We stopped to see Chief last week after the big rains. She showed us these photos. She and Mya went to Dry Creek which is full of water from the hard rain. Little Mya was singing the salmon song and then she began to yell “Grandma! Grandma! Run4Salmon!” And much to Chief’s surprise two salmon were swimming in the creek!!! What a special day. Little Mya sang the salmon in. This is the dry creek Chief wants connected to Cow Creek and have McCloud river run through it to successfully bypass the dam. I pray for good things coming!!!!

 Today we went to see Chief again and talked about the rain, the dry creek beds filling with water, the ponds coming back.  Everywhere there are salmon and fish coming in.  Salt Creek had salmon spawning.   We went to see them the weekend.  But today, Chief had taken Mya and NetChi  to school and saw a figure in a pond, once dry, now full.  She got out of the car?  More salmon, she wondered,  It was an otter, who saw her and started gliding full steam toward her to greet her.  I am so happy and will put that video here for you.  The otter must have recognized the leader who prays for the water, and prays for the salmon's return, and in fact knows exactly how to bring back the original DNA eyed eggs of the McCloud River Chinook, and has a plan to connect Dry Creek and Cow Creek to the lake for the salmon to return around the dam, and then the fingerlings to go out to where Cow Creek meets the Sacramento to go out to sea to live.  I pray for Good things coming!!!

 

Getting off the gerbil wheel at Warm Springs Reservation

I found an old journal.  It had one entry and a poem, some thoughts of lectures.  It is the entry which is important because it is what I wrote at the very moment I made the choice to live following the original, free way of being on this land.  This is the first time I stepped out onto reservation land, Warm Springs Reservation, accompanying Hunkpapa Elder, Wilma Crowe. When I got back on the bus to return home, I returned to Indian Country in my heart and mind.

 

February 5, 1979

Wilma asked me to accompany her to a Give Away in Warm Springs.  I was reticent at first, thinking I would e stepping out of place as a Nikkei immigrant.  This Give Away by George and Janice Clements was to end the period of mourning after the death of their eldest son.  The family had not danced for a year because they were grieving. Such an important time for this family and their friends, I thought.  So private a time.  But I decided to go after much debate with myself.

 A long bus ride to Warm Springs with Wilma.  Arrived after dark, the glaring light of the lumber mill, the most obvious sight in that small town late at night  Couldn't wait until morning to see those beautiful hills whose form I admired against the night sky.  Wilma called when we got to the Standard station and George's son Warren picked us up.

 

We arrived to the Clement's home.  We walked into a house ablaze with lights, filled with people, George and Janice's adult children, foster children.  All around were hanging wing dresses, beaded necklaces, shawls.  Sixty pies spread across all the counters and table.  The welcome smell of hot coffee.  Warmer than that cup of coffee which we were both offered were the smiles of welcome from Jeanie Tom, Alta Tom, George and Janice.  Soon, Wilma and I were put to work fringing a shawl.  Alta and Jeanie and Janice beaded.  The girls rolled out pie c=shells.

 

The drum from Heart Butte would be coming soon.  They were friends and would also stay at the Clements' home, nine children, Alta, Jeanie, Wilma, the parents, the Heart Butte Drummers and a stranger, me.

 The women stayed up.  We worked on the gifts which were to be given away until 330 in the morning.  We also laughted, shared stories, and sometimes, Janice reminisced about Junior, their deceased son.  We looked over a few pictures of this young man, as a child, and as an adult, always carrying a little brother or sister, his football picture, his graduation picture, wearing his traditional outfit.   He had told his mother about the senior pictures too late to buy a suit.  His frield Amil suggested he wear his dance outfit -- Amil his close friend whom he stood in front of, protecting, when he was killed.  I looked at these pictures.  It was hard for me to understand why this healthy, good hearted young loved son was gone.

 Moments of silence passed as we beaded.  Jeannie commented about me.  "This is the one I talked about."  I had joined the beading group hosted at her home where spent the night beading comfortably, sometimes talking, often laughing and just as often in comfortable silence.  Around 330 in the morning, we crashed. I was in the living room. The big workday was tomorrow.  I dreamed that I was stringing beads and was awakened by a loud knock.  In my dream I said "Go away.  Let me finish the last few beads."  The knocking continued. It was not a dream.  I woke up with a start and staggered to the door.  There stood a man who I later learned was named Cash.  "Is George here?" he asked.  I automatically said, "he's sleeping" then I remember where I am and stepped to the side to let them in.  George came out to greet them.  The Heart Butte Drum has arrived!  Cash, Clara Jean, Bacon, Ethel, Fern and Gary.  (there should be a Snake listed here too, and Mr. Mountain Chief).

 We awakened agin at 630.  Coffee is already made.  We begin to bead and fringe shawls again.  Jeannie is working on a "Jesus" figure for the leather cover for the preacher's bible.  The night before, she had worked on a beautiful cape with two beautiful  rosettes.  The friend to receive it could not see well so they were made especially bright and large.  This man was born with disabilities and sometimes teased by the townspeople, but a relative to all. Junior had taken his name as his nickname, and for the gift, this man was to be given a cape.

 About noon, or perhaps earlier, activity picked up.  Things began to be packed out.  We felt the urgency.  Vans, cars and a pickup were loaded.  Jeanie, Wilma and I rode with Alta, Jeanne's sister in law.  Wilma sat on my lap.  We were with the turkeys, pies and corn to our ride to the longhouse in Simnasho.  As we cart the food into the kitchen I see about twenty women with scarves and wingdresses, cooking and organizing carts of food for the feast.  We get into it.  The pies must be cut.  The cabbage must be shredded.  The garbage taken out.  The turkey cut.  Thesalmon dressed and cooked.  The corn and bitter root boiled, jams, canned peaches, choke cherry canned opened and put into their serving bowls.  The frybread must be prepared and cabbage and potatos boiled.

 Outside is slippery with ice and snow.  The dogs have upset the garbage cans and ton through the  trash bags.  Right outside is stewn with paper plates, styrofoam and orange peels but all that provides safe steps across the ice as we carry in heavy boxes of apples and oranges. 

 We help out in the kitchen.  The Seven Drum, Washut Ceremony begins.  I stand in the back.  The meare drumming on had drums and singing.  Four youngwome, a young boy and a child are dancing around the circle of the Simnasho Longhouse, jumping high as they circled the large room lined with short bleachers.   I can see those beautiful hills, snow spotted through the large windows of the Longhouse.  The drums are called up and introduced.  They takeir time.  People join them to drum and sing.  There is Heart Butte Drum.

 The family is ready.  The drum begins, and  George and the youngest, Luther,  lead out.  Luther wears his eldest brother's outfit.  The men go first, and teh women next, all dance around the circle as we stand.  The designated mourners, elderly women, wail.  The family are dancing for the first time.  It is hard for me to keep myself fro crying.  Then I see the mother, beautiful in her wing dress, and my tears flow.  The dance cannot be described.  But the family bearing their grief supporting one another, dancing for the memory of their beloved son, brother, uncle and nephew.

 When the dance ends, there is a prayer and as it ends it is sent up with sound, and arm raised all of us turn in place.

 The feast begins.  Suddenly tables apear and are set up.  Our benches are to be moved so I go out into the kitchen.  More women and young girls are filling carts and pushig them.  I go outside to join Jeannie, Alta and Wilma.  Jeannie is still beading Jesus.  She tells us to go on to the feast assuring us she's almost finished.

 But first the garbage has to be taken out, I say to myself, picking up the trash.  The tribal police officer helps me.

 Wilma and Alta has saved me a seat.  As we sit, food is precisely lined up in front of us along the center of the table.  There is a pile of golden frybread too Together, everyone drinks a small glass of water to a prayer and teh feast begins.  We eat our fill.  When the meal is over, the ladies in wing dress pass out paper bags to every person, invited to take what we want as leftovers for home.  Then the feast is over.  We stand, and we pray toward the east.  This may be the moment that i began to think, "again, the circle." Along the way the stranger found a place within a circle.

 Then the drums began.  Rudy Clements, George's brother, was the spokesperson for the family.  He said, "Women, clear the tables" and the drums became louder.  We started clearing and stacking quickly.  This was so familiar to me I felt at home.  We worked faster with the drumbeat.  Suddenly everything is cleaned out, cleaned up and the tables folded and benches set back into rows.  As that ended, piles of gifts and bundles are heaped on the floor and the Giveaway begins.  Sometimes, small anecdotes came with the gifting.  The introduction of a family friend is made, and called up to receive a gift from the family.  Blankets,  beads, wing dresses, vests, shawls.  Special gifts with thought.  A lawn chair for Eight Ball so he can be comfortable at the emcee spot as pow wow.  A tricycle for Amil's little brother who provided Junior and Amil an excuse to get out of the house. 

 All the while, members of the family distribute bundles of houseware, things the family used while the son was alive.  When he had died, the ladies of the church came in to the home and took away the furniture, rugs, dishes, whatever he used and wiped down the walls.  Then day after day this neighbor, that friend, would give the family a new chair, a couch, some dishes. until the home was redone and everything new.  As for the family's things shared with their son, all of that was given throughout his friends' families.  And visitors.  Strangers.  Rudy spoke out "The ladies who are guests of George and Janice, please come up to receive a gift from the family -- Wilma, Alta and Donna." Jeanie was already family with the Clements.  I was shocked to hear my name.   I was just a rider who came along with Wilma.  This family who had already been so generous, who had fed us, housed us, and welcomed participation in the work and therefore the circle, Nikkei way, my sense of grateful obligation just kept piling up.  I was humbled as the shawls were draped across our shoulder. The generosity and the circle which accepts even the stranger into the family is a belonging I had never ever experienced or dreamed of in this country, and it changed me.  It changed my direction, my position.

 Years later in my kitchen during one George and Janice's visits to Eugene, staying with us, my mother was also visiting.  We all were washing dishes together.  Janice teased my mom.  "Mary.  You raised Donna for her first 30 years, and now we are raising her for the next 30."  It is all true.

 

 

The Belly Decolonized the Winnemem Way: Chapter One

 

Chapter One:  "I Am Your Mother." Florence Jones, August, 1987, during the Meteor Showers, Coonrod

A lot has changed since June, 2018, when I wrote the commencement speech I was invited to give at the UO Ethnic Studies Department graduation ceremony. They picked an alumna who had been around at the inception of the youth led Asian American  movement on their campus decades before, one of the last ones who still remained in Eugene, Debbie McDaniels and I. We were the generation who started AASU, before Pacific Islanders were without consultation swept in with Asian diaspora colonial forces of the Island nations and it became APASU on the UO campus.  We started Asian American studies, without credit and taught by regular folks guerilla style you might say, with the tacit agreement of the UO.  Now there was a graduate program and a major/minor, and I was asked to speak.  This was  three months before I spent the summer packing half of what we gathered up over 50 years living in Eugene from the house which I made so many fond memories with a couple generations of University students of color and the community peoples who remained to continue making Eugene safer for our own children, children who grew up with Aunties and Uncles of many backgrounds -- all of us who fought the good fight together on this campus.  Will and I had made the decision to move to Winnemem, a region identified by Bullyum Pyuk to the north (Mt. Shasta) and along Winnemem Wyakit, (the McCloud River) to the Sacramento River, and if we are to follow our Nur, and it's journey to live, all the way to Sagorea Te of the Ohlone peoples where they grew and changed to young adults who then swam to the ocean, turned south to the Orca peoples area, the Kumyaay, then out to the sea to live and grow in the Ocean.  

We were moving to live near Granny's people,  our Winnemem family.  We met the tribe when we were taken to be helped by Florence Jones, the Chief and Spiritual Leader, the Top Doctor of California who had told me when I went to her in desperation to help our little 4 year old adopted daughter, Soon Sun Park growing up Maki Doolittle and us, her parents, whom a Snoqualmie doctor, Kenny Moses, said we were living under a heavy grey cloud which he tried to push away from us.  He did this after he took away a black highway going through our daughter's back, and coming out of the top of her head then on into a black tunnel. There was no good future which lay ahead of her.  But he took care of it as best he could and said we would need more doctoring.

Our good friend Marvin Stevens, Kickapoo Doctor, said we would need a woman doctor and he knew exactly where we should go and took us to Granny's August ceremony.  "She does what I do with Fire with Water," he said.  Florence Jones was an answer to Animithat, Marvin's prayer. He was able to see sickness in people, and thought why do I see this unless Creator had a purpose to help these people and he prayed to be used for good.  And he saw Granny, Florence Jones, as part of the answer, the mentor he sought, in the Mountains he prayed to find her.  He would travel often from the rolling grassed areas of Oklahoma to the mountains and rivers of northern California for the rest of his life.

Marvin took Roger Amerman, Choctaw, recent single father raising two sons Darren, four and Dawson two.  His mother Harriet and her grandsons had moved in with us, and we were raising the children together.  Roger took Maki, Darren and Dawson to Ash Creek to play while Marvin took me into a long line of people who came to receive healing from Granny.  I would watch her, her cousin Dawinkai, (Emerson), as they worked on people.  He used his pipe to blow smoke on them as well as onto Granny, as she put her hands on the people, and with her doctoring box on their chest, telling them to hold it there with both hands, she would close her eyes and put her hands on them.  She seemed to be listening to the spirits and spoke in a low voice her own ancient language.  Often, perhaps with instruction she would use her strong hands, and would wipe or take something and with her breath, give things to the Creator.  One person after another would do exactly what she would say and would receive something from her, which at the point I will call medicine.  

When it was my turn, Anemithot introduced me to Granny, and she looked at me and nodded to him.  Dawinkai smoked me up with the root, a smell which still settles me and puts me into a mode to be open to the universe of Winnemem ancestral spirits of leaders, species not human and mountain water and fire.  My eyes closed and for the first time simultaineously with her deep voice saying "you're going to see something. Tell us what you see."  I saw these things one after another.  First I saw Maki, laughing gleefully.  I burst out in tears and told her I see our daughter.  Pain went through my heart, and she said "you think you're a bad mother" and I nodded my head.  I was a bad mother, I thought.  I can't help her.  She said, "you're not a bad mother. "  Then she said something that surprised me and gave me a start.  "I am your mother."  My instantaneous reaction was "but I have a mother" but at the same thought another one lay on top "but you really need help.  This is help!"  And I nodded and breathed her words into my heart.  Thank you, thank you, was my thought.  

Then I saw a small animal and a small tree.  Suddenly Mt. Shasta came rumbling out of the earth, and rose majestically and the animal and tree looked up to it.  "I see a small animal and tree" I said.  "The Mountain rose up big" and she said "how do the small animal and tree feel?"  I tried to explain how they were happy to see the mountain and happy to be the way they were."  She said, "so they felt normal."  Yes, I nodded.  But at the time I knew that from the society I came from, that was not the norm.  All my life as a Nikkei (Japanese diaspora) I was prodded and scolded as being too shy for not striving to be the mountain, you might say, when I was perfectly happy being and growing as a tree.   Her words felt assuring to me. Then Dawinkai said "That's good!" and that set in place that feeling I had inside my heart though I had not expressed it aloud.

Before I could say what I saw next, Dawinkai woke me out of whatever dimension I was in with a loud clap, and his words, "Do you see that!!  It's a white butterfly that just flew out of her head!"  I opened my eyes feeling kind of light headed.  Granny finished up, and I walked dazedly out of the meadow with Dawinkai after thanking her.  She put her attention to the next person.  This hugely significant moment for me was just one of many people she helped that day.

The thing about these healings is you feel completely the same, unburdened, and just go on your way.  What changes are in the days ahead, and if you are lucky or should I say, if you are grateful, you notice where the blessings ahead come from.  It began very quickly, as we walked toward Ash Creek to see the children.  "Hey, Misa!" Roger clambered up from the creek.  "You should have seen it!!!  This white butterfly came flying and it flew and tapped every one of our kids on the head before it left!"  I was so happy!!  My thoughts were partially feeling badly Roger and the kids did not also receive a blessing from Grams, but I was wrong.  They all were blessed, I was sure of it.  

Now 30 years after, Will and I have moved ourselves to be close to Gram's people, her sacred lands, right by the Village of her people led by her niece, Caleen Sisk, who has led her people for twenty years following her Grams step by step.  That is the story I will continue to blog.  I am no longer the distressed 40 year old woman who was over my head in misery parenting a little girl who seemed to disdain everything about her new life, wrong parents, wrong home, wrong way to be, unafraid of the dangers looming ahead on the path she seemed to be choosing, but I know it was the path she was familiar with raised by neglect and abuse from infancy in a crowded orphanage which Holt Intnl broke ties with upon seeing what had happened to this little girl, our daughter, when we reached out for them for help.  They turned their back on that orphanage which closed the next year, after they had wholesale gotten rid of all the children and the whole staff at once and ceased to exist.  And they turned their back to our desperate calls for help.  As Maki told us as soon as she could speak clearly her ideas, "Mom.  I don't learn by experience, not by listening!!" And she meant it.

That is also the time, that at the moment I believed her words, I took Florence Jones for her word.  I called her every two weeks, to check in even though I knew I was just one of many who came to ceremony every year.  One time she had run out of firewood, I called an Asian brother in Mt. Shasta, Mark Miyoshi, sansei drum maker.  I knew he was a friend who would say yes.  I said I'd send him the money if he could buy a cord of word and take it to Grams, and he was happy to do it.  Granny said he came and unloaded the wood, chopped all of it to a size for her stove, and stacked it neatly.  That was Mark's way.  Meticulous.  Which brings me to the third image I saw, under the medicine of the root at the doctoring, I saw Mark, looking down on the Mountain with the most lit up smile he could have.  I puzzled about that image, but this moment was the beginning of a long relationship he had with Grams, became like a son to her, and with Chief Caleen Sisk right now, he and his wife Luisa Navajes, are her strong left arm-helpers.  His Winnemem Name is "The One Who Looks Over The Sacred."  I had seen his name.  And if I hadn't been startled out of talking, Grams would have gotten the message "Miyoshi is coming."  

 Chapter Two:  "I Am Your Mother" is the Medicine

It's only been recently that I have begun to realize the import of Granny telling me during her doctoring that she was my mother.  What I realize now is that Granny was giving me the medicine I had prayed for.  She offered herself.  She offered to take me under her wing as a daughter, treat me like a daughter, and if I were to reach out my hands to receive I would put myself into her care, I would trust her, believe in her authority to lead me through life as any parent would a child.  I would humble myself as a daughter raised Nikkei.  Listen, learn, trust, love, and in the way of a forty year old, take care of my elder mother as I would my own both at the same time.  So, I called both of them every week or two, check in on how they were doing.  Florence, I thought to myself, must wonder who I am but she never made me feel strange and we would always have a small conversation of how things were at the ranch.

One day, someone else answered the phone.  I now know it was Ben Branham, Hoopa, now a brother to me born 24 years after me.  When I said hello, he said "I can't talk.  The ambulance is hauling Grams off to the hospital - she's had a stroke" click!  I sat down stunned.  "Oh, no!!"  I began to fret and by the afternoon I got the courage to call again.  This time his mother, Sharon Branham, answered  and she said she was glad I called back.  They needed help because Granny's family were all up in the mountains running a culture camp for children and Granny needed someone to come and help her in a few days when she came home from the hospital.  Of course I said our daughter Maki and I would be there.  It was June.  We were out of school.  We could stay as long as needed either with Grams or in Hoopa taking care of Sharon's household while Sharon stayed with Granny.  She called the next day.  She had checked with Grams and Florence Jones had said, "the daughter was quiet.  They can come ahead."  

Some days later, our five year old daughter and I packed our car intending to stay as long as it took, and headed to Florence Jone's ranch on Bear Mountain Road.  I called ahead, and she instructed us to take the Mountain Gate exit and turn over the freeway."  I marveled that she just didn't seem like she had just been through a stroke, clear voiced and clear headed.

 We arrived at the ranch.  The first thing I saw was a large pond, and pink roses tumbling down from the edge to the waters.  The neat white framed home was on the other side of the country road which became the driveway, meandering along the hill, grass meadow on one side and the hill on the other.  A green barn sat on top of the first slope.   To the east loomed Bear Mountain. Granny would tell me later that Bear Mountain was Suun Sawal, and the first rock the Great Olelbis put down in this territory which I since learned was Winnemem territory named after the river, Winnemem Wywaket, the middle river.  Maki and I sat by the pond and waited.  No one seemed to be home yet.  Soon enough on a small tractor, Oso or Bear arrived to greet us.  I had seen him at the ceremonies.  He seemed to be one of the people organizing.  He wore his bandana around his head, and jumped off the tractor with the same authority as he had in ceremony, friendly, and instructed us.  "Just come to me if you need anything or want to know anything.  The old people in there" he gestured with his head toward the white framed house, "they're not very friendly.  They're crazy.  So just come and ask me."  I didn't answer.  And thanked him and turned with Maki in hand to walk into the house.  If he could read my mind I had already dismissed him.  For the next month all my needs and questions were answered by the four elders in the house, the most influential elders and whose every word I believed and well being I prayed for each day.  They were an answer to a prayer I had made each day for our daughter which I thought was a wish.  Each day I wished sadly that Maki would have my childhood.  Poor as we were, crowded into a white framed house of our own in Twin Falls, Idaho, a farmworking family for the Potato King, JP Marshall, we were happy, safe from the WW2 incensed Jap-hating neighbors and kept ignorantly secure surrounded by my little sister and my Issei grandparents, two Nisei uncles just back from serving at the European front in Italy, and our single parent mother, fresh from a bad divorce.  I wished for that happiness and safety for Maki who came with a propensity toward dangerous behavior which caught negative attention from teachers and predatory white old males all at the same time.

 I walked in to four elders.  Leona was the first to greet me.  Dawinkai was sitting at the little melmac kitchen table just like the one Grandma (Obachan) had at our kitchen in Idaho.  He had is usual cup of coffee.  Leona bustled around the kitchen making sure I knew that in this house, everything had a place and there was a place for everything.  She nailed me with her eyes, and announced, "That's the way Ms. Jones likes it."  Yes, I said and nodded.  I knew exactly what she meant.  She showed me into the living room.  I saw Gram's daughter, Margie and Grams herself sitting there.  Grams had her signature house dress, her white hair neatly pulled in a side pony tail framing her face like a halo.  She was seated on the end of a couch and probably with a flyswatter in her hand.  Placed in front of her was a tv tray with her yellow cereal box mug, probably with Rose tea. In the months ahead, I would make sure she had that every day with a snack.  Sliced avocado.  Peach cobbler.  A treat from McDonald's -- apple pie, or chicken nuggests.  Margie sat in the armchair where now sits my sister Helene Sisk who lives in the main house of the Winnemem Village,  Margie had a gallon jug of fresh spring water at her feet and carried an armload of her dolls on her lap.  She would be noting the goings-on around her. Her ears were sharp because she was blind from an accident in her childhood, although sometimes we wondered, is Margie really blind?  She walked fearlessly everywhere, knew exactly where to sit, or at least, had the greatest of faith that when she fell back there would be a chair to catch her.  Her smile spread across her face, and her cute face crinkled up as she lifted her head toward us, eyes shut.  I looked at them, remembering the two in the kitchen behind me and said, thank you!  thank you for these grandmas and grandpa for Maki.  And began being a daughter who just came home with the little granddaughter for the first time.  

  

 

 

 

University of Oregon Ethnic Studies Commencement Speech, June 17, 2018

 I have not blogged for years.  Once I got on Facebook, my blogging was over and my FB posts long-winded. 

 I was surprised to have been asked to be the speaker or a speaker at the University of Oregon Ethnic Studies Commencement, 2018, Sunday, June 17.  I was more than surprised.  I couldn't really take in the emailed request because I could not understand why they would ask me.  But got over that. Commencement speeches are about sharing what you have learned in your life with the graduating youth, and I figure, now that I'm 72, I'd better have something to share by now.   Here it is.  Lessons learned.

I'm very happy to be here to share in your Commencement today.  In my humble opinion, you are more prepared with an Ethnic Studies degree than others are when they leave campus for the next phase of their life.  When I was graduating from college in 1967, I never dreamed of a major called Ethnic Studies.  In Caldwell, Idaho, a farm community, where I grew up and attended the College of Idaho, we were far from the movements that culminated in the San Francisco State Strike, November 1968, led by

students who called themselves the Third World Liberation Front with their demands for Ethnic Studies, and Black professors.  A lot of young people got arrested, and hurt.  SI Hayakawa, President and an embarrassment to his race took the tough stance, but by March 20, with the Black Panthers involved and community people and churches showing up, the movement prevailed and the student demands met.  This spread throughout the country. Your degree was dreamed of and fought hard for by another generation like yours.

In 1970 here in Eugene, after the San Francisco State  Strike, LCC offered a class called the Black Experience taught by Jay Jones, College counselor, a Black educator teaching this class for free, in the cafeteria, after hours.   We hungrily devoured books of documents, histories, poetry, novels and plays.  These were the stories of Black voices, narratives put down by those kidnapped, brought in chains over the Middle Passage and enslaved, their children born into slavery -- babies enslaved -- treated as chattel and yet, each rising to that moment in resistance, through insurrections, certainly by risking lives to reach freedom, then returning to free others, risking their lives to learn to read, and write books to inspire a long fight for freedom.  Their descendants are still the first to raise their voices and stand up for justice, even today.  Reading is an act of resistance and so it was in those days we sat with Jay Jones in a deserted cafeteria listening and learning about the underpinnings of this country and the inhuman source of its wealth.  In these weekly conversations began the emergence of our Black Consciousness. 

As a descendant of these first immigrants brought to America as the exploited labor force in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it made such a difference in my life that I acquired Black Consciousness because through its lens, I was able to make sense of my own life as a child of railroads builders and farmworkers, criminalized, and forcibly removed into WW2 concentration camps.

We are the sansei generation who were considered too noisy by our Nisei parents but appreciated by our Issei grandparents for forcing our elders to break the silence and tell their stories about the concentration camps forging a Reparation Redress Movement so this would never happen again.  Yet, here we are as elders ourselves witnessing great inhumanities.  We stand by our Muslim brothers and Sisters! We speak up for our immigrant, undocumented and Dreamer families, our brothers and sisters whose exploitation followed ours, criminalized, labeled as "Illegal" as we were labeled  "Enemy Aliens."  Their deportation has devolved into something more inhuman than the desert camps and barbed wire built for my ancestors because it separates babies from their mothers.   Here, locally, we are needed to show up at the Springfield City Council meeting, June 25,  7 pm, wearing red to demand Springfield police end their contract providing jail space to ICE!

As immigrants, my family was also part of the design to steal Indian Lands through reclamation projects for dams in the 1950's.  We too share in the other Foundation Block on which this country rests to make its wealth. "We are all on stolen land."   For us it was the damming of the great Snake River that cut farms out of the original land of the Bruneau Band of the Paiutes in southwestern Idaho. The Alien Land Law forbidding our American Born Second Generation parents to own land was lifted after World War 2, and many Nikkei left southeast Idaho concentration camps to settle and farm their own fields.

For settlers, there is a responsibility we carry to learn about the history of the original peoples of the land we grow from.  There is a responsibility to hear indigenous voices and take to heart the perspective of those who have been here from the beginning of time and who have resisted generation after generation, the legacy of genocide.  They are not invisible. Their perspective of how this Earth should be taken care of is not irrelevant. For me, listening to these voices of Black consciousness and Indigenous resistance, the stories from the exploited labor forces and my own ancestors have been a saving grace. 

Mine has been long journey that begins on this campus in the 1970's. The roots of the Ethnic Studies Department come directly from the activism of young students and the community people who joined them.  I taught some Asian American Experience classes back then while attending school for my Fifth Year certification.  It was guerilla style.  You find an empty classroom, not scheduled that term, advertise it, charge nothing and Asians will show up, twice a week for no credit.  We had long conversations about what were the issues of the times.  Read books and sociological insights written by Asians.  Wrote our own stories and histories.  We named ourselves, not Oriental, Gook, Jap, Chink.  We were Asian Americans.   And this happened for every ethnic student group on campus.  That's how we learned about each other and helped support one another's struggle.

There was no social media.  We stayed connected by traveling, or for me, also by hosting travelers from Vancouver BC to LA in my home on this artery of our community called I-5.  My ethnic studies experience through the 70's were the conferences we put on together and the performances we brought through, the hitchhiking booksellers we housed, the activist movement leaders we showcased and then got into our cars to show up when they called, -- it was exciting.  

You can also look around this campus and see the fruit of our young activism and the ongoing activism and struggles with the administration of young people of every decade after.  It has not stopped.  Everything here for students of color was fought for and envisioned by students of color and their allies.   

In 1978, I returned to teaching with what I had gained -- Black Consciousness, Solidarity experience, Safe Place Making skills, and from an immigrant background, listening and learning from Indigenous Peoples of this land, a way of life that is so different from the settler nation that it changed me.  For one it made me a better teacher.  Respect became the curriculum.  Yes I taught literature, writing, US History.  All of these were my passions.  But I also taught respect. If a safe place is created, and the student is invited to bring their whole self in, their family upbringing, their name pronounced right, their style, their identity, their tastes, their opinions safely, they will share and talk and everyone gains.  Middle school students demand fairness. They want to be respected. And they will talk to us, if we listen.  

For example, I learned how it is to be Black Brown Indigenous and male at twelve and be in danger from the police from my students.  I learned there were definitely more than just five genders from a student. I learned how homework is one of the causes of the "Achievement Gap" which is really an Opportunity gap.  Native students go to Feasts to bring in the season of sacred foods that last several days including travel time to the reservation.  No one should have to choose to be Indigenous or pass a class.  Many of our youth have jobs or take care of their younger siblings after school.  A student should not have to choose safety of family or earning enough money for the family to make ends meet or pass a class.  I unlearned many lies and myths, unpacked attitudes, found a better life by going to the doings that my students and their families were involved in outside of school and learned that they were leaders, that they were gifted and carried important responsibilities in their communities that I never would have known if my teaching stopped at the school door.

I look back on my 72 years and I realize I have learned just as much by unlearning.  When I was a student, I learned about water in sixth grade, about trees in seventh grade, about fish in eighth grade.  How different my life becomes when I learn the roots of the giant trees draw up the underground water closer to the surface so we can access it, or that salmon in going out to the ocean to live and coming back to the rivers to spawn bring minerals on their way out, and on their way back which helps the ocean life and river waters.  Or that there is salmon DNA in the leaves of trees.

When the elder Chief who taught me so much and who took my daughter and me under her wing when we went to her for help thirty years ago was ready to retire, she asked her niece, Chief Caleen Sisk to take care of us, and Chief Sisk offered us tribal membership.  At that time, she did not say, "Winnemem only spoken here."   That was very different from when I was six years old and spoke Japanese asking my teacher if I could go to the bathroom.   Chief Sisk would not have put me in the closet and left me there most of the day like Mrs. Finney did.  When Chief Sisk offered me tribal membership, I just walked my whole self in.  My ancestors with me, my history.  And when I walked in, there was work to do that I believe in and inspires me.  The work as a tribal member is to resist the genocide of this federally unrecognized tribe.  Federally unrecognized tribes have no rights, and no visibility.  They are criminalized for burying their people on lands given to them.  They are criminalized for holding ceremonies.  They have no access to programs. Chief Sisk faces that and says, "we're recognized by Creator who made us, and that's all the recognition we need."  When the federal entities say to her, you are federally unrecognized so you can't have your ceremonies by the river on Forest Service Land, Chief Sisk says, "you might have the papers, and hold the key to this gate.  You may have made the laws and regulations that try to keep us out.  But Creator made this land for US.  And we're going to keep on carrying on."

Often I hear people call wars, slavery, greed -- human nature.  I reject that.  Humans may do all these things, but it is not their nature.  To say otherwise is rationalizing and normalizing human weakness, human depravity.  I believe that the human being is a part of nature, and the Winnemem affirm this belief.  In fact they say our job as human beings in the natural order of things is to Tend to Life.  Take care of life.  The elders say that the plants and the earth itself, the water, the animals they all miss our human hands.  They miss our voices.  They miss our prayers.  Our human nature also is to take care of each other.   A home, doctoring, food are not things that must be earned, and a privilege for a select few. 

My "unlearning" has brought me to this place, to stand with a federally unrecognized tribe fixed on our responsibilities to take care of water, sacred lands and bring back the Chinook salmon runs.  The work for the rest of my life will be to tend to these things following the Chief, leaving settler values behind.

Where there was no Ethnic Studies, fifty years ago I was part of a movement to do it anyway.  Where there is no justice, I have been led to keep justice in sight by Black Freedom Fighters throughout the history of this country even now.  Where Asian presence is not noticed, I am part of the continuing Asian American movement to stand up, speak up and show up anyway.  And as for the stolen land I've always lived on?  I hope when my journey is done, that all that I leave behind will only sustain indigenous resistance. 

I can hear Yuri Kochiyama's voice in my ear, quoting in her own way Franz Fanon, "It is for the youth of every generation to determine what is their mission.  And then for the rest of their life, for each person to fulfill it or betray it."   

I wish all of you well on your journey, taking with you a degree that has a proud hard-won history.  I wish for you a consciousness from the Root that reveals the truth of things and wipes out all fear and a life of listening and learning well in how to Tend to this good Life you have been given in your own chosen way and to be happy.  Congratulations, Graduates, from the bottom of my heart.

Hee Chalu Beskin!

https://www.facebook.com/will.doolittle.58/videos/10155625214061824

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BREAKING NEWS DAKOTA PIPELINE PROTEST TURNS VIOLENT JEFF YOUNG

"Defenders of Mother Earth"

Incredible film.  Listen to the quality of leadership is among the Indigenous Peoples of the Land.  They are the hope of this Nation!  Listen and Learn.

https://youtu.be/oneBYBfjNcc

Eyes on the Prize Black Panther Party

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeQUrUSFszo#t=160