The reservation - seriously? I was finding out as an adult that I was Cherokee. There were so many questions that I wanted to ask her and now she was gone. "What was it like and how did you feel about being Native American?" But the biggest question, I asked my dad. "Why didn’t you tell anyone we were Cherokee – including me?"
My dad explained that in the 1950s and 60s, being a Native American was not a good thing. It would have hurt his ability to get work since the stereotype was a drunken and lazy "Indian." He didn't tell anyone and neither did my grandmother. Before my oldest aunt died, she mailed me things that had belonged to my grandmother. On the back of her marriage certificate, my grandma wrote the names of each of her children and for some of them; the day they died. She had 7 children; her oldest son died in World War II, her youngest daughter death is an unsolved murder or accident in Oklahoma, and one baby died a few months after birth. She had a hard life.
My grandmother was married at 16 and had her first baby, my Aunt Thelma, a few months later. Her own parents lived in poverty in an area north of Bluejacket, Oklahoma that was incorporated into the Cherokee Nation in 1894. Today it has about 300 residents. There were nine people living in the same house, so I’m guessing that my dashing and older grandfather gave her an escape to a better life. He was truck driver and made a living being a bootlegger - probably selling to the Cherokees.
My grandparents had their first three kids and ended up moving to Colorado where my father was born before moving again to California where I grew up. I was the 2nd youngest of 15 grandchildren, so I wasn’t close to these grandparents, especially when they moved back to Oklahoma when I was about ten. We never traveled there, my mother didn't like my grandmother and I think it was mutual. My mother was German, and my grandmother's first born son died fighting the Germans.
After my grandmother’s death, I decided to join the Cherokee Nation and found her name on the Dawes Roll and filled out the paperwork. My dad was getting old, so he asked that I enroll him too. He was proud to get that tribal card and I was intrigued. Who was our actual Native American ancestor?
I am a genealogy buff and found so many of my ancestors on Grandma's side born in Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee and then they died in Oklahoma. I thought it might be how my mom's German side settled in Missouri and then migrated to California from 1901 - 1940, but this was different.
Then I read the Trail of Tears. Why wasn't this forced march and the genocide of the Indigenous people taught in school? We have finally inserted into history books some of the horrific things the European settlers did enslaving African Americans, but not too much is devoted to the genocide of Native Americans. An estimated 5 million to 15 million were living in North America when Columbus arrived in 1492. That number was reduced to only a few hundred thousand by the close of the Indian Wars in the late 19th century.
Trying to teach kids today about the realities of this genocide is difficult. “Cowboys and Indians” have been glamorized for years in our culture and I was guilty of it when I sat and watched the extremely inaccurate Pocahontas by Disney with my granddaughters. I’m thankful that I never dressed any of them up in Native American costumes for Halloween. How insulting that is to our ancestors.
Borrowing from Disney, “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down…,” I think the best way to tell this story and correct history is through our writing. If we can tell the truth within another story that kids will be excited to read, then we’ll shine a light on problem. We study history to help prevent things like this from happening again. My actual Native American ancestor, Clarissa Wright was in the Cherokee Nation East in 1826 then died in Oklahoma in 1936. She died young, leaving behind two small boys for a step-mother to raise. I could never find out what happened, but I decided to make up a story for her and make her a superhero.
In my first middle grade book, Sleep Warrior, I give the microphone to Clarissa and Aya’s crusty grandmother to teach our history. In the book I’m currently writing, the protagonist has the microphone and with the passion of a teen, he tells the truth. I’m thinking of calling it either Truth Warrior or Moon Sleep.
I might be late to the game, but I’m in it now. I'm trying to teach my own granddaughters about being Cherokee and getting them involved in the tribe. I am learning about our Cherokee history and culture so that I can tell my stories authentically.
I hope you’ll read my latest version of Sleep Warrior, which a kind editor and member of our tribe suggested that I rewrite into first person POV. Here is the link - https://sandijerome.com/free/SleepWarrior%20Sandra_JeromeRWPDF.pdf
.JPG)
