My People

In later years, I would come to think of that day, actually that very moment, as a spawning of alternate universes. In one, the moment passed without notice, and I carried on, doing what I always did to get through each day, a countless progression of sameness, a mundane repetition of each day’s tasks, a fulfillment of meaningless expectations. I feel for that woman, and pray to whatever gods there are, if indeed there are any, that she may find her way back to that space in the dusty cobwebby attic, to that particular coffin of faded anonymous documents, and to that particular moment in time when an obscure piece of brittle paper fell out of the envelope she was holding, unnoticed, and fluttered to the ancient floorboards like a white butterfly finding its final resting place.

Time stood still; dust motes hung motionless, lit by a hundred shafts of frozen cold sunlight that pierced through the gaps in the tiles. The heart of the universe stopped beating and the butterfly silently held its breath, waiting for the next moment, where the laws of physics would resume, and one women‘s life is graced by the blessings of a butterfly‘s wings, and the other is not.

The heartbeat resumed, the world began to turn, the dust motes took up the music and dance, and the butterfly sighed its last breath.

I found the paper laying there. I could have missed it in that cold attic, anxious to return to the warmth and get on with my day. But my eyes were clear, and my mind was sharp. I picked it up and read:

I hereby certify that Aurelia (Montoya) Chavez is listed on the San Juan Pueblo Census Roll, dated October 1, 1982 an official record of this office, as being of Tewa Indian blood with census roll no. 458 date of birth 05/15/04.
Signed Governor, Pueblo of San Juan, (unintelligible signature) Date June 29, 1990.

I vaguely remembered getting this. It had been sent to me when Aurelia had died, some 14 years ago, by the woman who had been looking after her. It didn't come with an explanation and I don't know why she sent it. At the time, I wasn't much interested in these things, still in the first flush of life and thinking that fulfillment was just around the corner in a someday where I would find my true nature in achievements and accumulated ownership. Who cared about things like heritage when there was a career to pursue, important acquaintances to impress, future doctors and lawyers to raise? I had more important things to do with my life. The document went into a box and into the attic.

They say suffering is our best spiritual teacher, and I have had many teachers along the way. I wanted to find myself in the future and never seemed to get there. Three marriages later and as many careers, having lost hope in the future, I was ready to look into the past. I decided to find out about my grandmother’s people.

I went to San Juan Pueblo, the north of New Mexico -- a land of buttes, mesas, volcanic structures, fertile river valleys and badlands. It is now known as Okay Owingeh, the original Tewa name, meaning ‘place of the strong people‘. I had written several letters beforehand, learned there was a woman, Ester Montoya, who was the niece of a niece, and therefore a distant cousin of mine.

She invited me to her home, which smelled of freshly made corn tortillas and sage smoke. There were hand crocheted doilies spread over the arms and backs of every chair as well as on the end tables and coffee table. She had chickens out front, three dogs out back, and at least half a dozen cats indoors.

Her hair was grey, kept it in the traditional way, with long braids trailing down her back. She was plump, dressed in a smock and skirt and sandals. Her eyes were dark, much like mine, much like my father’s. She greeted me warmly with a hug, as if we had know each other all our lives, long lost cousins that we were.

Except for her animal friends she lived alone. Her husband had passed away and her children left the pueblo for city life a long time ago. I stayed with her a day and a night in that cozy little place. Mostly, we sat amid the doilies and the cats, drinking fresh brewed coffee, talking about the family, about why some stayed and why some left, and what it was like for an Indian child to come of age in the 50s and the 60s, in America, the land of the free, where all men are created equal and all are treated with equanimity, regardless of race, gender or creed.

The story that Ester told me reached into my very soul. It revealed much about my own childhood, why things were they way they were, why my parents behaved the way they did. She said when she was little she had been sent away to live in schools designated by the government for ‘training the Indians’. She said that they wanted to Christianize her and set her on the right path.

‘When I got there,’ she told me. ‘There were children from all the tribes. There were Hopi, Navaho, Cherokee, Lakota, Cree. It was interesting to meet all these other children, but I was afraid because I only knew my native tongue and I couldn‘t find anyone to tell me why I was there or what I was supposed to do.

‘They taught me to speak English, and I learned that the teachers called us dumb, stupid savages. They wouldn’t let me speak my native tongue or practice my native ways. I kept running away because they were so mean to me, and I wanted to be back with my mother and my father. But they always found me, and brought me back to the school and beat me. I didn’t understand why my mother and father had abandoned me and left me in that place. I tried to pray, but had forgotten how to pray in the old way, and the Spirits’s don’t understand English.’

I understood that Ester’s spirit had been broken. She cried when she told me her story, of the beatings, and the feeling of abandonment, as if it had happened to her only yesterday, instead of 50 years ago. How could this be? How could this happen in a world and time of prosperity, where religious freedom was sacrosanct?

Ester reminded me of my grandmother in the way she spoke, the accent, the hand gestures. But not the way she wore her hair or dressed. My grandmother dressed like a ‘white’ person. My grandmother would have been spared the cruelties of the Indian boarding schools, but she would not have been spared the shame placed on her by a misguided government, one that convinced her that her children should be taken from her if they were to have a better life.

Because of this, they never spoke to us of our heritage, and I didn‘t understand much of what went on in my family as a child. Maybe they believed that they were dumb stupid savages. What is particularly sad is that my father was made to feel this way. But I don't think it affected him the way it did Ester or my grandparents. He was a fighter, one of the strong ones. I can’t imagine him being ashamed of how he was. But in the end, this thing, this attitude about the Indian people, did him in. He could accept who he was, but he couldn't accept that the ‘white’ woman he had married, the woman he loved and the mother of his children, despised him for it.

This journey into my past, my family’s past, makes me want to weep for them, and for all of the people that the ‘civilized‘ white man attempted to brutally subjugate and assimilate. There is a little girl inside me like the little girl that Ester was. She’s still there, and she cries for the loss. How different things would have been if we had been taught to be proud of who we were, instead of ashamed.

I wonder about the people in my family who didn't teach us differently. I think they wanted to be white and tried to pretend that they were. I don’t blame them. It’s the American government that I blame. It was a betrayal.

Okay Owingeh is named ’place of the strong people’ because, despite the invading cultures that attempted to wipe out their way of life, these people have regained their heritage. They have learned to be proud of who they are, and that is as it should be. This must be why family loyalty means so much to me. The words ‘my people‘ are sacred, and I will never feel ashamed of who I am again.