, and yes, Cherokee plus others who were mixed with several nations. It saddens me to see languages, crafts, and old ways dying. People know the dances but they’re not exactly sure of the meaning behind some of them. They do things that were passed down but do not fully know why. An Indian friend of mine who got shipped off the rez as part of a government “integration” program knew the American Indian activist and actor Russell Means well. Among other things, Russell was the author of “Where White Men Fear to Tread.” In his book he said:
“Golden eagles don`t mate with bald eagles, deer don`t mate with antelope, gray wolves don`t mate with red wolves. Just look at domesticated animals, at mongrel dogs, and mixed breed horses, and you`ll know the Great Mystery didn`t intend them to be that way. We weakened the species and introduced disease by mixing what should be kept seperate. Among humans, intermarriage weakens the respect people have for themselves and for their traditions. It undermines clarity of spirit and mind.”
We cannot go back, nor can we rewrite history. One thing I know I CAN do is to not hide my heritage out of embarrassment — ironically not embarrassment of being Indian; embarrassment of not looking it.
