United States of Race
United States of Race
Episode 3: We're Still Here
Grace shares the personal ways in which historical trauma has impacted her life and that of her family, her community, and her tribe. In discussing the lasting effects of the Residential Schools and a system of assimilating Native Americans, she helps us understand the beauty and strength of cultures lost or slowly being recuperated.
A heartbreaking story, it is a stark reminder that ignoring or denying our history only binds us to repeating it.
You know, everybody burn sage, right? That wasn't legal up until 1978. For everyone, but nobody even heard of it until recently, is it real, it's more of a thing now everybody does it. But within my lifetime, I couldn't even do that. Our ceremonies had to be done in secret.
DB Crema:This is United States of race, personal stories of how our earliest memories determine a lifetime of relationships. I'm your host, DB crema. This week, we are speaking with grace. And she shares in the most personal way how historical trauma has impacted her life, and that of her family, her community, her tribe. You know, while most of us have learned about the residential schools in the news lately, she brings to life, the realities and the lasting and detrimental impact of those schools, and what it takes to overcome generations of colonisation and oppression and violence against Native Americans. And it's got me thinking about why we share our stories, the importance of it, you know, we are sorely missing a breath of inclusive history in our education system, there is no doubt. And at the same time, no matter how much textbook learning there is, it's only really through the power of sharing one's personal story where you can help other people really understand it, and really internalize it and see it from the perspective of the lived experience. And I guess that's how this podcast got its start. You know, a couple of years ago, I was hearing a lot of anti black sentiment creep into work related conversations. And I was incensed. And I felt someone needed to speak up and represented a different viewpoint. And so as a woman of color, I facilitated conversations on race. And within one of my groups, I asked that question, the initial question, when did you first become aware of race, and each person went around the room and shared a story from their early childhood, when they first learned about it. And what was interesting is that, you know, as a professional network, we didn't know each other on a personal level. And what was interesting was, not only did we get to know each other better, but there was this intangible but palpable impact among this group of people, you could see that we had this new understanding of the realities of each other's lives. And what I took away from it were these two realizations. One, we all had to be taught about race introduced to it at some point, you know, none of us were born race aware, across the group in everybody's story, we were all confused, and shocked and dubious like we do. What about what now? You know, as children, we see difference. But it's not until we're told that we should differentiate based on that difference, that we start to apply these judgments that we're being taught. And so the reality is for society to come to terms with its past, its ugly past, it has to learn through individual stories, the lived experience of its people. For this, I am so grateful for all the folks who have shared their stories along the way. While the show includes people from all walks of life, the voice of black, Indigenous and People of Color is still sorely underrepresented in media, and I feel honored to be able to bring some of those voices to the fore. When did you first become aware of race?
Unknown:I grew up in South Dakota. And the race relations between natives and non natives is not good at all. We when we would leave the reservations as as kids to go to, say a grocery store. We had, I had the experience of you know, just people following us watching us. South Dakota is very, very racist towards Native peoples, even though we're about a third of the population there. So there was a lot of experiences like that, and I didn't really click until I got older. But there is one particular memory. I do have. And the thing is it wasn't with a non native it was with my own people. And I was real little I had to be, I don't know, five, six, or maybe even seven. But my mom just was on the reservation. And we were at a grocery store. She went into get groceries There were six in my family, six kids, I'm number five of six. And I have a younger sister and me and her were always together. And my dad was outside. We were kids, we got tired of sitting in the car waiting for our mom to do her grocery shopping. So we got out and we sat on the hood of the car. And I remember it was a sunny day. And this native man walked by, and he he made a comment. And he said, look at those ies because, and yeska in our term in our language. It means what today is a derogatory term, it means like halfbreed. And my dad, my mom definitely looked much more native than I do, because I'm very light skinned. I have four, four older siblings, and they all have much darker skin and darker hair. So they look like the typical ethnic kind of kid. And me and my younger sister, a much lighter skin. And we were kids, though, we were little little. And I didn't. At first I didn't know what he said. But my dad heard it. And it pissed off. My dad made him very angry. He got out the car. And he said, What did you say? Because those are my kids. And the guy knew my dad, and he goes, Oh, my God, I'm sorry. I didn't know those were your kids. And I didn't know what he had said was wrong until my dad reacted. And the older I got, you know? Yeah, the older I got, I began to realize what it meant. And it was it was it's an ugly feeling. And then, I began to realize what the term meant. And I as I got older, and I began to realize what colorism meant. It still impacts me to this day. Right? It made me it made me feel like what's wrong with me. And I knew, I mean, there was always kind of jokes about me and my younger sister, because we were a lot lighter than my rest of my brothers and sisters. And then that always kind of made me feel like I'm not enough.
DB Crema:Not enough, like I don't look enough
Unknown:Indian, or native. And I didn't have the straight black hair that a lot of natives have. My mom had that my sisters had that. But my dad had curly hair. And so I had a lighter brown hair that was more wavy. So I didn't have the hair that I had seen in my tribe, that his beautiful black shiny hair. And I didn't have that I had this brown curly wavy hair that I hated. You know, because I didn't look like the other kids. And even the boys boys had really long hair down to their waist. And it was it was to me, I always looked at their hair. And I was like, gosh, it's beautiful hair. I like their hair thing of beauty. And just growing up that always stuck with me. I didn't feel like I was enough native. And I don't know if that makes any sense.
DB Crema:Absolutely does to me. I grew up around whiteness. And so, you know, I had dark curly hair and very, very curly. And I just always wished it was lighter in color. And I always wished I could feather my hair like Farrah Fawcett. I seriously spent the first 14 years of my life wishing I could feather my hair like that.
Unknown:Yes, I know that feeling. And then the hard thing was when we left the reservation, it was abundantly clear. I was not white. And my family was treated, not very kindly. And so I think I was aware of race, some a very young age. And colorism does happen amongst every group. And for my group. I had cousins that had blond hair, blue eyes, and they were treated pretty badly by other natives. And then there was some native some relatives of mine that were very what you would call fullblood. Meaning meaning they were full. Native America didn't have any white blood in them or anything else. And so they were made fun of too. If you were too light or too dark or and then people like me who were in between, we were still called half breeds. So like just no one could win, right? Yes. And I never understood that until I got older. And my aunt, she got me into my life direction where I'm at right now. She was a nurse. She became a therapist. She was in the military and she had gone through the boarding schools just like my mom and dad. And if you're not have heard what the boarding schools are, most people are beginning I need to be aware of what they are.
DB Crema:To be honest, I actually know about schools in Canada.
Unknown:The boarding schools in Canada happened here, too. And they went on until the late the middle 70s. Those forms of boarding schools. And they were government, not always government run, sometimes they were run by private missionaries, private religious groups to Mormons had their own version, Catholics had theirs. And then there was government run boarding schools where the kids had to attend these schools starting at age five. And the purpose of them initially was too, it did a good job of was to stomp out the culture and identity of natives. And just try to get rid of that erase that identity knowledge. They tried to break the passing of cultural knowledge on generationally. And these went on from like, 1891, all the way up until 1970s. And so my parents went to them. And in the schools, there was a lot of abuse, the parents could not see their children, they could not say no, you know, if you spoke your language in the schools, they would beat you. There was a lot of rampant sexual abuse, verbal, cultural, emotional, mental, you name it, it was there. And it was it. It was horrible. You know, today, we call them survivors, people who made it through those because there's natives that didn't make it through them. And so my parents went through these boarding schools. And they, if a parent did not hand over their kids to go to these boarding schools that were on the reservations, they could withhold money and food from them.
DB Crema:And so these schools, their children were taken from their families taken from their parents put into the boarding school, solely for the purpose of assimilation. And yes, stripping you of your culture and identity through refusing to allow you to use your your language, your dress, your customs. Is that
Unknown:Yes, yes, that's exactly it. They cut the hair of the kids as they came in, they stripped him of any identity. They marched, the schools were kind of run like military styles, schools, they were marched from class to class. It was a horrific experience, honest to God. And so my parents had gone through that. And I didn't know much about it. I didn't really know anything about it, because people who natives who came out of that did not talk about this era. They didn't want to talk about this era, because it was very, it's traumatic. And I had an aunt who, while my parents became alcoholics, and so did she and a lot of people did, who came out of the schools for obvious reasons. And she, as she got sober, she went back to understanding the culture, our traditions, and our tribe, because she never got to learn it. And she wanted to know why she was on a journey to figure out why she became an alcoholic. It was part of her healing process, right? She began to understand our culture was very different than what we have today, our traditional knowledge. And that's when she it clicked with her. What happened in these boarding schools was abuse. Oh, wow. Yeah. And she was one of the first people to speak out against this and start talking about it. And this was back in the 1980s. Before today, where it's a lot of people talk about it, it was before we understood trauma. It was you know, we didn't even have a term for trauma then. And so she would do these presentations. And I attended one of those when I was in college, and it changed my life. She gave me so many answers that I've been looking for, and that many natives are looking for, you know, what happened to us? How do we? How do we get to where we're at right now, because we have a lot of issues and dysfunction in reservations. And people don't understand that. Well, whole generations went through this abusive environment from age five until they graduated high school.
DB Crema:And even those who didn't, the generations before them are passing it on. And it's very challenging to not pass it on to your children. If he's actually incited abuse.
Unknown:Yeah. So it's a huge complex issue. And it changed me it gave me this aha. Like I said earlier that I want to know more about my culture. I want to understand what happened. I want to understand how did we lose our parenting skills because we had awesome, beautiful parenting styles in our tribes that were extremely healthy. That knowledge was almost completely eradicated. And it's a resurgence. Now we're trying to pull it back. So I look back now at this adult who called me in ESCA as a child, I'm just like, wow, I was a child. I mean, who really does that to kids? And I looked back and I was and I think now I know where and why he said those things. Right? Right. Where and like you said, there's no winning there. You read the two foot fullblood or your two white or you halfbreed you know,
DB Crema:but you can also hold a space for empathy for him no understanding that, you know, the negativity that we put on each other, even our own kind, is because it comes from a place of the traumas that we've experienced.
Unknown:Yes. And lateral violence was a term I learned. It's more, it's used a lot more in Canada. It's the violence that happens to oppress people, between each other in the community. It's called sideways. Because when people are oppressed, and colonized like natives were, you can't overthrow the oppressor, right. And so it becomes internalized, and we begin to hate ourselves as what's called internalized oppression, and then it comes out, sideways on each other through lateral violence. Yes, once I understood, this is why I decided to go into therapy and counseling, I got a psychology bachelor in psychology and then moved into working in the schools. And I began to get a better understanding of what natives urban natives are going through. And because there's a wide spectrum of natives, there's, there's ones who live on the reservation, those who go back and forth, and then those that live on the reservation. There's those that are traditional to a wide spectrum to non traditional, who know nothing of their culture. You know, so there's a big picture going on here that I didn't understand until now. And it's taken me since since I was little kid, right? Since taking me decades to understand, right? It's interesting
DB Crema:time, when you mentioned that your aunt that you attended your aunt's presentation, and it almost like fit the puzzle pieces together for you, I imagine and gave a name to some of the things you were feeling and seeing happening. But when you don't have that name for it, not only is it hard to make sense of it, but it's also you kind of keep it to yourself as like something a fault of your own, rather than understanding that it's because of this systemic issue that has been perpetrated against your entire community for generations.
Unknown:Yeah, yeah. I, I did an internship at a treatment program with natives. And I began to talk to them about this, they were wanting to know more to it got to a point where several of them were like, can you put this in a presentation? Can you give this to my, my church? Can you talk to my group about this? I was able to talk about historical trauma in a way that we could explain what happened. But I had people coming to me saying, can you tell me more? I want to know more too.
DB Crema:But that's within that specifically within your own community. But there's so much less discussion kind of across the country. As a general in terms of a general population, there's so much less discussion on the reality of centuries of these impacts on the Native American population.
Unknown:And you're right, you're absolutely right. I asked people, well, I get people who've asked me and said to me, you guys still exist. You know, they don't even know we're still here. And the history of happened. What happened with Native Americans is, like you said, it's not talked about it's not discussed is not taught in the schools. And people, they don't even know we exist anymore. So when people ask us, What do you want to say? I'm like, I want to say we're still here. We are still here. We still exist. And there's a whole history in there that that has to be taught has to be talked about. You know, we were obviously colonized. There was a genocide that happened. When Christopher Columbus came here. They think there was anywhere from 30 to 50 million natives in the continent. And then by the year 1900, US Census said we only had 250,000. Oh, wow. You know, the city I live in, has at least 365,000 people. Right? Today, our population numbers are rising again. Thank God, we're, there's about 6 million of us. I mean, but that's still smaller than New York City. And so for me, race issues are always present. Because for natives everywhere we look, anywhere we go. In United States, this was traditionally native land. Mm hmm. So there is a constant reminder there. That, you know, there was a genocide you know, it's hard.
DB Crema:How does that how does that affect someone, right? So like, we're all aware of genocides taking place, in different places, and it's one thing to have sympathy for it and to but to be able to hold it at arm's length, what is it do to a person to know of this genocide of one's own people?
Unknown:Well, that's that's a good question. Thank you for asking. It's a tough one to it obviously, is it's very emotional. And, and it's very emotional for natives who hear it too, because they were I see in their eyes were lights are going off into being and to understand what happened, I realized I have to be careful how I present this because when I first started doing this, there was a man in the, in the audience and he was native. And he got up halfway through the presentation, he was crying. And he said, I have to leave. He said, I can't I can't hear this anymore. This hurts. And he said, If I don't, I'm gonna walk out here and find the first white person and punch him in the face. You know? And so I was like, okay, yeah, you need to leave. You need to take your time, you know, you need to process. Give yourself that time to process this. Because for natives, we I know for myself, all I can do is speak for me. There's there's a sense of sadness, some anger, hurt, confusion, when we hear it when we learn about these, this history, and knowing about that can really rile you up. So how do you process that? How do you deal with that? It's gotten easier for me to talk about it to speak about these things. But it's, it's still there, like I said that there's a daily reminder for natives, we can move on some, a lot of people are able to go about their daily lives and just not think about it. But I do think there are others that don't, and that can't, and they may not know where the sadness comes from. And what we call it we call historical trauma, right. And there was also a phenomenon that happens to people who are colonized, they their self esteem and self worth can sink to a very low level where they begin to hate themselves. And if the whole group is going through that, there's going to going to be some that just can't push that aside. Some have turned towards drug and alcohol use to be able to cope with it. It's I had an interesting conversation with somebody who was Jewish that we were talking about the Holocaust. And he remembers the date whenever they were liberated. And it occurred to me, natives never had that. We never had this aha Liberation Day, you know, and we never had our pain or trauma acknowledged either. Yet, yet? Well, we've tribes have asked the government for apologies, and they refused, is very complex with natives because our position here is unique in the way that we are a political entity to we have a political status, and we have legal claims to Lance. So the government is very clear on saying I'm not gonna apologize, because then I admit guilt. Mm hmm. And then we can go to court. Right.
DB Crema:Right. As a sovereign nation, yeah. So my understanding is that through your treaties that many have been, most have been broken, broken. Um, it does bestow upon you US sovereignty as a independent nation. Yes. Or I should say, plural independent nations. Yes.
Unknown:I mean, I'm trying to like sum this up real quickly. Keep it back to personal experiences here. Yes. Can
DB Crema:you just sum up like, yeah, freeze them in about a 20 minute, you know, sound bite for me?
Unknown:It's not easy. No. Oh, so my experiences, it's hard to not talk about them without having talked about the bigger context. Mm hmm. So going from from those experiences growing up in South Dakota, when I was little, I'll be upfront and honest, I did not like white people. I was treated very rudely, whenever we left the reservation. And then I went off to college and I got a scholarship to go to a private Jesuit school. And then I was placed in with a lot of white people. That definitely had more money than I did. And so I that was a whole new experience from there and i i Slowly made friends and coming from a place or reservation in the state of South Dakota. It was seriously like going to a foreign country for me, even though I was within the United States. But I, I was, I've come a long way I think that going from angry, angry at white people to where I'm at now. Right? I don't, I don't feel that anymore. But it had a lot to do with my experiences and who I encountered and who I talked to.
DB Crema:When you're talking about the presentations that you've given to variety of audiences, when you give those presentations, how are they received by non natives?
Unknown:At one point, I realized I had had to tone this down a bit because I had people crying. And I think I was traumatizing them. And I'm like, I'm trying to just give you the history. This is not just native history, this is American history. A lot of them were grateful, honestly, it was very impactful, because they had never heard this information before. It just blew their minds that like, native religion was outlawed until 1978. Anything with traditional culture was it could have been considered outlawed too. And our language was outlawed until that time also 1978. Yeah, yeah, 1978. In 1979, there was an act called the Indian Religious Freedom Act, then we could practice our spiritual practices, beliefs, religion, everything. And I would tell them, I'm not blaming you, I'm not blaming anybody. This is just the history that is not taught in this, we'd need to know this, in order to understand where we're at today. And I would think, to, I would say, the government to help would be to teach actual native history included into American history, not as a separate just a separate month, and a separate class. I'm like, No, we, we were always here, whenever the country was moving along, from beginning to now, and it just needs to start including us.
DB Crema:I'm trying to imagine what an entirely overhauled education system would look like to to genuinely and faithfully recount the history of all of, of Native Americans, but all of all America, all Americans, it just,
Unknown:it would be an awesome thing if we could do that. Because I always say, American history begins with Native Americans. You know, we were here first.
DB Crema:You would also talked about asking the government for an apology. So it kind of in that vein, what would for Native Americans, and I recognize you can't speak for all of them, or even freed the entirety of your own tribe. But
Unknown:there's, there's not one person who can be like spokesperson for a group. And you know, a native tribes, there's over 500 of us around and we're all very different. So it's it's something that people don't always understand or recognize, right off that there are so many tribes here that we have such different cultures, sometimes in languages that it is difficult to try and get a representative for tribes, because
DB Crema:right, it's hard. No one can speak for the experience of an AI that's, that's across all groups, all demographics, I guess, no one can speak for the experience of everyone. What would it what is needed? What would it take to be to acknowledge these issues and to be able to reconcile resolve move on?
Unknown:Oh, I've thought about that. Yeah. Every time I see some stuff, I remember those. I'm like this is could be reconciliation. This could be reparations. Oh, that's a that's a four letter word for a lot of people reparations are so pissed with them. Some people are like, what reparations? I'm like, Yes. I think one of them would be providing funding for immersion schools, because in native tribes, our entire culture is is held within our language. And that was one of the things that was outlawed was our language, and our religion. And that's why they went out of their way to remove them from the home and put them in these schools and beat the crap out of them if they spoke their language. If we had funding for immersion schools, just to help the kids start learning their language, again, because they're dying out in so many tribes. There's a lot of tribes who completely lost all their languages. And that's one thing that defines a society as a living language. Right. Right. And there's so many tribes are losing that. I know in Hawaii, they're doing it to try and revive the Hawaiian language. Oh, and it, I'm thinking that's just one thing they could do. I would say they need to honor the treaties. The government needs to honor the treaties that were struck. And, and remembering now over in Germany, what they have done for Jewish people? Uh huh. What? If you go to Germany and you'll find placards on the ground and statues, you'll see you'll find these these markers all over the country that acknowledged how many Jews live there prior to the Holocaust in Germany that they're very, they really don't. They're very embarrassed of that history that they have of the Holocaust. And they don't want to forget it. Because if they do they know what can happen again, right? So if you go through Germany, they really, like I said, they mark everywhere. How many Jews were in this one area? Or maybe how many were killed? And they make sure that history is taught.
DB Crema:The importance of starting with the recognition?
Unknown:Yeah, just talking about it even Yeah, yeah. Acknowledging, like I said, we're still here. We are still here. I think this is that is why the boarding schools were so they were so effective in and how much damage they they made. By separating the kids from their parents, you know, and they did it at such an early age, unfortunately, because they were like age five, I mean, how many five year olds you know, are terrified when they're missing their mom and dad? Yeah. In my tribe, Lakota, the word for children, the language Lakota, but the the word for children is what chi Asia. That means sacred people. And that was the literal term for children. We call them sacred people. It helps to give an idea of what we saw them as, right and how we treated them. When you see something as sacred and beautiful. You don't hurt it, you don't abuse it. You know, you you take care of it, you love you provide you care for it. And we had an environment where we could raise our children in a very healthy manner. And to allow them to be them allow their emotions to just develop and their mind to develop. We created very healthy adults. And we had this system that worked. It worked really well. So you go from that to what we have today. And if you you can see where and why and how we got where we're at today. But what we were like traditionally, if left alone, we had a beautiful functioning society that worked well.
DB Crema:Thanks for listening to United States of rates. This podcast was produced by me, DB crema, we'd love to hear from you. Send us a one minute Voice Memo with any reactions, questions or stories you'd like to share. You can use the app on your phone to record the voice memo and email it to United States of race@gmail.com. That's United States of race@gmail.com. It might even be included in an upcoming episode. And be sure to hit follow or subscribe on whichever podcast platform you're listening. That way you won't miss a single moment. Until next time