Taken from home too soon
I have to begin my story with prefacing that my mother was Native American (Anishinaabe also known as Chippewa). Born in 1940, she had been taken away from her family at the age of 4 years old to be placed into the St. Benedict’s mission school and orphanage in St. Joseph, Minnesota. The brutality and inhumanity she experienced over the span of her growing years left definite scars upon her psyche, and she struggled with alcoholism throughout most of her life. Her schooling at St. Benedict’s was minimal and mainly focused upon training her to become a maid and child carer for wealthy families.
Losing home again and again
I and my younger sister grew up in Seattle, about as far away from my mother’s youth as she could get. Because of her lack of education and – both directly and indirectly – because of her skin color, Mom was only able to ever receive minimum-wage jobs. There were a number of times when we would lose our apartment when the rent could not be met. Everything except for some of our clothes had to be left behind – all of the bedding, the kitchen utensils, the toys, the household objects that held our memories of ‘family’ had to be abandoned. At those times of unhousing and homelessness, my mother struggled the most with her alcoholism.
But she would gather herself together, save money up, and find another apartment that could be afforded. I remember her excitedly leading my sister and I into our new housing. There, she had made a new refuge of beauty and wonder. She would purchase knick-knacks from Salvation Army, from Goodwill, from second-hand stores, and place them around this new, sparce space of ours. We often did not have mattresses (could not be afforded), but blankets galore would be set up for each of our very own sleeping area within a one-room apartment.
Turning bare rooms into wonder
But what I remember most, were the Christmas lights. She would hang the lights around the room and when we walked in they would be the only light…making the space look wondrous and magical. I vividly remember the awe I had as I stepped into the new apartment for the first time; bathed in soft red, yellow, green, and blue lights. I still hold a great affinity for Christmas lights, and I never wait the decent time (after Thanksgiving?) before I string them in, and on, the houses I live in.
My sister and I would wander around this new, small space, picking up and ‘oohing’ and ‘ahhing’ over the knick-knacks, the small toys now meant for us, the few kitchen utensils, the added clothing – all second-hand, all weathered and worn, but now all ours.
What she taught me about courage
Writing this up for the very first time, I am hit with the realization of how devastated, and then how courageous, my mother had been to bring beauty up from the ashes. I only remember her crying just once when we lost an apartment. It had been a sweet little space – in an old Seattle 1920s-era house turned into five apartments. We had the basement space, and it was the largest that we had ever lived in. It had built-in shelving and filigreed cabinets, and it had been painted a soft yellow throughout. She did break down when losing that space.
But every other time, she would simply explain that we would be getting another place soon. And she would speak of how lovely our new apartment would be, and that she would find one in the same area so that my sister and I could keep going to our schools and continue to grow up with our friends. We never doubted her. To this day I am not afraid of homelessness, and I channeled her strength to my own children when I found myself in that same situation: we will find a place of beauty. And we will start over.
Breaking the cycle in one generation
I didn’t know about her internal fear. About her pain of having her children homeless once again. About the dread she must have harbored that homing might not happen this time. I just didn’t know. Because she never let on.
I want to end my story with sharing that, despite the beatings and cruelty my mother experienced during her growing up in an Indian mission school, she never beat me or my sister; she gave us all the love and kindness that she retained in her heart despite it all, and we grew up feeling loved and cared for (to the best of her abilities while she struggled with her own insecurities and pain and her attempts to ‘drink’ it all away), and most importantly, we felt that we were people of high worth. Something she never felt about herself despite attempts to self-heal throughout her life.
She broke the cycle of historical trauma…not through seven generations, but through one.
That kind of power and perseverance of spirit cannot be minimalized. My mother was a strong and beautiful woman; not perfect, but who would be? Many other Native American children of her generation grew up struggling with histories of abuse, neglect, and yes even sexual abuse and torture. The Indian Boarding School Era of the 1600s to the mid-1900s left a wake of Native American children grown that never recovered or did not make it to adulthood at all. There were more than 500 government-funded or government-sanctioned Indian boarding schools across this nation, where children were forced to enter – forcibly taken from families and purposely moved far away from the reservations where their families lived. Heartbreaking photos exist of tipis set up near these spaces of horror, when parents and grandparents, siblings and extended families, moved to desolate areas next to the schools in the hopes of getting back their young. All to no avail. There are multiple stories of children hidden and, occasionally, kept safe at home. Very, very occasionally kept safe at home.
The term “Boarding School Survivor” must be a badge of courage for everyone who did survive. But it is a bitter, bitter badge. What is survival? It doesn’t mean being healed with all the shackles of atrocities-past shaken off. Far, far from it. It means just that: to survive. To continue. Despite all the odds. My generation, the children of Boarding School Survivors, felt…feel…the weight of what they went through. We also survive. For some, barely. Because the devastation of spirit was so nearly complete for so many of our parents, for so many of our tribal communities. But over and over, generation by generation, we will continue. In beauty. Because our upcoming youth deserve it.
About the Author:
Jessie Ryker-Crawford, PhD, (White Earth Anishinaabe, Chippewa) served as the Dean of Academic Affairs at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) where she holds the rank of Professor Emeritus. The founder and former Director of the IAIA MFA in Cultural Administration, she received her PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology through the University of Washington exploring the crucial changes in the museum field through the advocacy and activism of U.S. Native American and Canadian First Nations tribal leaders, artists, activists, and museum professionals.