I didn't find out I was Cherokee until my
grandmother died. I hadn't seen her for
a few years and I asked my dad, "Where?" He said that she went back
to the reservation and died in one of their rest homes.
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
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