Race, Ethnicity and My Face

As a mixed-blood woman of Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, and German descent, I came of age understanding that I'm not totally a Native person, and I’m not a white person. I'm a border woman dwelling between the boundaries. 

I have light skin, light enough that some people think I’m white. My dad, a Native man, and my mother, a white woman, had me when they were teenagers in 1953. 

I grew up in Compton, California. The family next door was Bolivian and they loved me like a daughter. My best friend was Japanese and Mexican. Still, when I was 10 years-old, my dad sat me down to have “the talk” with me about race. He told me about how to navigate the streets, about how to stay safe. He also wanted to make sure I understood that in order to be accepted by certain white people it mattered who your friends were. 

By that point, however, I already knew. 

I had discovered that when I went to the houses of my white friends after school I needed to be aware of how I was holding myself at all times. I learned to stay alert and watch for clues: sometimes there might be an older brother who pulled his eyes in an upward slant and said something mean about Chinese people; or a father that casually spouted racial slurs at people of color, and made fun of Indians. When this happened, I knew I had to make an excuse to go home and I’d never go back. Sometimes I’d make up stories when asked about my darker skinned, mixed-race family in order to protect them. But if the mothers of my white friends didn’t feel satisfied with my answers, I wouldn’t be allowed to stay at their houses for long. 

Things would be different when I went over to the houses of my friends of color. Their mothers would always take me in without hesitation. And if there was a grandmother at home who spoke English with an accent, or didn’t speak English at all I could usually be certain they wouldn’t ask me if my daddy had a job. In their homes, I felt safe. 

As a child I had things all figured out. But when I reached my late teens and early twenties it became more complicated. 

Hanging out with my friends of color meant witnessing them get treated poorly and face multiple instances of discrimination by white people. Being out with my white friends, however, meant that we could expect to be given preferential treatment no matter where we went. When I began dating and went out with Native boys or other boys of color in my community, I was considered “white trash” by many white Americans. I could even expect to have a white man point to my date and ask me what I thought I was doing being with the likes of someone like him. But when I dated the first guy that was white, I was allowed to be white by association and had access to the privileges of white America because of that. In stores or restaurants, we were always served or seated first, before people of color. 

When we acted up or got into mischief in public, it was laughed off as opposed to being taken seriously with the assumption that we were up to no good like it is for teens of color. My early adulthood was charged with decisions to make: Should I mention my Native identity? Should I let white people I don’t know well and may not ever want to become close friends with, assume I’m white? Keep my racial identity private from employers and others who would discriminate against me if they knew I’m a mixed-blood Native American woman.With dark skinned family members and dark skin friends, and with strong ties to Native America and firmly rooted within a community of color. 

When people look at my face, what they also can not see is that my mother, who was born white, is a member of a mixed-race family, with white and Black and Mexican family members. 

At age twenty-three, I found myself employed full-time in a company that was predominantly white. So white, that my intuition told me if my boss had known I was anything other than white, I would have probably not been hired. My white co-workers seemed to only accept people of color who adhered to white social norms and didn’t challenge their biases. They could not accept how vastly different the culture values, thought processes, and social norms of ethnic people were from white America. 

I wear the face of a woman with light skin privilege. While keenly aware of the advantage it has given me over my friends and family who are not able to pass, I always make the decision to disclose my Native identity. I never try to pass. Passing would mean turning my back on my Native family, my family and friends of color, and my community and my identity. 

Following my experiences working in a predominantly-white company at 23, I began to make sure that at each interview I had for a new job, I’d take a “racial temperature check” to ensure that people of color who looked like my friends and family were always welcomed. And I’d proudly list all the positions I’ve held within American Indian and Asian-American organizations on my resume. 

Later on in my life, I married a man who was white and we had a daughter together, before adopting two Korean children. Two of our kids had apparent ethnic features and their black hair and darker skin often caused people to mistakenly assume they were Native American. I knew that blending into white society would never be an option for them. So it was always a toss on whether they would be able to ride on the wings of my white privilege, or be subject to the racism that ruled America when they were out on their own. 

In turn, I did my best to connect them with their Korean roots by becoming deeply involved with the Korean community in our town. For more than four decades my heart and my soul was shaped by my connection to the Korean community for which I am grateful to be a part of. 

Now, in my 70s, my gray hair and wrinkled face reveal the many years I have lived. Yet what has not changed is what most cannot see: I am a border woman. Borders are set up to define or to separate, but I am neither part white, nor part Native. My blood is a mix between two worlds, Native and white merging together to form a third: a mixed-blood dwelling between the boundaries. 

First published in a slightly different form in Santa Clara Review, vol 108 / issue 01. 

Copyright © Terra Trevor. All rights reserved. 

Love and Fireflies

My cousin Debbie and I are both mixed-bloods; American Indian born and raised. 

When we were teenagers, I wanted to look like her. Especially on that summer day in 1966. While I held in my stomach, wearing a one piece, she ate fry bread wearing that brown string bikini, tan skinned and thin, like a Pocahontas Barbie. 

It was as if Debbie had one long leg in each world that summer, as if she were climbing out of childhood and stepping into womanhood. 

She leaned over and whispered that Richard Rustywire asked her to go steady. I had my eye on Johnny Drinkingwater. 

Later that afternoon, after we left the public pool, known as the Plunge, Debbie and some of the others went in to town, while I went back to auntie's house and sat on the porch swing, reading, waiting for a cool breeze and the moon to rise. The fireflies came out, white beads of light, flashing off and on all over the yard. And it was the way I always wanted to remember a summer night—the night of fireflies and my first kiss. 

While I was sitting on the porch reading, Donny came over. I’d had my eye on him all afternoon too. Donny he kissed me in the moonlight, behind Auntie’s clothesline, between the sheets. We stood barefoot, toes touching, arms entwined. His eyes searching mine, while his blond hair blew across my face. His voice cracked when he asked, “Is this the first time you’ve been kissed?" 

As we stood together under a spirit sky, with purple violets blooming in my mind, I answered “No.” But I was thinking “Yes.” Because the kiss I gave to Johnny Drinkingwater didn't count after he lost interest in me, after he found out that I was an Indian girl.

In a sorrow-filled voice his sister said, “I don’t know why, but my brother only goes out with white girls.” But her brother wasn’t white and I wasn’t white enough for him. Me—a high yellow mixed-blood girl, with olive skin so light. 

So the way I saw it was that I was starting out again. And this time, this boy, wasn’t disappointed that I wasn't a white girl and he wasn't trying to have some kind of sexy Indian princess fantasy evening, all impressed by the fact that I was an Indian girl, which was something Debbie had to deal with all the time when she dated white boys. And... in that malachite moment Donny was just kissing ME. 

For Donny 
September 5, 1952 - June 12, 2008 
Thank you for sweet memories in the summers of 1966--1968.

Tangled Thoughts

This time of year, I like to walk at sunrise, when the air is cool and blue-bellied clouds hang low over the mountains. 

Today my thoughts are heavy saddle bags. I walk with my dog at my side, in the privacy of the wind, thinking about a workshop I was invited to attend, where I was asked to speak about being bicultural and what it is like for me living as a mixed-race person and calling two cultures home. 

I’m walking faster than usual this morning. I need to wrestle down my thoughts holding me hostage. About the first day of the workshop, within the first hour, shortly after we received our orientation session and “before” the workshop began, we were given an icebreaker assignment. Asked to pair ourselves with someone we didn’t know. We were given a topic and asked to take turns and give each person five minutes to talk on the topic. 

The white woman I partnered with went first. When it was my turn, something I said triggered this woman to begin asking me a series of rapid fire, deeply personal, questions. Each time I answered she fired yet another question and I found myself explaining that I didn’t grow up in a white community setting. Why not? She asked. Where did you live? When I said Southeast Los Angeles and began to explain she interrupted and said, But you don’t look like you are Native American. And you didn’t grow up on a reservation. How much Indian are you? She was asking me to tell her my blood quantum. It's an inappropriate question. Indian Blood Quantum laws in the United States and the former Thirteen colonies were used as a tactic to reduce the number of Indians and Native Nations and resulted in forced assimilation. 

So, what you really mean… She said next. But I didn’t hear what she said. By now I could feel my hackles going up. 

This scene and similar scenes play out thousands of times, over and again for me and for my brown skinned family members and friends, by white peers who think they know our lives and our lived experience better than we do. 

My mind began to unsheathe my tomahawk. I wanted to chop her words to bits. Instead, I did what I always do when this type of micro aggression happens. I shut down. I could feel myself shrinking, getting smaller and smaller, fading away. 

But her next statement startled me alert. She said. "What you mean is that you have some Native American ancestry, now I understand.” 

But she didn’t understand anything at all. I grew up with my Indian ancestors, we sat down together for dinner every night. Grandma sewed beadwork on uncle Elmer’s deer skin leggings and my cute aunt Lydia, with her beautiful black hair, cried because the white men at work called her a squaw. 

Suddenly, I felt a deep place inside me, rise. Immediately I was able to pull myself into the moment, into what was happening all around me. From a corner in the crowded room I saw a friend, a close friend. Her face tender, concerned and staring right at me. I began telling myself to stop shutting down. Climb out, I demanded of myself. This was my opportunity to learn a better way to deal with micro aggressions. It was painful but I stayed open. When the two-day workshop ended I felt something inside me stand taller in mixed-race America where nothing comes easy.

By the time I’ve walked the first mile, my morning thoughts are untangled. I look up at the sky; the sun is covered with high gray clouds. I shrug my shoulders and tighten my cinch on yesterday. The air is filled with birdsong and my dog is panting happily. Then I make the decision to set my weary thoughts free. In the second mile of my walk only the colors emerging in the scrub oak and the smell of mountain sage call me. Call me home.

I feel like I have been carrying a weight around that I’ve inherited

I am in deep thought this morning. 

When I was twelve I remember my grandpa lifting up my chin with his rough brown hand, and he said, “Sometimes it’s better not to claim you’re Indian.” 

Understand, he could well remember the warnings, the fear, after the U.S. Congress passed the "Religious Crimes Code." This code forbid Indian people to hold religious ceremonies or conduct prayer. Parents were forbidden to teach their children our customs and traditions. Anyone who did these things could be put in jail. 

Basically it was against the law to be Indian, and the law required American Indians be made over in the image of white Americans. 

Under colonial occupation, Native communities across the Americas endured devastating historical circumstances now recognized as genocide. 

My German family members recall how Hitler gained power by running on a "Let’s Restore Germany to its Former Glory" platform. He identified the groups making it hard for good, decent Germans to get ahead. He then sought to isolate those groups. He dehumanized Jews and many other peoples. And then he asked the German people to ignore their own values and what was taking place, and to believe his words. Fascism and Nazism did not suddenly appear. It gained power and favor slowly over a period of time.

For those who are wondering how these things happened, look at your community members and neighbors and pay attention to their values. Pay attention to your own values. 

You also might say there is no way something similar could happen again. History proves otherwise. We are standing in an unprecedented moment in America and world history, and Americans will all pay the price (and be judged) by how we respond.

“I feel like I have been carrying a weight around that I’ve inherited. I have this theory that grief is passed on genetically because it’s there and I never knew where it came from. I feel a sense of responsibility to undo the pain of the past. I can’t separate myself from the past, the history, and the trauma. It has been paralyzing to us as a group.”  
--A Dakota/Lakota woman (Brave Heart & DuBruyn 1998)

The ways of white folks, I mean, some white folks

I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother.
 They send me to eat in the kitchen
, When company comes,
 But I laugh,
 And eat well, 
And grow strong. Tomorrow,
 I ’ll be at the table
 When company comes.
 Nobody’ll dare 
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
 Then. Besides,
 They’ll see how beautiful I am
 And be ashamed– I, too, am America. –Langston Hughes

Sometimes the only cure, with all the blackening and whitening and out Indian-ing, the othering and the whitesplaning all around, trying to dominate— is a long sit with Langston Hughes wrapping his words around me, like a dance shawl in flight.