U.16. Long Civil Rights Movement: The Women's Movement in the South

Transcription

1 This interview is part of the Southern Oral History Program collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Other interviews from this collection are available online through and in the Southern Historical Collection at Wilson Library. U.16. Long Civil Rights Movement: The Women's Movement in the South Interview U-0641 Patricia Grant 18 May 2011 Abstract p. 2 Field Notes p. 3 Transcript p. 4

2 ABSTRACT PATRICIA GRANT Interviewee: Interviewer: Patricia Grant Joey Fink Interview date: May 18 th, 2011 Location: Length: Cherokee, North Carolina One audio file, approximately 76 minutes Patricia (Patty) Grant is Native American community activist and counselor working on issues of mental health and substance abuse in Cherokee, North Carolina. She also travels the country as a speaker, raising awareness about historical trauma and its effects. Topics discussed: growing up in the 1950s and 1960s with her single mother in Tennessee and then on a reservation in Cherokee, N.C.; memories of her mother; her mother s experience in the Native American boarding schools in the early twentieth century; trauma caused by the federal government s attempts to assimilate Native peoples into the dominant culture; stereotypes held about Native Americans; cultural dissonance experienced by Native children; her mother s parenting; not being taught the Cherokee language by her mother; dysfunctional family system; drinking culture on reservations and history with alcoholism; studied chemical dependency at Southern University Nazarene in Bethany, Oklahoma, and went on to work with Native men and adolescents; injustices suffered by Native peoples of North America; how her work with mental health and substance abuse helps people to incorporate native practices; relationship between God, Mother Earth, and the medicine wheel concept; the different philosophies, such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), she identifies with and lives by; her experiences traveling and speaking about historical grief and trauma; her grandchildren and how they learned to speak Cherokee; starting an Indians in Sobriety Campout; experiences in public high school and Cherokee tribal school; love of basketball; winning beauty pageants and dealing with self-esteem issues; working in her community and sharing the history of Native peoples with others; historical trauma increasingly talked about in Indian Country; reactions from non-natives to her work; how the Cherokee matriarchy had been affected by westernization; the prevalence of sexual abuse in Native communities; different political responses to Native peoples; federal recognition of Native peoples; spending childhood in survival mode; how familial dysfunction affects self-image and self-esteem; how alcohol changed her and how she recovered; how she feels about being aligned with the women s movement and her thoughts on feminism; proud of her identity and thankful for her healing. This interview is part of the Southern Oral History Program s project to document the women s movement in the American South.

3 FIELD NOTES PATRICIA GRANT Interviewee: Interviewer: Patricia Grant Joey Fink Interview Date: May 19, 2011 Location: Patricia Grant s office, Cherokee, North Carolina THE INTERVIEWEE. Patricia Grant is Native American community activist and counselor working on issues of mental illness and substance abuse in Cherokee, North Carolina. She also travels the country as a speaker, raising awareness about historical trauma and its effects on Native Americans. In this life history interview, Ms. Grant offers many poignant reflections on her personal journey and her work with members of her tribe around addiction and substance abuse. Although Ms. Grant does not consider herself part of the women s movement, this interview is a valuable part of our Women s Movement in the American South for her perspectives on her own experiences and Native women s experiences within and beyond their communities, particularly around issues of self-esteem and self-image, recovering from trauma, and building stronger communities and families through a healthy identification with one s culture and past. THE INTERVIEWER. Joey Fink is a graduate student in the Department of History at UNC-Chapel Hill and a graduate research assistant for the Southern Oral History Program. DESCRIPTION OF THE INTERVIEW. The interview was conducted in Grant s office in the facility in which she works in Cherokee. Pauses in the recording (we had to pause for a phone call Ms. Grant had to take) and background noises do not detract from the sound quality. NOTE ON RECORDING. I used the SOHP s Zoom H4 handheld recorder.

4 TRANSCRIPT: PATRICIA GRANT Interviewee: Interviewer: Patricia Grant Joey Fink Interview Date: May 18, 2011 Location: Length: Cherokee, North Carolina One audio file, approximately 76 minutes START OF INTERVIEW Joey Fink: It s May 18, I m in Cherokee, North Carolina with Patty Grant. Thank you so much for talking with me. Can you start by telling me a little bit about when and where you were born and where you grew up? Patricia Grant: Okay. My name is Patty Grant. I am half Lakota and half Cherokee. I was born in Tennessee. I m the youngest of eight. My mother was a full blood Cherokee. My father was Lakota from Rosebud, South Dakota. I have five brothers and two sisters. My oldest brother is deceased. The rest of us are still living. One lives in Tennessee. The rest of my siblings live in Cherokee on the reservation. I lived in Tennessee until I was twelve and then we moved to the reservation. My dad died seven months before I was born. My mother was thirty-five years old and she had seven children under the age of thirteen. JF: Oh my gosh. PG: She took my dad to the hospital and came back without him. She knew she was pregnant with me but my dad didn t know that. My sibling, when she came home, was seven months, my brother was seven months old, and all of us were two years apart, all except myself and my youngest brother, which were fourteen months apart. We moved to the reservation and

5 my mother never remarried. She was full grounded and staunch in her Cherokee beliefs. She was a fluent speaker. She was a basket maker. She knew over two hundred and thirty some odd plants, medicinal, edible plants. She truly had a relationship with Mother Earth. She would pick blackberries when they were in season. During the summer months, beginning in the spring, anything that was in season she made use of, whether it was to make medicine or whether it was to feed us. She made white oak baskets and she gathered honeysuckle vines. They were all natural resources that she used to produce them. She knew the Smoky Mountains like the back of her hand. She could go and travel and she would talk about all of the trees that were natural to this environment and those that had been transported and brought here. Cooked all of our, you know, raised all of our food, and believed that. She grew up in a boarding school, and the boarding school was a forced attempt by the dominant society, the federal government, to force assimilation, the Native Americans into mainstream America. They also wanted to force us to adopt a culture, the Western culture that was completely contrary to who we are as Cherokees. Those experiences, three to four generations that went to boarding schools, has impacted what we are working on today, historical grief and trauma, addressing those issues, because it has had a huge impact on the last three or four generations. The children that was forced to go to boarding schools and there s probably over a hundred boarding schools throughout the United States. The first one was put in place in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. There was over twelve thousand Native American kids that were forced to attend that boarding school. They left their communities, their tribal communities, whole, grounded, and intact, spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically. By the time they if they were able to live through the boarding school experience many of them were psychologically wounded,

6 sexually abused, traumatized because they were not allowed to speak their language, they were not allowed to practice any of their cultural and ceremonial teachings, they were not allowed to even associate with their own siblings. The federal government s mindset was in order to save the man we must kill the Indian. They were not allowed to wear any of their traditional clothing, their hair was cut, and for many Native Americans that act alone is an indicator that someone has died, and so when they were forced to cut their hair then a lot of those children would mourn because they thought that a death had occurred. They were forced to wear uniforms. The mindset was that the indigenous people of the North American continent, all Native American tribes, were not intelligent enough to become professionals, so the females were taught to be seamstresses, maids, of that nature, you know, laundry workers, and of course the male students were trained to be laborers and carpenters. I just heard a speaker, a researcher. Her name is Dr. Bonnie Duran. She talks about decolonizing. She talks about the indigenous population of North America and the mindset of Western culture s thinking and wanting other cultures to believe that the indigenous populations of North America was lacking and dependent and barbaric. The reality is that we, the indigenous population of North America, was far more advanced than any Western culture, but people don t know that, so America has this mindset about who we are as American Indians, stereotypical beliefs about us that are far from the truth. As I grew up in this family, with my mother being a survivor of the boarding schools and the tremendous and extraordinary person that she was, she raised all of us with a firm hand, the best she could, I suppose. She had no parenting skills because they didn t learn parenting skills in the boarding schools. They were punished severely for any resemblance of who they were as a native person, so therefore of course they were being punished continually because they didn t

7 know how to be anything but native. She said she didn t want us to grow up and have to go through what she went through, although the boarding school was a thing of the past but the trauma was still very present. So our mother was a staunch full blood Cherokee. She was an angry woman because of her own trauma. She didn t tell us that she loved us. She didn t tell us that she was proud of us. They got none of that validation while they were in the boarding school. So we all know that it s learned behavior, and oftentimes individuals that went to the boarding schools will talk about the need to survive, and they had no one to comfort them when they were in pain, and they were very small children. Oftentimes they were forced to be in the boarding schools and so some would talk about running away and their parents taking them back. Some would run away and their parents would hide them to keep the school personnel from coming and forcing them back to the school. The federal government felt that if they could kill the Indian out of the children then they could come home and teach the elders, which set up for a lot of feelings of confusion, feelings of displacement and feelings of uncertainty. They knew that they didn t fit in the white world because of who they were as an Indian, and after being in the boarding school and being taught what they were being taught they wound up going home and found out that they didn t fit at home either because it was completely a different way of viewing the world, a completely different way of perceiving themselves in the world, and they no longer felt like their own people tribal members, community members knew them anymore, so lots of trauma across the board. But our mother said to us growing up that we have to live with the white man and you have to think like a white man so you need to learn how to work with them. So she sent us out into the education system, out into the world, for us to learn those ways, all while she maintained

8 her grounded-ness in being Cherokee; therefore she didn t teach us to speak Cherokee. That s been a common thing in the years of working in historical grief and trauma, is that those individuals that had parents and grandparents that went through boarding school said that the reason they were not taught was because they didn t want them to have to go through what they went through. So our language was. We right now have a little under three hundred fluent speakers, so our language was not lost but due to the boarding school there was many students that in order to cope and survive in that setting quit speaking for survival purposes. My mother did not. However we did grow up in that family system, very dysfunctional. I had siblings that were exercising their right to drink alcohol and as I came up through the ranks I started drinking at the age of seventeen. It was all around me and very available to me. My mother didn t drink but hanging around other kids and being exposed to it, as well as within my family, it wasn t long til I started drinking. When I started drinking, right out of the chute, I drank alcoholically, didn t think that there was. I thought that was kind of the accepted way of drinking. So that continued for seventeen years. I have one son who is now thirty-six and I got into recovery when he was twelve, a year before my mother passed away. So I ve been in recovery going on a little over twenty-four years, finally decided to get my degree and was able to obtain a bachelor s in family services in gerontology in Oklahoma. I ve worked in the field of chemical dependency for over twenty years. Shortly, a year after I got into recovery, God saw fit to put me in an environment where he saw that I guess I couldn t orchestrate it for myself, due to the distorted way that I saw the world and also my perception of myself in the world and my capabilities. I ve always been a hard worker, never been afraid to work, but grew up with the mindset of living for today, like a lot of native families do.

9 Anyways, I got into the field of chemical dependency and got my bachelor s at Southern University Nazarene in Bethany, Oklahoma, and then I was working in a treatment center out there for Native American men. Prior to going out there I worked three years in prevention here in Cherokee at the inpatient treatment program. Then I got a job back here in Cherokee working in the adolescent treatment center for Native American kids, so I ve worked there for six years. I found that working with native families, working with native men, working with adolescents, the common thing for the most part with Native Americans is pretty basic: There s been trauma throughout the generations, and whether it be from trauma that just has been caused by the federal government from taking our land, from forced assimilation, through boarding schools, through wars and battles and broken treaties, it just is amazing, the resilience, the ability for the indigenous people to have survived over five hundred years of abuse and oppression, and it s continued even today, how America views Native Americans. Many people out there don t believe that there are any of us left. There is a belief system that we are all drunks and that we live off the government. They believe that we don t deserve anything, even today the attitude that many have in regards to who we are as the first nation s people, and I feel like that it s because they don t know. I feel like that a lot of Americans don t want to know and don t believe that the treaties that were made, the land that has been taken away from the Native Americans, has been outright unjust, and it continues today in many native tribes. So we as a people, our resiliency and our ability to adapt and to survive and persevere speaks for itself. There are many tribes out west that are well grounded culturally. They know who they are, they have the language, they practice their ceremonies, they practice their ways. The tribes on the east coast, we have three hundred more years of Western influence and so sometimes it is difficulty when we go to other tribes and they speak their own language, they

10 practice their own cultural ways and ceremonies, and sometimes it s hard because many tribes don t believe that there is any real Cherokees. So as Indian people we have our own issues among our own people with other tribes. So the fact that I ve been doing this and working in mental health, working in substance abuse, helping people to get into recovery and to look and take that first step to changing their life and helping them to see that if they make that decision to get into recovery then their life takes a completely different direction. Oftentimes when that happens they come full circle and begin to work on who they are as a native person and then begin to identify and incorporate their own native cultural ways and practices. That becomes a journey within itself because then they recognize that we as Native Americans, what I have learned, is that we have been created by God for this relationship that we have with Mother Earth and that our spirituality is grounded and it s not only grounded but it s innate. It s something that we just know and it s something that we have, and that was given to us by the Creator. So I ve learned that we have what they call the Red Road, the medicine wheel concept: The four directions on the medicine wheel, the four races of man, the four seasons, the four gifts, and the four stages of life, and in the center is the Creator. I understand that in that philosophy is that from the east comes the red man, and the gift is. Of course the direction is the east and the red man comes, and when a child is born into the world the gift is enlightenment. So the gift of the red man is the relationship with Mother Earth. So as you travel around the medicine wheel then to the south is the yellow man. That s summertime. The east is during the springtime so the south is the summertime. It is the place of the red man. The gift is of innocence and adolescence. The yellow man has the relationship with air. So, as you move around the medicine wheel to the west, and that is in the fall of the year, that s where the black man comes and also the gift of introspection, and of course that s for the

11 adult stage of life. The gift is introspection but also the black man has the relationship with water. Then you move on around the medicine wheel and to the top is the north, and of course that s in the wintertime. That s with the elder stage of life and the gift is wisdom, and of course that s where the white man comes from, and they have the gift of fire. So that s the four elements and each element is all interconnected. Therefore if we can all begin to recognize the importance of God creating us to have these areas of what we have relationship with, and that we are able to share it, then I believe that we move to that place of acceptance where we are all linked together as human beings. That s our common link. Of course you know with the way we are and how we perceive ourselves in the world and what s important to us very few people are able to rise to that place. But we know about it and we can learn about it and we can strive to be there, and when we do it reflects in the way we live our life. So that s my teachings, I mean that s my understanding; that s the way I try to live my life. When I got into recovery they talk about having a spiritual experience and of course in Christianity you can interpret that as accepting Jesus Christ in your heart, and I too am a Christian so I understand that as well. I attend AA so I have the twelve step philosophy that I live by as well, and it all makes sense to me because it s all one and the same. One seems to be a little bit more evolved than the other but it all takes you to that place of understanding, of how we see ourselves in the universe and also who is the guiding force, where the guiding force comes from. So then I have been doing this work in mental health, substance abuse, for over twenty years, working, volunteering with the Healing and Wellness Coalition. I have the opportunity from time to time to travel with AA and I get to share my experience, strength and hope. I have gotten to travel quite a bit to present on historical grief and trauma, to talk about historical trauma in native communities and how as professionals if we become aware and informed of the

12 history of the culture that we re working with it allows us to develop a complete different understanding and a relationship that otherwise we might not evolve, and I think to validate and to appreciate all of the gifts and strengths and resiliencies of a culture is an opportunity to help me not only to appreciate theirs but for me to appreciate mine as well. Oftentimes I find that there are more similarities than there are differences, and that s one of the gifts that I believe that teaches us in AA, is that we re all connected with a common bond and we all have a common goal and that s to maintain our recovery one day at a time. Provided we get on board and really take advantage of that recipe for living, the quality of our life will change significantly. My son and his wife have blessed me with two incredible, beautiful grandchildren. My grandson s five and my granddaughter, his sister, will be four in July. They both speak fluent Cherokee, read and write. JF: How did your? Your children, I imagine, are teaching their children. How did they learn Cherokee, because you said you didn t? PG: About seven years ago there was a process put in place, and I m not real sure how it got started, but today we have what we call the Immersion Academy and the children that are accepted in that academy go there as infants. They only hear Cherokee the whole day, so they learn to speak, read, and write Cherokee. So the agreement is that the parents and grandparents have to be involved in learning the language as well. I have collected grandchildren from different tribes. I have two grandsons that are Hopi and an unofficial Hopi daughter that lived with me. I have four granddaughters that live in Oklahoma. Their mother is Otoe and Cheyenne and Arapaho. I have two grandchildren that live in Denver, Colorado. They have siblings and then they have cousins. The kids lived with me for a year or so, two years, and they had children while they were here, and they call me Uchee,

13 that s Lakota for Grandma. So I ve collected grandchildren along the way and unofficial adopted children along the way. My life seems to be full. I participated on the Indians in Sobriety Campout and Convention since 95. I stepped down last year from being on the committee. I was beginning to have some health problems, I don t know, maybe it was because of the stress of my overall schedule, but it was time for me to give someone else the opportunity to be a part of that process. So we started the Indians in Sobriety Campout and the convention back in 95 as a result of me living in Oklahoma and attending these events in the southwest. There s nothing greater than being in a roomful of Native Americans that are sober. In Indian Country, as high as the rate of alcoholism and drug addiction is, that s a spiritual experience, if you ever get that opportunity. It happens; I experienced it; so I came back and asked several of my friends if they wanted to start an Indians in Sobriety Campout and also our Native American AA Convention, so this year I think will be the eighteenth year, and they just had the Indians in Sobriety Campout a couple weeks ago. So I m not real sure what else there is to tell. JF: [Laughs] Can I back you up a little bit PG: Sure. JF: and ask you a little bit about high school? One of the questions I had as you were talking is I was going to ask how you learned about your history and your culture and learned about the medicine wheel, because I m assuming that if you went to sort of a regular public school they weren t teaching that kind of stuff. PG: Oh, they didn t teach that in the. I went to the public school until I was a junior in high school, then I transferred to the high school here in Cherokee, which I think was called the

14 BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] School at the time. They taught the regular state curriculum. So I went to school with members of my own community, it s a Cherokee tribal school. Anybody can go to school there but it s considered an Indian school. There was a lot of bullying, a lot of violence, as it is with any other school, but having been in the public school and transferring to the tribal school I felt it odd, and being young, an adolescent, if you will, a teenager, it was very painful. There was a lot of violence, a lot of abuse, a lot of bullying, and I experienced a great deal of it. So my junior and senior year going to high school was probably the hardest and most painful years that I experienced in the educational system. I was a really, really good basketball player, although I m very short. I was just really fast and I loved basketball. I ve not always been able to say that I was really good. I felt that I was good but I could not ever say it actually out loud and believe it, but today I can because I was. I earned several all-conference basketballs and awards for my ability. But that had to do with my level of confidence, lack of confidence and self esteem. But I loved basketball and that was the one thing that kept me in high school. I think if it had not been for basketball I probably would have dropped out due to what I was experiencing, being bullied, because my life was threatened every day and other kids or other students were being beat up all the time. JF: Was this the same at the public school and the Cherokee school? PG: No, it didn t seem to be as bad in the public school, but I felt like I wanted to go to Cherokee because I m Cherokee and I felt like that s where I belonged, because I d been in a public school from elementary, because we lived in Tennessee and we were the only native family that lived in and around where we lived, and it was in a rural county. So we went to that public school and then when we moved to Cherokee our mother put us in the public school here, although there was the Cherokee school. I guess my mother knew what would happen, but

15 finally she did agree to let me go to Cherokee. So for a long time I hated school because of the experience that I had but I maintain that there was something inside of me that just wouldn t go away, the need for me to go to school. So I was in and out of higher education, the school systems. JF: What year did you graduate high school? PG: In I had a lot of good things to happen for me. I was Miss Cherokee when I was a senior in high school, and then I. JF: What s Miss Cherokee? PG: Well, you know, it s a beauty pageant. JF: Okay. PG: My self esteem would not allow me to appreciate what that meant. So then several years, well a few years later when I was in junior college, again I received another crown where I was at. I was Miss [36:42]. The year before that I was Maid of Honor. Again my self esteem would not allow me to appreciate that. There were other opportunities. I got an invitation when President Nixon was in office, and he was the one I think that passed the Self Determination Act for Native Americans and said that we should be able to govern ourselves and not to have to worry about the federal government controlling us. So I was invited to attend the White House Conference on Children in Washington, DC. I went up there and of course I had a personal invitation to have tea with he and his wife, so I didn t know what that represented and so of course didn t follow through with that. Then later on when I was going to the local junior college, which was a technical institute then, received another crown for that college. They had a beauty pageant. [Laughs] So it was like, okay, I continued to be doing the things that I was doing, making the kind of decisions that I was making, often very self destructive decisions,

16 again until I was about thirty-five and then I got into recovery and my life has changed and the rest is history. [Laughs] And, you know, I work here in my community. I share this historical grief and trauma presentation in many different settings with many different types of people from many different walks of life and I jump at the opportunity to share this information because I know that it s just not about us; it s about people in general. However this presentation is based on who we are as a people and what we went through. When I present this information on historical grief and trauma invariably the participants, the members of the audience will say to me. If they are black they will say, You ve got to bring this information to the black community. If they are Hispanic they ll say, You ve got to bring this information to the Hispanic community. And if they are white, they will walk up to me with their eyes wide open in almost disbelief, saying, I cannot believe this. I never knew this, with across the board mixed emotions. So I know that this is not about anybody but it s about making a decision to start healing. The greatest blessing [and] joy that I can ascribe to is when members of my own community request that I present this information to them. I ve presented and I ve had mixed reactions. Some get really angry and are completely in disagreement. I get others that say, I never knew this. I thought my mother hated me and after hearing this. [Pause; continues tearfully] She said, After hearing this, Patty, now I know that it was because of what she went through at the boarding school. And she said, I had one good year with my mother before she died. She said, I saw my mother in a completely different light. JF: May I [have a tissue]? PG: Oh, I m sorry. JF: [Laughs]

17 PG: So. [Pause] JF: That s really powerful. PG: The anger, the anger, you know, the outburst from those that are not in agreement or don t want to hear it, and I know that it s because it s too painful to revisit. It s too painful, so I don t take it personally, but when I have those kinds of responses then it s worth it. I m not in charge of how lives are changed or how lives are impacted. I just feel like when I heard this presentation not this one but one like it this light bulb started coming on and it was like, oh my gosh, this all makes sense. This is not the solution of healing but it is one more approach that can influence and encourage and may impact one s decision to start the healing process. It s what I ve been doing, you know, and I had the opportunity to go present this presentation in Albuquerque, New Mexico a couple weeks ago, and it was Historical Trauma and Native Families, and in Indian Country more and more people are beginning to talk about it, and in some Indian communities they still won t talk about it, but there s a lot of work being done, and so I m thinking, okay, lots of people have talked about it. So there s a hundred and twelve workshops that were going on and so there were seven workshops at the same time my workshop was going on, my presentation, so I was thinking. I went to one of the other workshops the day before and there was only eight or nine of us in there so I m thinking, well this will be a good size audience. [Laughs] A lot of people, like I said, I m thinking probably feel like they re OD-ing on this stuff, because for non-natives this is real hard stuff to hear and for natives it s hard stuff to hear because both of us have this sense of understanding, and I believe that we carry our ancestors pain and when we talk about the experiences of our ancestors and family members it resonates within our very essence of our being and then we get emotional or

18 however we get. It s an understanding that it s there, it s present, so then when non-natives hear it they get angry and they don t want to hear this because it was their ancestors that did it. So you get this mixed reaction of: Why don t you just move on? I didn t do that to your people. But the other part of it is, [and] I think the natural response is [because] they re carrying their ancestors guilt, which is an indicator that healing needs to take place across the board. When you mentally know that the person sitting in the same room isn t the person that caused your trauma but you know that it was their ancestors, and vice versa, you kind of realize, I think, internally, each individual realizes internally what they need to do for themselves. I mean I think it just makes sense, and we can either choose to heal ourselves. And of course this man right here, Eduardo Duran, he says medicine is inside of us. We carry our own medicine and we just have to be willing to tap into it, but we ve got to go through a lot of grief and pain for the medicine to be able to be applied. So that s kind of where I m at today. JF: I think it s so important what you re doing, the idea of historical grief and trauma. I think historians have gotten better about talking about what has happened in the past but too often it s something that happened back then. We were bad then and we didn t know better. PG: Eduardo talks about that when the Europeans came to North America they came here and did to us what was being done to them over there, so that s why it s imperative to acknowledge. I ve been reading the Old Testament and I marvel at the fact that they are fighting and killing each other, all the time. I m amazed. So it s human nature. JF: Have you found in your work and in your life in the community issues that affect women in particular or ways in which women are even more or differently affected in dealing with this kind of historical grief and trauma or in dealing with contemporary issues of survival, employment, education?

19 PG: Well, ultimately in the very beginning we as Cherokees, of course we are matriarchal and so we can talk about being matriarchal and the importance of the woman. We have our clan; our clan comes from our mother. That s completely different, opposite from the dominant society so that sets up for a sense of conflict internally and externally, if you will, our perception of who we are as people, how God created us has been completely I guess in a sense trying to force a culture upon us and as a way of surviving adopting and adapting to this culture which is completely opposite. So our native men, us having that egalitarian traditional government in place, knowing that our women played just as important a role as the male counterparts, even to the point where the women decided if we went to war or not. When the Europeans came here and the women showed up with the men to talk the Europeans were indignant and just appalled that the women were viewed as equals, and of course in the European mindset that meant that we were weak instead of balanced. So adopting this dominant way of life and thinking, this patriarchal mindset, and of course with Western values we don t think any different than the non-natives in a sense; therefore our women have experienced a great deal of abuse, being viewed as second class. You have to remember that even though we are a tribe and of a sovereign nation we live the same way as everybody else does under the same dominant Western values, and that to me I think is what is really difficult, because when you try to apply tribal ways and values and beliefs it s conflictual with Western values and beliefs. So either you adopt one or the other or you try to blend them together and it s very difficult and complicated in a sense. But we have a lot of our women that get sexually abused. We have a lot of domestic violence. When you look at the statistics it is two and three times higher than the national average. We can t even get the protection until President Obama signed the Tribal Law and Order Act, and that is so that more

20 and more protection will be provided to the Native Americans. I don t know the exact statistics but I think when they did the ceremony, when he signed it, the woman that spoke and told a bit of her story there at the press conference, it s three out of five women will be sexually assaulted and raped throughout her lifetime and a high percentage will experience domestic violence. It s horrendous. I think Lyndon B. Johnson was the one that called us the invisible people. In my opinion it hasn t been until Obama came into office that we have ever been acknowledged on the national level by our President of the United States. When he stood at Ground Zero before the election with McCain, who has supported Native American rights in the past, but Obama said, I don t care if you re African American, Latino, Asian, Hispanic or Native American. He said we re all in this together. He s the only President that s ever put us on the radar. So he did more for the Native American in the first hundred days in office than any President has ever done in the last hundred days of their office. So we now get invited to the table, but that has to do with the fact that we have a casino and everybody wants part of the pie. Otherwise no one ever included us. I had a state representative tell me, We thought you were self sufficient. We knew that there was over fourteen thousand of you, but we didn t. This is a representative from the Department of Health and Human Services, from the state. I said, Are we not state taxpayers? Now we live on the reservation so we re state exempt but we have I don t know how many Native Americans that live in the state of North Carolina and oftentimes if they find out they re enrolled members of the eastern band of the Cherokee Indians, these outside agencies, they tell them that they have to come here. We re North Carolina citizens. But that didn t happen until 1924 and in 1917 or whatever, the year World War I was going on, we had over ten thousand, ten thousand Native Americans, serving in the armed forces and we weren t even citizens of the United States. And

21 because of the patriotic duty of the Native Americans in the armed forces Congress felt compelled to pass the Citizenship Act. Now don t you think that s a little odd? JF: It s awful. PG: I mean it just goes on and on and on. And so this is our place in America, but people don t want to hear that. And of course those are just bits and pieces. I don t even that s just what I ve learned in my Indian policy classes. So I mean this is. You know the little bit of work that I try to do as an enrolled member, as a community member, as a tribal member, as a professional, I have to remember my ancestors, what they did and the price they paid for us to be here today. I m just glad the Creator gave me an opportunity to do what was right, and that s to give back, the best and the best possible way I could possibly be, as a woman, as a mother, as a grandparent, as an enrolled member, but even on a greater scale as a human being. JF: You would have been pretty young but I m wondering if you have memories of the Civil Rights Movement or the black freedom struggle and if that resonated with you, hearing about that. I know you would have been pretty young when that was going on. PG: I just. I think one of the things, for my own self, I was pretty self absorbed growing up, mainly because I spent the biggest part of my childhood in a survival mode. So when you grow up in a dysfunctional family and there s a lot of violence, a lot of dysfunction, a lot of disruption, children spend most of their time surviving, focusing on surviving. So what one individual would have an opportunity to do, whether it s dream, work towards a goal, plan for your future, we lived one day at a time. So my interest was athletics, I was very physical and very active, and my education process, I think, was highly interrupted and opportunities were not.opportunities that came and was offered to me, I didn t have the insight or the ability to

22 appreciate what that represented, and so. [Telephone rings] Can I take this? [Break in recording] JF: You spoke a lot about your self confidence was really low or nonexistent. What has been a source of strength in building up your self confidence, or how did that change happen, because now you ll go and you ll present in front of crowds and you have the strength to work with people and to help them. Can you tell me a little bit about what changed and how that change happened? PG: Growing up in a family where there s abuse and where there is dysfunction, that again children wind up focusing on learning how to cope and to survive in that particular environment, and I think as a result of that of course our self esteem, our self worth, and our self image is highly affected in one form or fashion, and for me my self esteem was. Of course I had some natural abilities and other people saw me completely different from how I viewed myself internally. So because of having that experience of having to focus on survival many areas of my life was shortchanged and/or was never developed, because I didn t have the nurturing, the validation, I was not encouraged, and when I say that I m talking about from my mother, who didn t have the parenting skills. So my mother left all of that up to other people, the education system, the teachers, whoever, and my mother was just present. So [I did not have] that nurturing and that affection that a child needs to be well rounded and to have the social skills. So of course my self image people saw me one way and I didn t necessarily see myself that way at all. My self esteem, I didn t have any area of my life, so to speak, that indicated from an internalized place that I was capable or as good as in order to accomplish. Of course I didn t have the ability to follow through. I hadn t developed that. I didn t understand what that meant

23 because I didn t have anyone to teach me those very basic necessary skills for one to have in order to be successful. So my self worth, you know, to not ever be encouraged or to be validated meant that what was given to me came oftentimes from outside sources. I think if children don t get what they need from those people that have the most influence on them or are the most important, that being their parents, oftentimes when it comes from someone else it goes oftentimes unheard and certainly not believed, and that doesn t say that it s that way with everybody but I will say that it was with me. When I started drinking the alcohol changed the way that I felt, it changed the way that I saw myself, it changed the way that I acted, and of course it was all temporary and it was a false sense of being. When I got into recovery I went into therapy, I worked on those issues, and as a result I learned that what I needed to do was to grow and self actualize and to become my own person, but because I felt void and empty from what should have been given to me by my parent, and not having a father figure, there was lots of issues that I had to work on in therapy. After three or four years of going to therapy and working my program in AA I ve come to a place where I understand who I am, what I m about, and that God has reassured me that I definitely have a place in the universe and that what I need to do is stand firm, stand bold, and stand up in that place. And it s because of my relationship with God. That s what gives me the greatest of confidence. JF: It s remarkable. A lot of what you re talking about I ve heard in other interviews I ve done with women, that self confidence is such an issue and not even realizing you don t have it until [Laughs] you get it and then you think. And I just wondered if, because this has been so important to a lot of women who ve worked in their communities or who have worked in different social movements to promote women s self confidence and to tell women it s okay to

24 step up and say you want or need this or you should have this or you deserve to be treated a certain way. Have you felt that you ve been part of a broader women s movement or would you consider yourself a feminist? PG: You know, I don t know. I don t think I project myself in that light. The truth for me, my truth, is that my alignment, my mental alignment and my emotional alignment. My mental and my emotional is in alignment with my understanding and my relationship with God. I try to align myself with what I believe is right and what I believe is true and then I stand up for that. If people see me in that light then that s entirely their prerogative, but as far as making a statement and being outright in front with anything as far as women s rights, no, I don t think so. I don t know. I don t think so. I m just loving being a woman. I love being a woman, I love being female, I love being me, and I love and appreciate the opportunities to be a part of change, however small or however large. JF: Well that s beautiful. I think we could wrap up on that PG: [Laughs] JF: but I always just ask. My last question is if there s anything that you d like to add that we didn t talk about or if there s anything you thought I would ask you that I didn t, or just anything you d like to conclude with? PG: No. I didn t know exactly what this would look like, but other than I am so proud, I am so proud, to be a Native American woman, and I just thank God every day for making me, me. I ve not always been able to say that. For many years I wished my life away, somewhere else, in another family, in another home, another town, another state, and lived outside because for some reason there was just so much missing inside, and of course I didn t know what it was as a child. But when my mother had her first stroke in 1987 that was when I got sober I said a

25 prayer, because I was hurting significantly because the only parent that I ever knew. She was everything to me. She was everything. I never had grandparents. I knew my grandfather, my maternal grandfather, just a little bit before he passed away when I was six, but that was the only extended family member, if you will. I had aunts and uncles but wasn t real close to them. So my mother was everything all rolled up in one, and so when she had her stroke I was hurting, and I knew that she was going to die, and I asked God, I said, God, will you please bring my heart home. What that meant at the time I didn t have a clue, but I know that he heard it and he answered it and that began my journey. [Pause; continues tearfully] And I ve never looked back; only when I talk about this. [Laughs] I ve never had the need to look back on it to reflect and to let people know that I understand. I get it. And I know that if God is willing to pull me up out of that. I tell people that I come out from the bottom of the barrel, and of course in AA they talk about the darkness and despair, but I know if God is willing to pull me out he ll pull anybody out. [Laughs] And I try to inspire hope, and I guess that s what it s about. JF: Well I think the people you work with are really blessed. PG: [Laughs] JF: [Laughs] PG: Well, I don t know, but you know what, I m really blessed to be working with them. [Laughs] It s all good. It s all good. JF: I believe it when you say it, I do. [Laughs] PG: [Laughs] JF: Thank you very much. I ll go ahead and turn this off. PG: Okay. END OF INTERVIEW

26 Transcriber: Deborah Mitchum Date: July 10, 2011