“Is it true that you’re ashamed of being Indian?” I heard that question regularly during my late childhood and early adolescence.
It started with a misunderstanding between me and my teacher. In my elementary school curriculum at that time, we studied the 50 states in fifth grade. Each student did an outline and an oral report on a state, and I picked Minnesota.
My mother had suggested that choice because it was the home state of my father and his family. My parents had divorced when I was seven, but they maintained a polite and open relationship in matters concerning their daughter. As a loving parent with a journalist’s avid curiosity, Mom was always interested in what made me “tick.” This included attributes, habits, talents, personality traits and physical characteristics. She was fond of pointing out things that I might have inherited from one ancestor or another: tendency toward motion sickness, fondness for winter sports, eye color, quiet nature and the like. So naturally she took an interest in her ex-husband’s ancestry—Scandinavian, Ashkenazi Jewish and Indian.
I presented my report and got an A. Being an extremely shy child, I chose not to tell the class about my Minnesota ancestors, Indian or otherwise. Instead, I focused on weather, population centers, history, cash crops and famous people. A few weeks later, during parent-teacher conferences, Mom casually mentioned my Minnesota Chippewa background when they discussed my excellent report, and my teacher expressed surprise that I’d left it out of the presentation.
That turned into a misguided “teachable moment” that dogged me for years. Until her retirement, my fifth-grade teacher told all of her subsequent classes the shocking story of a girl she knew. “That girl was ashamed of being Indian, and…well, I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but her name is Faith Burton.”
That’s why I anticipated the question, every year like clockwork, from a fifth-grader who approached me after hearing a made-up story from a teacher who used me to make a point: never be ashamed of who you are.
Actually, the opposite was true. I was incredibly proud of being “part Indian.” But the only thing I knew about my great-great-grandmother was what my father had told me: she was a member of the Minnesota Chippewa tribe, born on the White Earth Reservation.
I didn’t know much about the rest of my paternal lineage either. The only record was a rudimentary family tree of my paternal grandmother’s Norwegian forebears. Everything else was mysterious and rarely discussed.
After he got sober at age 50, my father nurtured his Indian connection. He made regular visits to AA friends in Navajoland, attended sweat lodge ceremonies, built a canoe of indigenous design, and collected indigenous art.
He also had a lifelong love for nature and wilderness. Of course that isn’t exclusive to indigenous people, but the connection to the outdoors was the deepest and most important common thread that my father and I shared. It also turned out to be the vector of my discovery that I had no Indian ancestry whatever.
My paternal grandfather, who died when my father was three months old, had three siblings. The youngest, Harold Burton, had a leadership role in the 10th Mountain Division and later was instrumental in establishing Whiteface Mountain ski resort near Lake Placid, New York. He was an accomplished outdoorsman who mentored my father in wilderness activities. They were very close for a number of years, but family connections grew tenuous over time.
One day, Uncle Hal came up in a conversation with my father, and as a result I tracked down his obituary. I thereby discovered that my paternal grandfather’s ancestry consisted entirely of Eastern European Jewish immigrants from Austria, Hungary, Germany, Poland and Russia.
I was quite surprised by this, and eager to acquaint myself with these newfound ancestors and my Jewish heritage. But when I reported my find, my father’s reaction was a low-key, amused “Hmm.” That was all.
Wherever the Indian story came from, he took it to his grave. I knew him well enough not to pry for an answer. The closest I got was “it must have been a wanna-be thing.” Throughout my childhood and adulthood, he’d made a few references to our Chippewa ancestor, maintaining the reality of it while categorizing her as “untraceable.” He also offered up a few tantalizing stories about Scandinavian ancestors with connections to royalty in the home country. Overall, I think his “wanna-be” self was in charge of creating the narrative of who he was.
I’ve done a lot of reflecting about this. It was, and is, unsettling in several ways. Mostly I feel deprived of a cultural connection that is so richly present in my mother’s lineage. For better or for worse, all those stories are part of the family’s oral and written narrative, warts and all.
My DNA re-do highlighted another truth: even if my Chippewa ancestor had shown up on my family tree, my lived experience had nothing to do with being Indian. My attachment to the idea was romanticized and made-up; I proved that to myself through the loss I felt when discovering it had no physical basis in reality.
So…lesson learned. I will always admire and do my best to appreciate Indigenous people, by supporting and honoring their communities and culture in an appropriate and respectful manner.
Now on to the question: who am I? About 10 years ago I compiled all that I knew about half of my genealogy. The chart, on a 16 x 20 sheet of paper, goes back 13 generations on the maternal side and 2 generations on the paternal side. Looks like it’s time for another voyage of discovery.
