In the podcast, the interview with VowellҀs uncle interested me the most. When he mentioned his regret at having been forced to drop out of school in the third grade, I instantly thought of my great grandmother Viola McCloud. Born in the South Carolina upcountry during the depression, she quit school at about the same time and went to work first picking cotton, and then spinning it in the textile mill. Her daughter, my grandmother, Betty had a similar story׀she dropped out in eighth grade, began work in a knitting mill, got married, and had my mama at age 15. They both had Indian blood, and although I donҀt pretend to be anything but white, the racial discrimination in South Carolina played a major role in their dropping out of school. As both of them were ardent racists themselves, they were ashamed to be sent to the segregated black schools׀both of them had very dark complexions, which made a pretty significant difference in how they were treated both by the state and by others. For these reasons, they both had children with extremely white men in order to ӀimproveԀ their childrenҀs color. My mama was sort of the culmination of these efforts, although she ironically feels very connected to her Indian heritage and wishes she knew more about it. But my great great grandmother׀the child of a bank-robbing outlaw Indian of mysterious origins and the even more enigmatic Julia Grant, who is unhelpfully listed as ӀmulattoԀ on the US Census records׀would only ever say that her daddy was a Ӏswamp Indian,Ԁ whatever that means . (She was alive until my mama was in junior high or high school, I believe). In any case, I am interested in knowing what difference color makes in the Oklahoma Cherokee/Indian community. In my experience, it is very important on the east coast, but given the different racial makeup in Oklahoma, I imagine attitudes would be different.
It is worth adding that I self-identify as white. My mama׀who felt cut off from her heritage but, like her mother and grandmother, married a very white man׀sort of groomed me to view myself as native in some sense. But I seriously want to avoid being what Conley calls a ӀCherokee wannabe,Ԁ and having been raised in a very culturally white environment, I feel I donҀt have the cultural background to legitimately claim to be Indian in any measure. In reality, though, my feelings on the matter are pretty complicated. On the one hand, I was raised as the son of a white doctor, but on the other, I spent a lot of time with my Indian great-grandmother. The real complication comes is related to the fact that she and my grandmother both were extremely, extremely ashamed of their nonwhite heritage, knew next to nothing about it, and would not have been interested had they had the opportunity to learn. They both thought of themselves as belonging to the working-class white textile mill class, then so prevalent in the Carolinas. Basically, I have a miniscule amount of Indian blood, but absolutely none of the cultural context. IҀve wrestled with this question a lot׀Is it offensive to claim Indian ancestry I know next to nothing about? Do I really feel white? Am I proud of my European heritage, which is the vast majority of it? Should I be ashamed of it? How Indian am I, really? Is blood quantum important? Ultimately, I got tired of thinking about it. Whenever asks me about my heritage, I generally tell them IҀm a Ӏmongrel white guy.Ԁ ThatҀs probably the most accurate description. Although, I have to say, this course has stirred up a lot of old issues that I thought I had finally put to rest.
In any case, thatҀs a complete tangent. The podcast and the connections it brought up made me think about the root causes of poverty in both the Western Indian and Southeastern communities. In the Carolinas, the working class white mill operatives (the group into which my grandmother and great grandmother roughly fit) was generally tied into poverty due to a system of low wages and the remnants of the Ӏfamily labor system,Ԁ because of which mill operative status almost became a hereditary position. In the Western Indian communities, clearly, federal and state meddling has a lot to do with Indian poverty, but I am interested in knowing more about the role industry has historically played in poverty in the Oklahoma Cherokee population. I would like to know how both agriculture and industry contributed to poverty among Cherokees, since IҀm unsure about how the balance and nature of the two economic forms compares to the situation in mid-twentieth century North and South Carolina.
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