Finding our close roots may have a different meaning for each of us, as I was so emotionally reminded the other day. A retired elderly man was directed to the Ogden Family History Center, seeking information about his birth mother. He and his wife were visiting the area, and their LDS host suggested that we, at the center, might be able to help him. He was not sure where he was born, but he knew he was born out of wedlock. His mother gave him up for adoption and never did tell her family that she had given birth to this child. He was adopted by a Texas couple, and, at some point, they told him that he was adopted, but that they knew nothing of his birth mother. Texas law, at the time, sealed the adoption records so that he was unable to find out from the official record who his mother was. Just recently the law in Texas was changed, and he was able to get her name and approximate age, but that was all.
After three days of searching at the center, our staff was able to help him find a census record with her name, as a member of a large family. His mother had been raised in a family with several brothers and sisters. This meant that he had blood uncles and aunts, plus an unknown number of cousins. He assumes that he will also have some half brothers and sisters, as well, and he hopes to be able to find them.
After finding her family, he was able to track her to a nursing home in Phoenix Arizona. She is now 88 years old, with Alzheimers. He and his wife flew to Arizona to visit with his mother for the first time in his life. During the first visit she didn’t seem to respond, but on the second visit he felt that she knew who he was.
He later found out that his mother was the only child of her family that was still alive. His hopes are to find his cousins and become acquainted with them. He made a return visit to our center last week, taking pictures and thanking the staff. He seemed so happy and emotional that he had finally found his real mother, and even though she was not really able to acknowledge him it was OK, because he could acknowledge her. How important was it to this man to find his roots? It was very apparent to me as I stood there and saw his eyes well up with tears and his voice falter as he talked of his experience.
Even those of us who think we know our close roots (mothers), in reality we may be very much surprised when we start researching in order to write their histories. I decided to write my mother’s history a year or so ago and found out some things that made me very sad. She grew up on an Indian reservation in Minnesota, The government at the time forced Indian children to attend government boarding schools that were designed to erase all knowledge of their ancestry and Native American customs. They were pun- ished if they ever attempted to speak their native tongue. These Indian children were only allowed brief visits to their native families for fear they would lose some of their indoctrination. The term they used as an end product of the transformation process was ‘Apple’. An Apple was a Native American person who was; red on the outside but white on the inside. ‘Oreo’ is a term derived from the ‘Oreo Cookie’ which is brown on the outside and white on the inside, used to describe black people who have adopted the white man’s way of talking and acting. It probably had its origin from that connotation of ‘Apple’ by whites for Native Americans brought up in government boarding schools .
We have all heard the term, “the only good Indian is a dead one,” That was not just a term used by the uneducated and rugged frontiersman, it was a term that was encouraged by many of our great and famous political leaders. The Indians claimed ownership to lands that white settlers wanted, and the only way they could lay claim to it is to annihilate the Indians or make them dependent on the white man. They were obviously very successful.
Mother never talked about her boarding school experiences because, I believe, it was such a dark period in her youth. There are many things I was able to find out about my mother by looking at records that she was not privy to.
When she was able to visit her family, she enjoyed watching her dad work in his blacksmith shop. She related a story to me about a time when she was watching her dad doing some work for a local farmer. This farmer teased her by saying, “What are you doing in this family of Indians? You look more like a Swede to me.” I could tell that she was pleased to hear that, and to tell that story, because in her young mind, she had been brainwashed to believe that being an Indian was not a good thing. Mother was more light complected than some of the others in her own family, probably because their great grandfather was a Englishman.
Mother married my father, a full-blooded Norwegian, and they had a large family. Some of us are even dark complected, but no one would suspect that we have Native American blood.
I’m sure that mother was pleased to have a white family, based on what she had learned at boarding school. Finding and understanding our roots can be painful sometimes, just as learning these things about my mother’s life have saddened me. To be ashamed of your heritage is an emotion that no child should be subjected to. I am proud of the Indian blood I have inherited and I have gained an appreciation of my heritage through my research.