I have been listening to "On Being," again. This week I have listened to a podcast featuring Robin Wall Kimmerer. She is a Professor of Environmental and Forest Biology at the State University of New York. She is a native of upstate New York and taught for a while at Transylvania University and Centre College. She is the author of, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses (2003), and Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants(2013).
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| Robin Wall Kimmerer |
At least as fascinating to me is the way she introduces herself as a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation; of the Bear Clan, adopted into the Eagle. She identifies as a Native American, an indigenous person of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. How one identifies one's self has become an important question to me and my father, and Robin Wall Kimmerer's self-identification gives me pause and cause to think.
Who we are, and from where we came is a question that gets asked of us a lot over the course of a life. Especially, in these nationalistic times when ethnicity is under direct assault, the question of where does one belong, and who they belong to is important. Perhaps for reasons we might deem wrong, but, important nonetheless, those of Hispanic origin, Mexican, Honduran, Guatemalan are under intense scrutiny. Those from Arab nations, or who practice Islam; wear religious garb are considered suspicious by nature. Those from China are under consideration by the government to be denied student visas. In like fashion in the history of the United States, the Irish were once suspected of treachery, the Japanese were interred and the Native American population was subject to removal from their ancestral lands. African Americans were removed from their homes and enslaved on the shores of the New World.
Who we are and where are from, matters.How we identify ourselves, matters.
I can remember in Mrs. Crum's class in 4th grade when we were studying place and origin, and she asked us what our ancestry was. Some people said, Scottish. Others said, Irish. Many said they were Native American. Growing up in Oklahoma it was very common to identify as Native American. Oklahoma is the place to which many peoples were removed by Andrew Jackson and the Indian Removal Act of 1830. When it came my turn to talk about family origin, I didn't have an answer. I didn't know.
Later, growing up around my Dad's side of the family, which was large, I came to understand we were Native American, at least in part, and that my ancestors had chosen, for reasons of wanting to fit in and not wanting to be labeled, to not identify themselves as Native American. My great grandfather was named Peter Choctaw Palmer. That has Native American written all over it. In my teen and adult years I identified as part Native American. It made sense, but it also became obvious to me that Native Americans are the only ones who have to prove their ethnicity in order to be recognized as such by the federal government. You have to be on the rolls. I didn't know whether my ancestors were or not, but my father was certain that at one time they had been.
Dad was terminated from his job past the age of 50 as the company, owned by a French multi-national conglomerate, sought to reorganize. He decided to start his own company with his brother. When he did he decided the time had come to reclaim his identity as a Native American so that he could qualify for minority business ownership. He wrote to Oklahoma City to get his birth certificate, which he had never seen. He talked to family.
That's when the earth shifted on its axis, and all we thought we knew came crashing down around us. I will make this part of the story short. The man whom my Dad thought was his father was not. His mother married when my Dad was two. No one in the family told him, and everyone but his siblings knew about it. They all died taking the secret to the grave with them.
Who was he? Every piece of information he thought he had to that point came under scrutiny. Turns out his mother was his mother, but all his siblings were half-siblings, and the stories of his identity and his place were lies. When the birth certificate arrived he saw the name of his biological father for the first time. He saw his birth name for the first time. But, the question remained, who was he, and for his children, who are we? Where did we come from? Who are our people? How do we identify?
Dad took the Ancestry DNA test. I did the 23andMe test. No Native American heritage showed up. Both of us showed 65% or above English and Irish. On my mother's side of the family a bit of genealogy has been done. We can trace our people back to Tennessee, and Mississippi. On my paternal grandmother's side, the Palmer side, we can wind our way back a bit to Arkansas, and perhaps to Tennessee and Kentucky. We are still working on that.
In Kentucky, particularly when I lived in Madison County, and now that I serve the church in Clark County, who you are and where you are from matters to people. Bloodlines for people are as important bloodlines for horses. People judge people on their character, yes, but it is often attached to family lineage. How does one find one's place in such a world when one's identity is clouded in falsehoods and the veil of death? And, of course, this is a curse for our family, yes, but so many people don't know who their family is -- and it's a curse for them as well.
Perhaps the DNA will lead us to our people and our place. We will see. I know this. It matters to me. Today I identify as mostly English/Irish and lots of unknown. It's the unknown that haunts my father, and troubles me.
Peace,
Jerry
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