Day 43 and 44 Without Television

I read the coolest sentence in a textbook..."I do not know anyone who has done more people more good with less noise than Miz Wakefield."

Isn't that a great sentence? I think of the people in my life who are the Miz Wakefields. They go about doing not because they expect any great reward but because they just love. The Miz Wakefields I know look forward to the next life. They make other lives better by simply doing their thing.

I have to write about my evolution as an individual...culturally. Here is what I have so far:

The cultural evolution of me

I am a member of a dominant group. I am white, with only enough Native American blood to make me look Italian. But I’m not. I share the privilege and the guilt of being a member of the dominant race. I also was the daughter of a doctor. I didn’t realize we were wealthy when I was growing up. Both of my parents were raised during the great depression. We lived on a farm near an isolated small town. Our home was about a mile away from town on the reservoir. Our family had a boat that we puttered around on. I learned to water-ski at the age of 12. I didn’t recognize this as privilege. I actually thought we were poor because my Dad complained about money so much and was very controlling with my mother. We ate lots of oatmeal and other kinds of cooked cereal. We always had a big garden and ate what we grew. Cold cereal, convenience food and going out to dinner were luxuries that were unheard of in our home. It was difficult to get either of my parents to buy clothing. Having been raised during the Great Depression, clothing was rarely purchased. I often wore my older brother’s hand-me-downs while children of families with less money dressed better than I did.

My family was made up of ten children. My mother gave birth to eight of us and adopted two brothers. Both of my parents were misogynistic. My mother came from a family with five daughters. She had been the tomboy of the bunch and was treated like a boy by her father. She told me once that every time she had a baby and it was a girl, she was disappointed. She was delighted when I asked her to cut my doll’s hair so that it could be a boy.
So when children were adopted, they had to be boys. Of my two adopted brothers, one was Ute and the other was Shoshone. My mother didn’t call them “Indians”. She used the term, “Lamanites”. Being of the Mormon faith, I was taught that my Native American brothers were not only part of our family because we had been sealed to them in the Temple but they were of the tribe of Joseph of the Old Testament. In Mormon doctrine Native Americans descended from a family who crossed the ocean from Jerusalem and were a remnant of the 12 tribes of Israel through Joseph. It was with a sense of pride that my parents adopted sons of Lamanite blood. The Mormon faith also taught that we “gentiles” were responsible to teach the gospel to the Lamanite people.

There were several families in our community who adopted or took in children through the foster care program. They were mostly Navaho and one of my best friends was Julie Bullcreek.
My Ute brother was 10 years older than me. He had dark brown skin and thick, silky black hair that shimmered in the light. Whenever Eddie was mean to me my mother reminded me that as an infant he was fed whiskey in his bottle. There was less expected of him because of his background, likely his race as well.

My Shoshone brother was three years younger than I and had fair skin but the same silky hair. I adored Ren. I never thought of him as Native American except when my parents spoke of it. He was ashamed to be native. Eddie used it against him and made Ren miserable. When I was six years old my mother brought home a three-year-old African American boy. Our local clergyman asked my parents to take him in. My mother doted on him and refused to believe he was a Negro. She said Randy was Polynesian. Eddie hated Randy. When Mom and Dad weren’t home and Eddie came in, my sister and I would hide Randy in the closet to keep him safe from Eddie’s wrath.

The townspeople were horrible to Randy. Ironically, the clergyman was one of the worst. We only had Randy for a year and we had to give him up. My mother cried but said it would be better for him to live in a community where he could be accepted. I assumed he went to live on Sesame Street because that was the only place I had ever seen black children.
My parents had an interesting perspective of other races. They had strong feelings against Japanese because of the experiences friends of theirs had during the war. I didn’t realize until I was an adult that there had been a prisoner of war camp just outside my home town that hundreds of Japanese from San Francisco were sent to live in. My parents detested racism in others and my mother verbalized how sad it was that a German acquaintance could not understand the horror of Hitler’s murder of Jews.

My father was a philanthropist and spent hundreds of hours of his time and thousands of dollars on a project in Guatemala bringing medical care to the indigenous Mayan people. My mother learned Spanish and kiche and interpreted for him in his clinic. In spite of adopting Native American children and bringing health care to thousands, I recognize that my parent’s racism was embedded deep within them. I didn’t realize that I had Native American Ancestors until I was almost thirty years old. Genealogy is a huge part of my cultural background. My parents researched our family tree with vigor and enthusiasm. Our family vacations were often spent traveling to places previous generations lived. My father wrote several books about his father and father’s father and so on. I can name the male ancestors that carry the family name back four generations.

The women were seldom spoken of. After my mother died in my twenties, I was watching a PBS program documentary on photography of Native Americans. Every portrait looked so much like my mother I was spooked. I spoke to my older sister and she told me of my Great Grandmother who had been a full blood Iroquois. I was amazed! I remembered how mother spoke of her mother who had thick, long dark hair that was silky and reached her knees. I realized she had spoken of her mother as Welsh but when I put together my family history I realized my grandmother Luella was Welsh and Iroquois! I have made it my quest to attempt to make up for the travesties of the past by not only acknowledging Keturah Button, but putting her up as an example.