Though I have never claimed to be Native
American, I do have Native American blood on both
sides of my family. On my mother's side of the family, My great,
great, great grandfather, Reuben Ellyit who took
his mother's maiden name of Ivy (probably because
he was born out of wedlock) was from Lumberton,
North Carolina where my youngest son Jesse was born.
It is claimed by family documents that Reuben's mother was of the Lumbee Indian bloodline, the lost colony of Native Americans who are not Federally recognized by our Government. On my father's side of the family, my grand- mother was half Native American. Her name was Leona Ray. Her mother's maiden name was Bledsoe. My grand- mother was born in Vain, Oklahoma. She couldn't read or write and didn't know much of her own family history other than her Native bloodline. When my mother was a little girl living in Idahel, Oklahoma, she said there were mostly Black- Foot Indians there but I know there were at least 20 different tribes and two Reservations in Oklahoma. Those Reservations belonged to the Kiowa/Comanche and the Cheyenne/Arapahoe. Now I have to find which tribe my grandmother is from. Wish me luck. I don't claim Native American status because I did not grow up under their teachings but I do follow the Red Road and I am working very hard to reconnect with my family roots. My mother has spent a good part of 30 years tracing our family line. I believe it is extremely important to know who we are and where we came from. Though my father was nothing more than a sperm donor, I always had a good relationship with his mother. I even went to church with her from time to time up until my teenage years. My first childhood movie hero was Billy Jack. Through those movies I have always maintained a healthy positive view of the Native Americans. I was never tainted by the White-man's potrayal of savage Indians. I have never in my lifetime had a negative view of the Native people. I always admired them. They looked like rock stars to me in their feathers and beautiful Native regallia. When I see a pretty Native American woman in a deerskin dress, moccasins and her hair done in braids ... Wow! That takes my breath away and my heart starts to flutter, that's the honest truth. When I was a kid I got to visit places like Mt. Rushmore which is the sacred lands of the Oglala Lakota Sioux, The Paha Sapa. The White-man calls them the Black Hills. Every time the Native People have to look at those Presidents carved into their sacred hills, it is like a slap to the faces of all Native Americans. Since the U.S. Government had stole it from them. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, along with their people fought and lost many lives over those sacred lands. It really is a sad story. The Paha Sapa will always belong to the Oglala Lakota Sioux and should be given back to them. That would be the right thing to do. In the 24 years of incarceration I have done, not one of the many jail-house behavior modification, drug programs, Thinking for a Change classes, Life Skills, or the many other different self-help courses I had taken, had ever worked for me. I mean, not one of these courses did me an ounce of good. Those classes were all a waste of my time. None of these classes were based in any real life reality. It has been my Native American teachings and studies that have done what all those other programs could not do. One day when I came to a standstill in my life and I had lost all my faith in human kind, I came to realize that the only way forward for me was the path back. I hope you'll read the other parts to "My Native American Experience" and see how much the Red Road has touched me. It gave me a road to redemption I could have never found any other way. A-Ho! |
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"Everything in life is somewhere else
and you get there in a car"
E.B. White, 1943
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