BACK UP BLOG

This blog is a backup for American Indian Adoptees blog
There might be some duplicate posts prior to 2020. I am trying to delete them when I find them. Sorry!

SURVEY FOR ALL FIRST NATIONS ADOPTEES

SURVEY FOR ALL FIRST NATIONS ADOPTEES
ADOPTEES - we are doing a COUNT

If you need support

Support Info: If you are a Survivor and need emotional support, a national crisis line is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week: Residential School Survivor Support Line: 1-866-925-4419. Additional Health Support Information: Emotional, cultural, and professional support services are also available to Survivors and their families through the Indian Residential Schools Resolution Health Support Program. Services can be accessed on an individual, family, or group basis.” These & regional support phone numbers are found at https://nctr.ca/contact/survivors/ . MY EMAIL: tracelara@pm.me

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Road Trip: BOOK TOUR

I hear this: “Oh, you wrote a book? When do you hit the road to read it?”
            I plan to share the story about American Indian adoptees with my hometown of Superior, Wisconsin and Duluth, Minnesota on my “book tour” next week. 
            Hardly anyone knows this story, unless you’re an American Indian adoptee or an American Indian family who lost a child to adoption during the Indian Adoption Projects.
            Back in 2008 I read from my manuscript at the Wisconsin Book Festival in Madison, Wisconsin. My friend Mark Anthony Rolo (Bad River Ojibwe) read from his book The Wonder Bull and we had a great big audience with great big questions. One young adoptee came up to me afterwards and said he’d never heard anyone say that adoptees have a “gratitude attitude” which we’re expected to display on demand, our entire life. And he thanked me!
            I told him, “Trust me, when we’re adopted, it’s expected. Once you move past gratitude, you’ll find yourself in unchartered waters, torn between acceptance, anger, love and despair…you might even have to break a few laws to find your own parents.”  This young man was afraid to move forward and open his adoption because he imagined it would hurt his adoptive mother.
            How perplexing, I thought, since I’d been there myself, as I handed him my email address. I advised him to be totally prepared and do his adoption search without telling anyone in his family. I know. I wish every day I didn’t have to say this. 
           
If you’ve read One Small Sacrifice, you know that many parts of the book are truly painful.  My 89-year-old neighbor Karolyn read my book and calls the Indian Adoption Project an atrocity and an outrage.
            What my hand wrote down at 4 a.m. – it was the best I could do. Every page was a canvas, a place to exorcise trauma and stir up ghosts.
            Slowly, the topic of adoption has shifted away from what I call “the gratitude attitude” to a more realistic discussion. Simply look at the numerous articulate writings by adoptees out there. This topic has grown up as we have grown up. Adoptees have sprouted new wings. Adoptees just need other people to hear us and read us. Perhaps then archaic atrocious adoption laws might change.
            So I’m planning a road trip. I am not managed or sponsored by a giant publisher…I’m simply a journalist who scoured adoption history and blended in some personal experience for a book.  
            That is really where the road trip began.  I had to look for strangers. I had to stop being afraid I might hurt someone if I found my family. I had to stop worrying how I might make people uncomfortable. I had to stop being afraid of the truth. 
             I decided I had to grow up.

            Trace’s reading schedule:
            Superior Public Library (on Tower & Belnap) Superior, Wisconsin, Wed., Sept. 29, 6:30 p.m.
            Jitters Coffee, Superior Street, Duluth, Minnesota, Friday, October 1, 5 p.m.
             (Trace will blog again after her road trip!) 

Check out my friend Mark's new book: 

Friday, September 17, 2010

Excerpt from One Small Sacrifice

New bookmark

THE JOURNEY
Who are you?
Stop and think about this… Who are you?
Think about your parents, your grandparents and great-grandparents, who you knew when you were growing up. Remember the stories of when, where, even how you were born.
Now… imagine you disappear, you’re erased, no longer a part of your family history and genealogy. How would you feel? Grateful? I don’t think so.
Now … imagine an adoptee who doesn’t know who they are … nothing, anything, zilch… Can you imagine looking in the mirror, not knowing anything? How might that feel?
A fairytale?
You think?
“Adopted people” are the only people in the world without free or unlimited access to their personal history…. we simply vanish into thin air.
This decision was made for us. Someone decided this long ago. Someone decided adoptees were better off not knowing anything. Someone decided this for me – I’d be fine, never knowing my identity.
Wait … I was dead without my identity, without my name. I can’t live like this.
My adoptive family had their stories, their names, their parents and grandparent’s names, where they were from, how they lived and died, everything.
Like my adoptive mom and dad, many families are very proud of their stories. There could be bank robbers or horse thieves or rich barons or fancy politicians. Mine could be, too.
To tell my story, I needed more than their story. I needed my own.

To contact Trace: email: tracedemeyer@yahoo.com

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Ain’t Life Crazy?

Mind Masons

            By Trace Hentz (blog editor)

Words, words, words. That’s what a blog is, right? Words.
            
 Yet I don’t think of this as writing words but sharing actual experience, my adoption experience, my American Indian experience, and my overall ain’t-life-crazy experience.
             
Life is crazy when you think about it. Lots of ideas became American products which started out as patents and experiments: for example – adoption was an experiment and now we’re finding out for those who were the recipients of being adopted aren’t quite tickled pink about their experience. Few in the adoption business want to change anything. They prefer to be known as “do-gooders.”
             
Secrecy permeates lots of experiments. I put this Albert S. Wei’s quote in my book: “My problem is secrecy. I believe that perpetually secret adoptions assure un-accountability and lack of transparency. And secret adoptions are only the tip of the iceberg. The secrecy permeates the process: secret identities, secret parents, secret records, secret foster care providers, secret social workers, secret judges and lawyers (all their identities are sealed, typically), secret physicians, secret statistics and, in the case of some adoption-oriented organizations, secret budgets and secret boards of directors. In any social practice, when people in positions of power hide behind masks, one can be pretty sure that they have something to hide.”  Wei is special advisor to the Bastard Nation Executive Committee.
            
 I had no idea how much was secret. Without the internet and light bulbs, I might still be in the dark.
            
 I write lots of words no one will ever see or read. Why? Writing has been a trusted friend and I consider some of my ideas secret.
             
Writing is a way to work things out in my head. A way to reason, looking at things one way and then another. If I find out it’s a bad idea, I change my mind.
             
Too bad those who could change things for adoptees haven’t had this happen yet.

Ain’t Life Crazy?




Mind Masons




            By Trace Hentz (blog editor)



Words, words, words. That’s what a blog is, right? Words.




            

 Yet I don’t think of this as writing words but sharing actual experience, my adoption experience, my American Indian experience, and my overall ain’t-life-crazy experience.


             

Life is crazy when you think about it. Lots of ideas became American products which started out as patents and experiments: for example – adoption was an experiment and now we’re finding out for those who were the recipients of being adopted aren’t quite tickled pink about their experience. Few in the adoption business want to change anything. They prefer to be known as “do-gooders.”


             

Secrecy permeates lots of experiments. I put this Albert S. Wei’s quote in my book: “My problem is secrecy. I believe that perpetually secret adoptions assure un-accountability and lack of transparency. And secret adoptions are only the tip of the iceberg. The secrecy permeates the process: secret identities, secret parents, secret records, secret foster care providers, secret social workers, secret judges and lawyers (all their identities are sealed, typically), secret physicians, secret statistics and, in the case of some adoption-oriented organizations, secret budgets and secret boards of directors. In any social practice, when people in positions of power hide behind masks, one can be pretty sure that they have something to hide.”  Wei is special advisor to the Bastard Nation Executive Committee.


            

 I had no idea how much was secret. Without the internet and light bulbs, I might still be in the dark.


            

 I write lots of words no one will ever see or read. Why? Writing has been a trusted friend and I consider some of my ideas secret.


             

Writing is a way to work things out in my head. A way to reason, looking at things one way and then another. If I find out it’s a bad idea, I change my mind.


             

Too bad those who could change things for adoptees haven’t had this happen yet.

Ain’t Life Crazy?

Mind Masons

            By Trace Hentz (blog editor)

Words, words, words. That’s what a blog is, right? Words.
            
 Yet I don’t think of this as writing words but sharing actual experience, my adoption experience, my American Indian experience, and my overall ain’t-life-crazy experience.
             
Life is crazy when you think about it. Lots of ideas became American products which started out as patents and experiments: for example – adoption was an experiment and now we’re finding out for those who were the recipients of being adopted aren’t quite tickled pink about their experience. Few in the adoption business want to change anything. They prefer to be known as “do-gooders.”
             
Secrecy permeates lots of experiments. I put this Albert S. Wei’s quote in my book: “My problem is secrecy. I believe that perpetually secret adoptions assure un-accountability and lack of transparency. And secret adoptions are only the tip of the iceberg. The secrecy permeates the process: secret identities, secret parents, secret records, secret foster care providers, secret social workers, secret judges and lawyers (all their identities are sealed, typically), secret physicians, secret statistics and, in the case of some adoption-oriented organizations, secret budgets and secret boards of directors. In any social practice, when people in positions of power hide behind masks, one can be pretty sure that they have something to hide.”  Wei is special advisor to the Bastard Nation Executive Committee.
            
 I had no idea how much was secret. Without the internet and light bulbs, I might still be in the dark.
            
 I write lots of words no one will ever see or read. Why? Writing has been a trusted friend and I consider some of my ideas secret.
             
Writing is a way to work things out in my head. A way to reason, looking at things one way and then another. If I find out it’s a bad idea, I change my mind.
             
Too bad those who could change things for adoptees haven’t had this happen yet.

Ain’t Life Crazy?

Mind Masons

            Words, words, words. That’s what a blog is, right? Words.
            Yet I don’t think of this as writing words but sharing actual experience, my adoption experience, my American Indian experience, and my overall ain’t-life-crazy experience.
            Life is crazy when you think about it. Lots of ideas became American products which started out as patents and experiments: for example – adoption was an experiment and now we’re finding out for those who were the recipients of being adopted aren’t quite tickled pink about their experience. Few in the adoption business want to change anything. They prefer to be known as “do-gooders.”
            Secrecy permeates lots of experiments. I put this Albert S. Wei’s quote in my book: “My problem is secrecy. I believe that perpetually secret adoptions assure un-accountability and lack of transparency. And secret adoptions are only the tip of the iceberg. The secrecy permeates the process: secret identities, secret parents, secret records, secret foster care providers, secret social workers, secret judges and lawyers (all their identities are sealed, typically), secret physicians, secret statistics and, in the case of some adoption-oriented organizations, secret budgets and secret boards of directors. In any social practice, when people in positions of power hide behind masks, one can be pretty sure that they have something to hide.”  Wei is special advisor to the Bastard Nation Executive Committee.
            I had no idea how much was secret. Without the internet and light bulbs, I might still be in the dark.
            I write lots of words no one will ever see or read. Why? Writing has been a trusted friend and I consider some of my ideas secret.
            Writing is a way to work things out in my head. A way to reason, looking at things one way and then another. If I find out it’s a bad idea, I change my mind.
            Too bad those who could change things for adoptees haven’t had this happen yet.

Ain’t Life Crazy?

Mind Masons

            Words, words, words. That’s what a blog is, right? Words.
            Yet I don’t think of this as writing words but sharing actual experience, my adoption experience, my American Indian experience, and my overall ain’t-life-crazy experience.
            Life is crazy when you think about it. Lots of ideas became American products which started out as patents and experiments: for example – adoption was an experiment and now we’re finding out for those who were the recipients of being adopted aren’t quite tickled pink about their experience. Few in the adoption business want to change anything. They prefer to be known as “do-gooders.”
            Secrecy permeates lots of experiments. I put this Albert S. Wei’s quote in my book: “My problem is secrecy. I believe that perpetually secret adoptions assure un-accountability and lack of transparency. And secret adoptions are only the tip of the iceberg. The secrecy permeates the process: secret identities, secret parents, secret records, secret foster care providers, secret social workers, secret judges and lawyers (all their identities are sealed, typically), secret physicians, secret statistics and, in the case of some adoption-oriented organizations, secret budgets and secret boards of directors. In any social practice, when people in positions of power hide behind masks, one can be pretty sure that they have something to hide.”  Wei is special advisor to the Bastard Nation Executive Committee.
            I had no idea how much was secret. Without the internet and light bulbs, I might still be in the dark.
            I write lots of words no one will ever see or read. Why? Writing has been a trusted friend and I consider some of my ideas secret.
            Writing is a way to work things out in my head. A way to reason, looking at things one way and then another. If I find out it’s a bad idea, I change my mind.
            Too bad those who could change things for adoptees haven’t had this happen yet.

Ain’t Life Crazy?

Mind Masons

            Words, words, words. That’s what a blog is, right? Words.
            Yet I don’t think of this as writing words but sharing actual experience, my adoption experience, my American Indian experience, and my overall ain’t-life-crazy experience.
            Life is crazy when you think about it. Lots of ideas became American products which started out as patents and experiments: for example – adoption was an experiment and now we’re finding out for those who were the recipients of being adopted aren’t quite tickled pink about their experience. Few in the adoption business want to change anything. They prefer to be known as “do-gooders.”
            Secrecy permeates lots of experiments. I put this Albert S. Wei’s quote in my book: “My problem is secrecy. I believe that perpetually secret adoptions assure un-accountability and lack of transparency. And secret adoptions are only the tip of the iceberg. The secrecy permeates the process: secret identities, secret parents, secret records, secret foster care providers, secret social workers, secret judges and lawyers (all their identities are sealed, typically), secret physicians, secret statistics and, in the case of some adoption-oriented organizations, secret budgets and secret boards of directors. In any social practice, when people in positions of power hide behind masks, one can be pretty sure that they have something to hide.”  Wei is special advisor to the Bastard Nation Executive Committee.
            I had no idea how much was secret. Without the internet and light bulbs, I might still be in the dark.
            I write lots of words no one will ever see or read. Why? Writing has been a trusted friend and I consider some of my ideas secret.
            Writing is a way to work things out in my head. A way to reason, looking at things one way and then another. If I find out it’s a bad idea, I change my mind.
            Too bad those who could change things for adoptees haven’t had this happen yet.

Ain’t Life Crazy?

Mind Masons

            Words, words, words. That’s what a blog is, right? Words.
            Yet I don’t think of this as writing words but sharing actual experience, my adoption experience, my American Indian experience, and my overall ain’t-life-crazy experience.
            Life is crazy when you think about it. Lots of ideas became American products which started out as patents and experiments: for example – adoption was an experiment and now we’re finding out for those who were the recipients of being adopted aren’t quite tickled pink about their experience. Few in the adoption business want to change anything. They prefer to be known as “do-gooders.”
            Secrecy permeates lots of experiments. I put this Albert S. Wei’s quote in my book: “My problem is secrecy. I believe that perpetually secret adoptions assure un-accountability and lack of transparency. And secret adoptions are only the tip of the iceberg. The secrecy permeates the process: secret identities, secret parents, secret records, secret foster care providers, secret social workers, secret judges and lawyers (all their identities are sealed, typically), secret physicians, secret statistics and, in the case of some adoption-oriented organizations, secret budgets and secret boards of directors. In any social practice, when people in positions of power hide behind masks, one can be pretty sure that they have something to hide.”  Wei is special advisor to the Bastard Nation Executive Committee.
            I had no idea how much was secret. Without the internet and light bulbs, I might still be in the dark.
            I write lots of words no one will ever see or read. Why? Writing has been a trusted friend and I consider some of my ideas secret.
            Writing is a way to work things out in my head. A way to reason, looking at things one way and then another. If I find out it’s a bad idea, I change my mind.
            Too bad those who could change things for adoptees haven’t had this happen yet.

Ain’t Life Crazy?

Mind Masons

            Words, words, words. That’s what a blog is, right? Words.
            Yet I don’t think of this as writing words but sharing actual experience, my adoption experience, my American Indian experience, and my overall ain’t-life-crazy experience.
            Life is crazy when you think about it. Lots of ideas became American products which started out as patents and experiments: for example – adoption was an experiment and now we’re finding out for those who were the recipients of being adopted aren’t quite tickled pink about their experience. Few in the adoption business want to change anything. They prefer to be known as “do-gooders.”
            Secrecy permeates lots of experiments. I put this Albert S. Wei’s quote in my book: “My problem is secrecy. I believe that perpetually secret adoptions assure un-accountability and lack of transparency. And secret adoptions are only the tip of the iceberg. The secrecy permeates the process: secret identities, secret parents, secret records, secret foster care providers, secret social workers, secret judges and lawyers (all their identities are sealed, typically), secret physicians, secret statistics and, in the case of some adoption-oriented organizations, secret budgets and secret boards of directors. In any social practice, when people in positions of power hide behind masks, one can be pretty sure that they have something to hide.”  Wei is special advisor to the Bastard Nation Executive Committee.
            I had no idea how much was secret. Without the internet and light bulbs, I might still be in the dark.
            I write lots of words no one will ever see or read. Why? Writing has been a trusted friend and I consider some of my ideas secret.
            Writing is a way to work things out in my head. A way to reason, looking at things one way and then another. If I find out it’s a bad idea, I change my mind.
            Too bad those who could change things for adoptees haven’t had this happen yet.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Living a mystery


Stork
           Grief grows when someone’s missing. My “someone” was Helen, the woman who grew me in her womb. Helen decided to sign me away to be raised by total strangers.
            What type of blind faith was that? What was required for her to decide to make me an orphan? How could she know I’d be safe? Someone must have told her.
            Maybe the Catholics convinced her. The Catholics arranged everything for her and for me.
             Why doesn’t America know being orphaned hurts the baby in a profound way? Prisons and psychiatric wards are filled with orphans and adoptees, some of the scariest and most violent offenders. Why haven’t we heard about this? 
            Losing Helen did hurt me in a profound way, but not enough to kill someone.
            Adoption was an experiment. Remember this. No one really knew how closed adoption would turn out. Our mothers never imagined how this could hurt us as much as it hurt them. Mothers were assured giving us up would be ok, and we'd be better off. 
             CUB Mothers are rewriting history and fighting to get us back and fighting adoption secrecy. (CUB means concerned united birthparents). An important essential book on America's unregulated adoption industry is Stork Market (there is a link on this blog). Riben's book will open your eyes in ways you cannot imagine.
            Then I find out our government forgets to count adoptees.  As a journalist, I was disappointed but not surprised to find out their U.S. figures are not recent, reliable or computed systematically. We’re not that important, I guess.
            Writing One Small Sacrifice, I was confronted with one reality then another. I woke up. I lived in a mystery novel. I can say now with certainty, it was an adventure solving the mystery.
             With obvious fear, I opened my adoption, even if it got me banished from my adoptive family or arrested for criminally trespassing in my own family tree!
            What lawmakers decide about unsealing adoption records in 2010, if they were not adopted and if they know their names, they may not get it. Expecting an adoptee to be ok with living a mystery is crazy.
            When you think about this, it’s obvious. The tree roots of trauma takes its hold in children. Orphans roots are scarred. My roots are scarred.
            I don’t think it should be so hard to find the woman who grew you in her womb. I don’t think an adoptee should be denied their name and their family tree and their relatives.
            I think about a lot of things but I pray that moms and dads across the planet can raise their own children and those children become strong and healthy moms and dads. 






** An adoptee wrote on Facebook: My sister and I have so many issues that a shrink wouldn't know where to start… Another wrote: I shut down my emotions at a very early age. Because I agreed with them, I wrote Ghost Shell and posted it on this blog on July 1.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Scraps - by Loud Blood


Trace wishes to thank Loud Blood for her wonderful guest blog... 





(excerpt from upcoming book, "Loud Blood")


I have been fed, clothed, sheltered, yet, my spirit must live off cultural scraps that I go begging where Native people gather -- a story, a song, a weave, a smile... where I feel a resonance, filled, soothed, but sadly, also invisible, broken, culturally orphaned; lonely. 





Will I forever be a guest among my own people?   Who will celebrate my joys and triumphs with me?  Who will mourn my sorrows? Who will laugh at some shared history?  Not my adoptive family -- our non-connection continued and became stronger in adulthood. I want to join in the Native community, to participate, to serve and share what I have and to receive recognition and feel valued.  But even on this side, there are those Indians that I thought were friends who walk past blankly in fuller-blood situations, or those who look at me in public settings with flash card eyes as they calculate their racist arithmetic with no thought of how they’ve adopted the blood-quantum mentality constructed by the colonists.  I yearn to feel welcome somehow.  I need to heal myself enough to come forward to work, for otherwise I remain immobilized, hollow, invisible. 





I can hear the critical thoughts of others; I think them myself -- Get over it.  Geesh, move on.  Stop feeling sorry for yourself. 





I’d love to.  The same as someone uses crutches when they are injured, or someone wears bandages after surgery, or someone wears glasses to compensate for not being able to see on one’s own; I am doing the best I can under the circumstances.  But I need to be my own auntie and tell myself, ‘Chin up.  Get over it.  Move on with life.’  This I can do.  It’s the smiles, nods, and hugs that are harder.  My grandmother’s spirit did come with me, but she cannot hold me connected alone.  When I am acknowledged with a smile, a hug, a nod -- these small acts mean so much to me, reminding me that I am here, less hollow, less invisible. 





I must expect nothing.  This is not my business, not my community.   So what am I doing here?  What is the draw?  It used to be my honeymoon, my infancy of native identity.  What didn’t take hold?  What connections failed?  I am not connected to these people, we are connected as human beings, but not as relatives.  I am a guest.





Because my mother was taken into the dominators boarding school and brainwashed and culturally broken, she gave me over to a white man’s church-people with the hopes they would find a wonderful family for me.  I am indebted my adoptive parents, Ole and Arleta, who did choose to parent me, and raise me in the best way they knew how.  But I must accept that I am henceforth a guest among my tribe.  Anyway, my lack of tribal knowledge and family history must make me seem like some sort of imbecile in a place where the connected members are at home.  It is as though when my mother said, “Goodbye,”  all conscious Native training ceased. When I reconnected with my Native family, and began listening to Native stories, songs, and conversations, my life as a Native resumed.   So I gather scraps, like Yvonne, an educator and Chehalis master weaver who collects cedar bark scraps from the weaving tables because she soaks and blends them and makes them into functional, spirited cedar paper.  I want to gather the bits and pieces of my life and process them into something functional and spirited.  I can’t wait to get over this deep-seated wound of detachment and melancholy.  I want to heal and live fully the life that isn’t about solving disconnection.  Once this is healed and resolved, what will I be writing about?  What work comes next?  Who am I in another context?  I long to find out.





It has been so soothing to be present at Native gatherings --witnessing tribal connections, witnessing families, witnessing powerful leaders; seeing Indian faces after growing up among blondes.  When attending the 150 Year Anniversary of Treaties Symposium in The Evergreen State College Longhouse, one word stood out:  “Quyana”, the speaker said.  Thank you in my mother’s original language.  Quyana, I heard.  Quyana, I comprehended.  Quyana, I felt run down my cheek. 





Quyana to you, Alaska Native speaker Sally Smith. 





A group of young speakers from the Makah Nation stood together at the microphone to share stories about their life and relations. Afterward, I wrote to them:





Thank you for appreciating the beauty of your culture and tribal connections.  As a person who was given away from her family and tribe as a newborn baby, who feels so alone in this world, who has no family connections to celebrate big days, like the births of my three babies who are strangers to the people who would be their grandparents, aunts, and uncles.  I also mourn my losses alone.  This is a heavy burden; a wound I don’t know if will ever heal.  But perhaps it will, because when I see young people like you that love and appreciate the connections you have to each other and your culture, this beauty gives me healing.





Thank you for appreciating knowing the names of your grandparents and great-grandparents, aunties, uncles, cousins.





Thank you for speaking.





I fully support my birthmother’s pseudo-decision to release me to adoption.  What choices were there?  How is it that she and I are one set among over 100,000 others (check for numbers) that experienced this?  Whose genocidal plan conceived this “solution?” Instead of creating or supplementing support systems for mothers in great need, they were set up to break contact with their family’s next generation; en masse.





Part of my story is finding out that there are so many others.  It changes everything.  I experienced myself as an Indian who stood alone, yet now I know there are hundreds of thousands of other Indians directly affected, and hundreds of thousands more affected in the aftermath.  This fact produces in me an empathetic stupor for us hundred thousand humans dispersed and scattered into strangers homes.





On a Dakota-Lakota-Nakota site, a link reads,


            For the Children in Exile. 


I feel the exile pain. Though I’m not a child anymore, the exile remains.  I live free, moving to many places.  A tumbleweed.  Free. Just the same, the longing for connections to my people, my tribe, my familiar blood, rises in waves like a daily tide. The exile is not punishment from my tribe, but a natural consequence of the benign genocidal practices of the colonists. 





In our lives, the security of connection to parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents is absent.  I’ve no older relations to call up and ask important questions or drop-in to witness, observe, share.





According to a quote by the International Indian Treaty Council from the 57th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights in 2001, as Agenda item #13: Rights of the Child, it seems that all or a majority of us have suffered extreme loss:


Current studies have investigated the damaging effects of transracial placement which include psychological damage, ethnic identity confusion, self-concept formation difficulties, and adolescence repercussions such as alcoholism and high rates of suicide.





Growing up, I thought something was very wrong with me -- not looking like others, not thinking like others, and when I could feel, not wishing to live.  But fortunately, I didn’t feel often. 





Ok!  Enough of that!  Beloved Upper Skagit elder, Vi Hilbert came to the microphone to give an even shorter variation on her signature “Ten line story” about Lady Louse.  


Lady Louse was a sponge.  Lady Louse became self-absorbed, and that was the end of Lady Louse.





I am going to be ok.  I am willing and able to work, I just also need to heal enough to not fall into that huge gaping wound at my core and walk and talk.  I see the hole now and can go around, jump over, build bridges of songs, stories, smiles, hugs, drumbeats, actions, and continue to listen, learn, light up the bridges and work around it.  I have encountered many full wings -- on my own, with my husband, the spirit of my grandmother, all my spirit helpers -- all lifting me up. 





I do have my immediate family to celebrate with, to laugh at shared history with, to mourn tragedies with -- my brilliant husband, and three beautiful daughters, each bestowed with multiple intelligences.





The day I stepped off the plane and met my mother, brother, and sisters, then, I looked like someone.  I met cousins, aunts, uncle, and cousin’s children.  From that point, I looked like a lot of people and something began to settle.  Some new sense of belonging, visibility, and authenticity rose above feeling detached and unseen and mismatched.  With this strength growing inside, I must squeeze the self-absorbed sponge, and focus outward.


Aho.


To contact the author, email:  LoudBloodAK@gmail.com

Scraps - by Loud Blood

Trace wishes to thank Loud Blood for her wonderful guest blog... 


(excerpt from upcoming book, "Loud Blood")
I have been fed, clothed, sheltered, yet, my spirit must live off cultural scraps that I go begging where Native people gather -- a story, a song, a weave, a smile... where I feel a resonance, filled, soothed, but sadly, also invisible, broken, culturally orphaned; lonely. 

Will I forever be a guest among my own people?   Who will celebrate my joys and triumphs with me?  Who will mourn my sorrows? Who will laugh at some shared history?  Not my adoptive family -- our non-connection continued and became stronger in adulthood. I want to join in the Native community, to participate, to serve and share what I have and to receive recognition and feel valued.  But even on this side, there are those Indians that I thought were friends who walk past blankly in fuller-blood situations, or those who look at me in public settings with flash card eyes as they calculate their racist arithmetic with no thought of how they’ve adopted the blood-quantum mentality constructed by the colonists.  I yearn to feel welcome somehow.  I need to heal myself enough to come forward to work, for otherwise I remain immobilized, hollow, invisible. 

I can hear the critical thoughts of others; I think them myself -- Get over it.  Geesh, move on.  Stop feeling sorry for yourself. 

I’d love to.  The same as someone uses crutches when they are injured, or someone wears bandages after surgery, or someone wears glasses to compensate for not being able to see on one’s own; I am doing the best I can under the circumstances.  But I need to be my own auntie and tell myself, ‘Chin up.  Get over it.  Move on with life.’  This I can do.  It’s the smiles, nods, and hugs that are harder.  My grandmother’s spirit did come with me, but she cannot hold me connected alone.  When I am acknowledged with a smile, a hug, a nod -- these small acts mean so much to me, reminding me that I am here, less hollow, less invisible. 

I must expect nothing.  This is not my business, not my community.   So what am I doing here?  What is the draw?  It used to be my honeymoon, my infancy of native identity.  What didn’t take hold?  What connections failed?  I am not connected to these people, we are connected as human beings, but not as relatives.  I am a guest.

Because my mother was taken into the dominators boarding school and brainwashed and culturally broken, she gave me over to a white man’s church-people with the hopes they would find a wonderful family for me.  I am indebted my adoptive parents, Ole and Arleta, who did choose to parent me, and raise me in the best way they knew how.  But I must accept that I am henceforth a guest among my tribe.  Anyway, my lack of tribal knowledge and family history must make me seem like some sort of imbecile in a place where the connected members are at home.  It is as though when my mother said, “Goodbye,”  all conscious Native training ceased. When I reconnected with my Native family, and began listening to Native stories, songs, and conversations, my life as a Native resumed.   So I gather scraps, like Yvonne, an educator and Chehalis master weaver who collects cedar bark scraps from the weaving tables because she soaks and blends them and makes them into functional, spirited cedar paper.  I want to gather the bits and pieces of my life and process them into something functional and spirited.  I can’t wait to get over this deep-seated wound of detachment and melancholy.  I want to heal and live fully the life that isn’t about solving disconnection.  Once this is healed and resolved, what will I be writing about?  What work comes next?  Who am I in another context?  I long to find out.

It has been so soothing to be present at Native gatherings --witnessing tribal connections, witnessing families, witnessing powerful leaders; seeing Indian faces after growing up among blondes.  When attending the 150 Year Anniversary of Treaties Symposium in The Evergreen State College Longhouse, one word stood out:  “Quyana”, the speaker said.  Thank you in my mother’s original language.  Quyana, I heard.  Quyana, I comprehended.  Quyana, I felt run down my cheek. 

Quyana to you, Alaska Native speaker Sally Smith. 

A group of young speakers from the Makah Nation stood together at the microphone to share stories about their life and relations. Afterward, I wrote to them:

Thank you for appreciating the beauty of your culture and tribal connections.  As a person who was given away from her family and tribe as a newborn baby, who feels so alone in this world, who has no family connections to celebrate big days, like the births of my three babies who are strangers to the people who would be their grandparents, aunts, and uncles.  I also mourn my losses alone.  This is a heavy burden; a wound I don’t know if will ever heal.  But perhaps it will, because when I see young people like you that love and appreciate the connections you have to each other and your culture, this beauty gives me healing.

Thank you for appreciating knowing the names of your grandparents and great-grandparents, aunties, uncles, cousins.

Thank you for speaking.

I fully support my birthmother’s pseudo-decision to release me to adoption.  What choices were there?  How is it that she and I are one set among over 100,000 others (check for numbers) that experienced this?  Whose genocidal plan conceived this “solution?” Instead of creating or supplementing support systems for mothers in great need, they were set up to break contact with their family’s next generation; en masse.

Part of my story is finding out that there are so many others.  It changes everything.  I experienced myself as an Indian who stood alone, yet now I know there are hundreds of thousands of other Indians directly affected, and hundreds of thousands more affected in the aftermath.  This fact produces in me an empathetic stupor for us hundred thousand humans dispersed and scattered into strangers homes.

On a Dakota-Lakota-Nakota site, a link reads,
            For the Children in Exile. 
I feel the exile pain. Though I’m not a child anymore, the exile remains.  I live free, moving to many places.  A tumbleweed.  Free. Just the same, the longing for connections to my people, my tribe, my familiar blood, rises in waves like a daily tide. The exile is not punishment from my tribe, but a natural consequence of the benign genocidal practices of the colonists. 

In our lives, the security of connection to parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents is absent.  I’ve no older relations to call up and ask important questions or drop-in to witness, observe, share.

According to a quote by the International Indian Treaty Council from the 57th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights in 2001, as Agenda item #13: Rights of the Child, it seems that all or a majority of us have suffered extreme loss:
Current studies have investigated the damaging effects of transracial placement which include psychological damage, ethnic identity confusion, self-concept formation difficulties, and adolescence repercussions such as alcoholism and high rates of suicide.

Growing up, I thought something was very wrong with me -- not looking like others, not thinking like others, and when I could feel, not wishing to live.  But fortunately, I didn’t feel often. 

Ok!  Enough of that!  Beloved Upper Skagit elder, Vi Hilbert came to the microphone to give an even shorter variation on her signature “Ten line story” about Lady Louse.  
Lady Louse was a sponge.  Lady Louse became self-absorbed, and that was the end of Lady Louse.

I am going to be ok.  I am willing and able to work, I just also need to heal enough to not fall into that huge gaping wound at my core and walk and talk.  I see the hole now and can go around, jump over, build bridges of songs, stories, smiles, hugs, drumbeats, actions, and continue to listen, learn, light up the bridges and work around it.  I have encountered many full wings -- on my own, with my husband, the spirit of my grandmother, all my spirit helpers -- all lifting me up. 

I do have my immediate family to celebrate with, to laugh at shared history with, to mourn tragedies with -- my brilliant husband, and three beautiful daughters, each bestowed with multiple intelligences.

The day I stepped off the plane and met my mother, brother, and sisters, then, I looked like someone.  I met cousins, aunts, uncle, and cousin’s children.  From that point, I looked like a lot of people and something began to settle.  Some new sense of belonging, visibility, and authenticity rose above feeling detached and unseen and mismatched.  With this strength growing inside, I must squeeze the self-absorbed sponge, and focus outward.
Aho.
To contact the author, email:  LoudBloodAK@gmail.com

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