|
ARE YOU
AN INDIAN? |
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By |
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Les Tate |
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11/18/96 |
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How often
have you heard or said "I'm part Indian"? If you have, then some Native
American elders have something to teach you. A very touching example was
told by a physician from Oregon who discovered as an adult that he was
Indian. This is his story. Listen well: |
|
Some
twenty or more years ago while serving the Mono and Chukchanse and
Chownumnee communities in the Sierra Nevada, I was asked to make a house
call on a Mono elder. She was 81 years old and had developed pneumonia
after falling on frozen snow while bucking up some firewood. |
|
I was
surprised that she had asked for me to come since she had always avoided
anything to do with the services provided through the local agencies.
However it seemed that she had decided I might be alright because I had
helped her grandson through some difficult times earlier and had been
studying Mono language with the 2nd graders at North Fork School. |
|
She
greeted me from inside her house with a Mana' hu, directing me into her
bedroom with the sound of her voice. She was not willing to go to the
hospital like her family had pleaded, but was determined to stay in her
own place and wanted me to help her using herbs that she knew and
trusted but was too weak to do alone. I had learned to use about a dozen
native medicinal plants by that time, but was inexperienced in using
herbs in a life or death situation. She eased my fears with her kind
eyes and gentle voice. I stayed with her for the next two days, treating
her with herbal medicine (and some vitamin C that she agreed to accept). |
|
She made
it through and we became friends. One evening several years later, she
asked me if I knew my elders. I told her that I was half Canadian and
half Appalachian from Kentucky. I told her that my Appalachian
grandfather was raised by his Cherokee mother but nobody had ever talked
much about that and I didn't want anyone to think that I was pretending
to be an Indian. I was uncomfortable saying I was part Indian and never
brought it up in normal conversation. |
|
"What!
You're part Indian?" she said. "I wonder, would you point to the part of
yourself that's Indian. Show me what part you mean." |
|
I felt
quite foolish and troubled by what she said, so I stammered out
something to the effect that I didn't understand what she meant.
Thankfully the conversation stopped at that point. I finished bringing
in several days worth of firewood for her, finished the yerba Santa tea
she had made for me and went home still thinking about her words. |
|
Some
weeks later we met in the grocery store in town and she looked down at
one of my feet and said, "I wonder if that foot is an Indian foot. Or
maybe it's your left ear. Have you figured it out yet?" |
|
I laughed
out loud, blushing and stammering like a little kid. When I got outside
after shopping, she was standing beside my pick-up, smiling and
laughing. "You know" she said, "you either are or you aren't. No such
thing as part Indian. It's how your heart lives in the world, how you
carry yourself. I knew before I asked you. Nobody told me. Now don't let
me hear you say you are part Indian anymore." |
|
She died
last year, but I would like her to know that I've heeded her words. And
I've come to think that what she did for me was a teaching that the old
ones tell people like me, because others have told me that a Native
American elder also said almost the same thing to them. I know her
wisdom helped me to learn who I was that day and her words have echoed
in my memory ever since. And because of her, I am no longer part Indian, |
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I |
|
Am |
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Indian. |
| (Courtesy Tiger Lilli Sakima) |
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