Andrew Jackson Stole Our Language

 Andrew Jackson stole our language right out of our mouth before we were even born - JP

Right after this class, we saw a bunch of eagles flying overhead

Over the last two weeks, I took an intensive Cherokee class (on top of my regular Tuesday and Thursday class!) It consisited of both online and two in-person classes at Daybreak Star Cultural Center. 

I'm not exaggerating when I say the in-person classes were life-changing. We went through the conjugations of the words which is exactly what I'd been missing! Things finally clicked and I feel much more confident in my language abilities - though I'm still a baby learner.  The two teachers, JP & Woy, were personable, helpful, patient, and all the other positive words you can think of. 

JP describing the meaning of the song he just sang

We started Saturday with JP taking us outside to face East while he sang us a song calling in our ancestors to be with us and help us over the weekend. It was my first time hearing a Cherokee song that wasn't sung by a kids choir. Then we got to work. 

This class was cool because they were kind of flexible with what they were teaching us so at one point, someone asked if we have an equivalent to "Oy vey," and that led us to learn Things Your Mom Might Say To You

Woy is so awesome. I could go on and on about him.

We learned helpful phrases like, "Let's eat," and, "Pick it up," and "Leave him alone," (something I say to my kids all the time!) so I can incorporate them in every day convo with the boys. I really liked that they taught us to say things like fluent speakers do rather than the proper and formal way. 

In addition to language, JP told us a story and we talked a bit about our culture. I drug my boys to the classes with me and they spent all 7 hours a day drawing but at one point, one leaned over to me and said, "This isn't nearly as bad as I thought." He also wrote down how to say "Skip me," in case on of the teachers asked him a question, haha. The other one told me we should move to Oklahoma. Even if they weren't paying attention, it was good for the to be surrounded by other Cherokees and hear people speaking. 

We followed up our in-person classes with three more online classes and at the very end someone asked JP a question. He told us about his journey learning our language and why it was important to him to become more fluent and teach his kids. He said something along the lines of  how capable we are of learning and we don't need permission to learn. We don't need permission to speak our language or to participate in our culture. No one has the right to tell us anymore. They tried to ban our language, our ceremonies, they tried to anhiliate us but our language and culture is the only thing that makes us different from the world. Don't give up. It was so validating as I've always felt like I needed someone to decide to teach me. No one is going to do that so I need to go out and get it myself. I'm just getting started.

"It's our language, no one has the  right to tell you you can't have it. Keep going." - JP 

Southeastern Artwork at Daybreak Star

We share the same wife!

 Luckily, I didn't have to wait super long to speak with this new-found cousin because not long after I was DMing with the cousin that invited me to the group and mentioned something about hoping to find people slightly closer related to me. 

Being the social butterfly she is (and admin of the group) she immediately posted that she was looking for people who come down from my 5x great grandfather for me.

Many, many people responded. My great grandfather had four wives and a ton of kids. It started a lot of really great conversations and I was able to work out some things that had confused me on my family tree. Finally, the cousin who posted the story responded. We both come down from my 5x great grandfather and the same wife! Remeber, this grandfather had four wives so I share this grandfather with many people in the group but they come from a different wife. With this particular wife, my grandfather only had 3 kids so it's not as easy to find people I share both the grandfather and grandmother with.

I'd found someone slightly closer to me and made new connections!

Restoring balance

 As much as I loved the cousin group, there didn't seem to be many people who came down from my grandfather. Many of them, though still cousins and still family, came down from his sister. So I was pretty quiet in the group and late one night, unable to sleep, I decided to search my family's last name.

One thing that was very important to pre-colonial Cherokees was balance. If an animal was killed, an offering was made to give something back to the earth. If a neighboring tribe killed a Cherokee, someone from that tribe had to be killed to restore balance. The Cherokee way of life worked because it was a series of checks and balances.

Imagine my surprise when I found a post stating a family member was involved in a famous act of restoring balance. Unfortunately, I will be somewhat vague as pretendians like to steal people's family histories and pictures as proof of their own family's legitimacy but you'll still get the gist.

Pre Trail of Tears, something happened and most of the tribe did not like it. It resulted in losing even more land than they already had and the guys who made it happen knew it was a huge risk. Land was lost, balance needed to be restored. Some very bad things happened to the guys who caused the loss of land and it is assumed that one of my family members was involved.

There I was at 2am, jaw-dropped, speechless. Not like I had anyone to talk to at 2am anyway, but still....it took everything in me not to get up right then and research where this story had come from.

I didn't find much else about my direct line but I then knew the person who posted the story was somewhat closer related to me than most people in the group. 

Now, how to get into a conversation with him without looking like a stalker...

Hey, Cousin!

After lurking in the Cherokee groups a bit, I finally requested some geneology help. I'm a "card carrying Cherokee" so my request was a little different than most people in the group. Because the "Cherokee Princess" and "My family hid in the hills" stories are so prevalent, there's actually a group who will research to see if you have any tie to one of the three Cherokee tribes. Hint: most people don't.

I asked for help on my gg grandmother's side. I can trace her husband's family back to one of the Old Families and I can trace her mother's death to the Trail of Tears but past that, things get a little murky. Because of how early our tribe had colonial contact, we're very well documented so I was hoping that maybe the group could help find any information or records I don't already have.

Unfortunately, I didn't learn anything new but I did recive this message

And just like that, I had 300+ new cousins.

It was a bit overwhelming, really. And it's still kind of confusing remembering how, exactly, we're related. But basically, my 6th great grandfather had a sister and so everyone in this group comes down from the two siblings.

And the thing is, in Cherokee culture, we're all cousins, no matter how far back. It's been really fun recognizing last names from this group as I find more and more documents about my family history. Through this group I found a really surprising story too.

It's not your fault

My reconnection journey kind of happened all at once and quickly. I found my very favorite podcast, All My Relations, hosted by Matika Wilbur & Adrienne Keene (and sometimes Dr. Dr. Desi.) Matika is a Swinomish & Tulalip woman (local to Seattle!) who was raised in her culture and Adrienne is a reconnecting Cherokee. Dr. Dr. Desi has two Doctorates and is Cheyanne & Chicana living in Aotearoa. I binged their episodes. It was all I listened to in the car for weeks and I spend a lot of time in the car. Highly recommend.

Around the same time I found a Cherokee genealogy group which led to a Cherokee culture Facebook group. From there I found countless other groups, including one including my distant Cherokee cousins! All My Relations was great for making me think about issues facing Natives today, the culture group has been invaluable for learning Cherokee culture, customs, language and history. (Have you ever tried to Google Cherokee?!? 99% percent of what you find is pan-Indian, a crazy mix of Native cultures all attributed to Cherokee. For the first time in my life I was learning true Cherokee culture from actual Cherokees.

This ikshe pops up when you google Cherokee Indians. Don't get me started on Pinterest.

I lurked in the Cherokee groups for a long time. My tendency, in new spaces, is to observe. Although the culture group was clearly full of people who were still learning, I felt like maybe they were still more connected to our culture than I am and wanted to be culturally sensitive.

Then one day, at the end of an All My Relations episode, Matika said something that changed my life:

It's not your fault.

I can't even describe how I felt hearing those words. I was driving and I think my body actually shuddered. And then I cried.

On one episode Matika pointed out that due to colonization it is not our fault that we don’t know our culture. They did everything they could to erase us: the Trail of Tears, the Dawes Act & allotment, Indian boarding schools, the 60s scoop…it is not our fault.

 My heart felt like she was giving me permission to feel like maybe it was possible to reconnect. I felt like her words helped release some of the shame (sadness?) I felt about not knowing our culture.  

Am I Cherokee enough?

A Dawes Enrollment Card. If you cannot trace your family back to someone on this roll, 

you cannot be an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation

I always worried I wasn’t Cherokee enough. Never having been to Oklahoma, I worried I was a “thin blood” and all the “thick bloods” would view me as a pretendian.

It wasn’t until I branched out from recording my direct line and started adding distant cousins to my family tree on Ancestry.com that I noticed that I had a higher Blood Quantum (BQ) than many Cherokees back in the 1800s. I have a higher BQ than many prominent Cherokees from back in the day. That was a shocking realization.

I struggle with Blood Quantum because I understand that it is a colonial construct made to erase our traditional ideas of citizenship, kinship and belonging. At the same time, it made me feel better that I have as much Cherokee blood as some people who were very much considered Cherokee at the time of the Dawes Act. Could there be a world where I feel like I’m “enough?” Could there be a world where I am accepted by those that stayed on the rez, or at least in Oklahoma?

I feel like it’s important to point out that I am certainly not trying to say that BQ, alone, makes me Cherokee. I do not want to take anything away from the lived experiences of people who grew up in our culture and I understand the privilege I have as a white-passing woman. Indian country has the right to be skeptical of outsiders & I understand that the difference between me and those with similar (or less) BQ on the Dawes Roll is that they were living the Cherokee experience every day and I have not. In my mind, all of those people are very much more Cherokee than me. And I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I still had hope. I just want to figure out where I fit in, reconnect, and maybe pass on what I’ve learned to generations after me.

I will stumble and fall. I'm sure I will, at times, not explain my point well and say things incorrectly. But I want to be open and vulnerable because as Matika said, "Many people feel like you."

Wait. Who's Matika?!?

Where do I fit in?

I’ve always known I was Cherokee. Ok, not always, but I remember when I was seven my grandma telling me my Papa’s family was Cherokee & walked the Trail of Tears. And that started my love for genealogy & all things Cherokee. I learned everything I could which wasn’t much in pre-internet, 1990s Seattle. It doesn’t help that my Papa died that same year so I only really knew what my (white) Grandma had on paper.

Luckily, my grandma had quite a bit and we could trace our family back to one of the Cherokee “Old Families.” My 5x great grandfather’s former home is a registered trademark and I’m intentionally being vague so pretendians can’t jack my family history, but more on that later.

I’ve always felt, or maybe I just wanted to be, not quite white. With my long, dark hair & tan skin (helped out by tanning beds) I was always asked, “What are you?” I remember laying on my parent's bedroom floor, listening to my Dad's Cherokee language cassette tapes when I was 7 years old. The only thing I could remember was how to say "Turkey," and I was pronouncing it incorretly. I’m also probably the only kid who asked her dad to take her on a family vacation to Oklahoma, but not during tornado season.

But, I didn’t feel Native enough either. I felt like maybe I was just a white girl who wanted to be Native, but all the real Natives would shun me & make fun of me for not knowing our language and our customs. I read & learned everything I could, I had dreams of moving to Oklahoma to learn, but not during tornado season.

One of the things I always heard about being Native was “Who claims you?” No one claimed me. I claimed Cherokee & care a lot about contemporary Native issues but no one tied to the tribe knew I existed.

Last year, or maybe it was even this year, I began to feel a change. And it all started with my favorite podcast.