edited 5-28-2024

Eventually this website will disappear as some other things have come to my attention. Since writing this post – all while attempting to keep from dumping too much into the laps of people who frankly don’t care – I’ve realized that a lot needed to be said regarding my motive and where I’m going. This means this post will not be professional sounding. It might be TMI. But what needs to be said needs to be said.

This program was begun to help my tribe. I worked very hard on it when I could. Buying the parts, trying to take the time out for it when I had to work extra hard just to pay the light bill, and other things were expensive in many ways. Even when I was literally dying I tried to make time for it. I never held a fundraiser but one single time, and that was objected to in private by a council member and an ego. The ego was nasty, no one seemed to mind, and so I separated the project from the tribe.

I was angry. I have no time for petty politics. Petty politics are high school games where the usual mean gaggle of girls vie for attention and make sure the unpopular stay unpopular. I don’t find petty politics good for the community. But also I was very hurt. No, I didn’t get to make this project my full-time job. To do that I would’ve either had to have money so I could be an armchair scholar a la 1800’s, or I would’ve had to have funding. The pain came on top of some other events, like the time I discovered the tribe used to do shapenote singing and joyfully told the tribe. They hooked onto it – I was there for some of their glee of discovery, the conversations, their joy at finding ways to get into it. I don’t even think they remember I’m the one that found it… they took off with it, and I was left behind because being so far away and so damn broke all of the time I couldn’t keep up. It was a lot like being uninvited from my own party.

While others could afford to simply move back to Brotherton (it seemed), the times I tried to figure out if it were possible I couldn’t even get a straight answer where in the mysterious land of Wisconsin I should look on the map. Where we should look for jobs. Anything that would’ve put us closer to what was supposed to be family. And of course now I’m saddled with family responsibilities in Florida – mostly because the other sibling refused but also because after being coerced to go back I stayed to help – so to be able to go up there would take a series of miracles. To visit would be nice. I don’t see it happening – I’m literally keeping two houses afloat financially.

I have even offered to volunteer with remote needs at the tribal office and was brushed rudely off. I ask questions about my family members on the rolls and the silence is deafening – a 100% spin around from when Caroline Adler handled things. SHE treated us like family. I’m a full member of the tribe while being treated by many like an outsider. I’ve often been made to feel that academia has been placed above being an actual tribe. Still I will send in my ID paperwork, vote, and do what I can do. Maybe one day things change.

This has been going on for years, but these days the thought brings me to literal tears. When my Dad had just died and my mother was very ill, her sister “gleefully – and I do mean gleefully -“informed” me no one had ever liked me. To have to navigate mean girl politics with my tribe as well is like being stuck in a blackberry bush with no clothes on. It hurts too much. I have even at one point genuinely asked my husband if I was allowed to be an Indian at all.

Being me, and what I am, learning everything my Dad had to teach have always been the most important part of my self identity. I find it very non-Indian to be pushed around to that point.

This little website with it’s cartoons, memes, and tricks to help people remember better was never a threat to anyone who wanted to go larger. It would’ve been the perfect instrument to team up with – collaboration with someone who could study harder and go farther would’ve been very good for the tribe. To get with me, all anyone had to do was 1. NOT insult my intelligence by lying to me or assuming I’ve never been to school, 2. NOT being nasty or egotistical (THIS ISN’T ABOUT YOU AND YOUR GLORY), 3. NOT being dishonest about the material in general, and 4. Don’t treat me like a slave, a piece of chattel, or tell me how to think, live, or breathe among other things. I am reminded of the person who talked to me about my super great-grandfather Samson long enough to get what they wanted, and when they were done they put their product up for sale only to his “ancestors” – of which I was NOT on the list. I couldn’t afford the product. I still deserved to be in the list with my extended family. Do that and then wonder why I won’t work with you ever again if you ask, because if you can’t figure it out the problem is yours.

The owner of another Mohegan language project has committed three of those sins. I cannot be a part of it – I won’t be a part of something like that where people’s hearts are not in the right place.

I find it offensive that people would use community to get the spotlight. The second most insulting thing aside from being treated like a high school dropout is how very little anyone cared that I was dying when I was dying. These days a little courtesy over how it stalled things would be nice. It was impossible to work on the language while I lay in intensive care hooked up to various tubes with that God-awful wasp machine of theirs stuck inside my lungs. It literally took years to figuratively be firm on my feet. The final operation had to be done under anesthesia so strong it took some of my memories away.

My renewed activity in the past year was because I’d finally found myself again. It took that long to heal and get things straight. If I’d just been told of what was happening and what had happened in regards to the Mohegan Nation pairing with the Brotherton, instead of it being a Rome-worthy backstab, I would have eventually been eager to join the classes and let others do the work. Instead it turns out while others knew what was going on I didn’t deserve to know somehow. And that lead to years of wasted time on my part, and a loss of rare resources.

One backstabber’s justification was that they wanted to do something “useful” before they died. (But my near-death isn’t as meaningful.) This after already doing useful things for another tribe (that they were more loyal to before the attention ran dry) and even getting a pipe for it. But it’s okay to talk to and treat me like I’m stupid and have temper tantrums when I don’t walk their line? PTSD, they call it. PTSD only towards me and not their equals? I have other words for it, as a military spouse who deals with diagnosed PTSD every time her husband or her friend gets on the phone.

TO be fair it isn’t that they’ve never had good moments. But some expect me to put myself into a bad situation because the other party put out a good face or simply because I’m the convenient goat You wouldn’t put yourselves into a bad situation willingly, I bet. Why should I be any different? So. No. Not doing it.

I must thank the people who finally let me know what was going on, even if they weren’t the people who should have said something in the first place. This was the right thing to do.

All of this is drama, and it’s always been left unsaid because when you find a healthy place it doesn’t need to be said. To center on it would’ve taken my mind away from my goals. But the truth should be known because some of you have sided with… well. I wouldn’t call this good by any stretch.

It’s not MY career you’re chopping up. I’m just trying to warn you, despite all the knives in my back. I’m also saying something because what has been done to me is outright wrong. Is this the tribal norm – to treat cousins this way if their goals just happen to be a place you want for yourself? To shun members who are doing what they can to participate? Asking for a damn friend.

Again – Up until now, the way I’ve been treated by tribe and family has literally left me wondering if I was even allowed to be an Indian. No one should be pushed that way. If you’re part of the problem, then you’re no different than all the colonizers who wanted to get rid of the “Indian Problem”. You have essentially become part of their solution.

How many others are being made to feel this way? It’s wrong. And as of now, I will do what I can to push back. Maybe it won’t be against you, maybe not against any one tribe. I don’t even know how I’ll do it, but someone has to do something.

I’ve mulled over it a very long time. What was the right thing to do? My heart hasn’t been in the right place to speak up. “But someone should say something,” a good friend urged me. Which means me, because it’s rare for anyone to stand up for me when they should. The only place I can say it is here. It’s inappropriate as all hell, but I’ll push forward.

I want to just move on from it without making an issue, but the right thing is apparently full of drama. So now I’m going to switch topics and talk about some good things. I did the hand washing ritual yesterday and have begun wrapping things up. I am moving on as best I can.

I’m going to be busy.

This website is closing but I’ve opened another. Some things from here, if they’re salvageable from old drives, will be moved there. It’s going to have a more academic bent, and the focus will no longer be on the “Mohegan-ish Pidgin” I’ve dedicated so much time to. There is something else that should be looked at. The new website will have better capabilities – this place was always limited in what I was allowed to do. That has to end.

I have been through a lot of fire for my ancestry over the years. I was literally made fun of it. Literally oppressed in school. Literally used by others who told me that’s what a “squaw was for”. And now this.

I acknowledge that the things my father taught us kids weren’t what most expect. But now that it’s just me, I realize I have to earn my name all over again. I have to be a Spearcarrier. So that’s what I’m going off to do.

I want us all to succeed in the right way. I want to see the children speaking the language. Like when Caroline took my powwow paper to council and now the people dance at powwows again – that’s growth. That’s us throwing out the enforced outsider ways and saying “no more”. So I’m going to do what I do in the best way I know how.

I send a heartfelt thanks to those who realized I should be included in knowing something and bravely let me know.

P.S. I kept names out of this for reasons. I won’t tell if you ask, either. If you want to know who anyone you’re working with is, it shouldn’t take someone like me feeling forced to open up. Thorough background checks are gold.