Coming Full Circle

In this part of Ohio (smack dead center) when I was growing up (I started 1st grade in 1962), it was not unusual to hear a classmate announce "I'm part Indian" or "I'm part Cherokee" or something similar. (Maybe it still is, but I am talking about then, not now.) Everyone (well, at least four or five kids)  claimed Native American ancestry, often Cherokee, whenever indigenous peoples were talked about, which in school meant when we talked about "ancient" Ohio history—the Adena and Hopewell tribes, called "Mound Builders" by the dominant white colonial society—or around Thanksgiving.

Heck, my family even had an "We're part Indian" story that persisted into the 21st century. My

Grandma Skatzes: not Native American 

Grandmother Skatzes told stories, perhaps more than one, that we had a Native American ancestor in her family tree. It was a grandmother, three or four generations back, who would tie her children to the fence so that she could work in the garden. (My grandmother, a gentle-hearted soul, would tear up when she told this, saying "That was a cruel and terrible thing to do! Those little children would holler all day long!") There was never a name attached to this allegedly Native American ancestor, just the story of tying the children up so she could do her chores.

Another version which popped up once or twice was that we had a male ancestor, supposedly of the Apache tribe, somewhere back in the past. Seriously? Besides the fact that the historical lands of the Apache were in the southwestern part of this country, a part of the country we did not move to or come from, a narrative involving a relationship with a male Native American runs contrary to what the standard settler/Native interrelationships looked like: male settler, Native woman.

Trust me, it didn't happen.

Still, the stories persisted. As I grew older and learned more history of the colonization in this part of the country, I began to disbelieve the whole family myth of a Native American ancestor. Most of our maternal genealogical records, even without digging too deep, followed such traditional white trajectories that I could not begin to shoehorn a Native American ancestor into them. Rape or sexual assault somewhere in the past? Absolutely a possibility. But a marriage or domestic partnership? No way. It was white, white, white all the way.

With the advent of DNA testing for "heritage" purposes, one of my cousins on my maternal side took a test. She was excited waiting for the results, anticipating seeing threads of that Native American ancestor pop up in the results. I told her to be prepared: there won't be any Native American DNA identified. Yes, there will be, April! Just wait and see!

True to my prediction, there was no Native American DNA. Zero, nada, nothing. Unlike Elizabeth Warren, we couldn't even pretend to have any Native American lineage.

That story resurfaced when I went to Kentucky last month with my dad and brother and sister-in-law. While we were eating dinner at a Bob Evans, Mark brought up that we have Native American blood in the Strickler family line (our mom's maternal lineage).

"No, we don't. There might be some in the family, but it's not there."

Dad looked at me quizzically. "The Skatzes side?" (That would be Mom's paternal lineage.)

"Not there either," I said, explaining that our cousin (who has the same Skatzes/Strickler DNA that my brother and I do) had a DNA test and the results were negative for Native American DNA.

"Frankly, if there is any Native American blood, it'll be on your side, Dad."

I went on to point our that his family history, of which I know the bare bones narrative, was more likely to have Native American/settler interrelationships of the kind that would lead to marriage or a domestic partnership. Our ancestors were in Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky very early in the dominant white colonial history of this country, and probably far enough in advance of "civilization" that tribes in the area would have been the only other humans around.

That's when I came to a complete stop in my mind.

Oh hell.

We, my family, did that. We were part of that wave of white settlers invaders, part of the white colonization mindset that it all belonged to us and those others—those indigenous people seen as lesser than, if seen as human at all—deserved to be pushed out of the way or slaughtered or both in the name of God, the King, the United States, the whatever.

We were those people and for all of my participation in circles on historical trauma and cultural and biological genocide and (gulp) restorative justice, it never hit me that I was a direct heir and beneficiary of that. All my law school clerk experience in the Native American law field, my championing of tribal law and the many Native sovereign nations: that was good work, but I was flying blind, in the fog, and upside down. I couldn't even coast by saying my family came to those parts of the United States (Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio) post-Civil War through Ellis Island after all the tribes had been exterminated or removed.

Oh, no, no, no, we were here from the very beginning and took part of that long, horrific history.

Oh hell. Talk about privilege. Talk about white dominant colonial culture bias.

Talk about feeling like a totally clueless goof.

If my child-in-law Alise, who is Anishinaabe, is reading this post, this is about the point where she is nodding her head and saying "uh huh, April, uh huh. Now you get it."

Better late than never.

But dang, that "late" was way late in coming.