I never knew my dad’s biological mom. She left my grandpa when my dad was two and his little sister one. She was only 19. We didn’t know much about her. My grandpa didn’t have much to tell or maybe it was that we didn’t really bother to ask. He had since remarried twice and the woman that had raised my dad from age five on was very much a grandma to us. She was from a family of 12 and they all seemed to love genealogy. It was easy to plunk her extensive family tree into my own.
One year, my older sister made one of those family tree fan charts, but this time she didn’t fill in the branch of my paternal grandmother. A quarter of the tree was blank.
We knew my grandma’s name and that she had been adopted. We also knew she was half… something. Native American? Mexican? No one was really sure. But we definitely were asked about it every once in a while. Of the ten kids in my family, half of us had dark eyes and hair like my dad and half were blond and blue-eyed like my mom. I would tan really well and would joke it was thanks to my grandma I didn’t know.
But it was a different story for my older sister. Only recently did I learn that she had been teased about being a “Lamanite” when she was growing up. Cousins, church members, and leaders would tell her her dark skin was a curse and she could become delightsome again if she was righteous.
Sarah Newcomb is Tsimshian of the First Nation from Metlakatla, Alaska. She has written extensively of her experiences on her blog, Lamanite Truth. She speaks of the harm of the church’s teachings about Lamanites, Native Americans, Christopher Columbus, and more.
I’ve been thinking for days now about the most recent conversation I had with missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One part hit me in the gut and hasn’t left – when the missionary said that Native American ceremony and dance were incorrect traditions, a remnant of our people turning away from God.
When I was a child I was taught exactly what the missionary said and I missed out on cultural experiences and connection. I am not the only Indigenous person to experience this. There are so many of us… I have talked to many friends and family who experienced this.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints taught and continues to teach Native Americans, South Americans, and Pacific Islanders that their spiritual and cultural traditions were incorrect. The church also continues to teach Indigenous families an incorrect ancestry. Lamanites, also called Children of Lehi, is ongoing. The entire time the church has told us not to act Native American the church has used Native American clothing and traditions in their movies, books, pageants, BYU singing groups, etc. This is what it looks like to use Indigenous people to sell a colonial fiction as fact.
She goes on in another post,
I grew up with these teachings and believed I was a Lamanite until I was 38 years old. When I realized that I no longer identified as Lamanite all I could do was write as I had no one to turn to. There was so much pain and confusion about how I had been taught to view my own tribe, Indigenous history, ancestry, and skin color.
Not every indigenous member is going to agree on whether the term Lamanite represents another way colonialism shows up or a hopeful promise of God’s love. I think the most important thing is that members do not perpetuate the appropriation of Native cultures and history. We must listen to their stories and respect the identities they claim.
I haven’t spoken to all of my siblings about their experience with identity. I am still grappling with it myself. Sixty years after my dad’s mom walked away, we found her. She was living an hour away from where I grew up in Southern California.
My grandma’s father was from Ireland and was serving in the navy in Oregon. He drowned in the ocean trying to save another man’s life. Shortly thereafter my grandma and her mother were separated by adoption. Through a series of events, my sisters and I were able to find and meet my grandma, as well as connect with the son of her sister. He never knew my grandmother either, but he had grown up knowing there was another sibling.
My paternal grandma’s mother, Monalita, was born in the US to parents who emigrated from Puerto Rico in the early 1900s. There are a lot of genealogical lines that run cold, but I do know now that some of my ancestors were from Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Spain. What I don’t know is what that means for how I identify.
I want to be careful here to acknowledge that my experience lies in the full privilege of whiteness. I do not consider myself biracial and I have in no way experienced discrimination because of how I am perceived. I am privileged to choose how I interact with my heritage. It isn’t something that affects my job prospects or how people view me.
I feel like I am constantly filling out forms for myself and my kids. Medical forms, census forms, school forms, surveys. What is your race? What is your ethnicity? Check this box if you are of Hispanic or Latino origin. But I am less interested in official recognition of my ancestry and more in how do I connect to that part of my heritage now? Not knowing my paternal grandma was in part due to circumstances that plague so many women throughout history: a widow not being able to support her young children. A teenager running from sexual abuse at home to end up pregnant. A teen mother, though married, not having the resources and help to deal with the everyday challenges of motherhood. I don’t know their stories in depth. But I crave connection to this part of me. I want to honor their struggles and joys.
I love the work of Michelle Franzoni Thorley @florafamiliar.
As a multiracial person, it is very clear that the histories and perspectives of my European ancestors have been and continue to be centered. I believe this is because we know their stories and the stories of many people in their community. We know their names. We have documentation of their lives… I am most interested in centering my Ancestresses, especially my Ancestresses of color. I want to center their perspectives and life experiences.
It is so important to listen to the stories of multiracial individuals and the unique struggles they face in our society.
I spoke to a friend who has a white mother and Mexican father. She was raised by her mother and is white passing. She feels guilty every time she marks Hispanic, because it is not something she has been crippled by in her life. Like many multiracial people, she feels like the world tells her she has to choose one or to justify her participation in cultural rituals or traditions. Like me, she wants to learn more about that part of herself and within her own sphere take pride in all her parts.
Specifically as a biracial member of the church, whose Mexican side of the family were all Catholic, my friend was told growing up that her baptism in the church was part of the fulfillment of prophecy – and that God’s mission for her was to convert her relatives.
These false ideas can be so persistent. In a podcast episode interviewing Kalani, a biracial member of the church, Caroline Kline points out, even if a teaching is disavowed, people may feel the “long tentacles of old teachings reach into the present and affect their lives in significant ways.”
Kalani says,
I hate it when people are like, ‘well it’s not that big of a deal that they’re teaching outdated material’ But it is. Because it directly impacted my understanding of myself. I feel like it directly impacted my marriage choice.
In another article by Sarah Newcomb, she lays out eight suggested steps the church can take toward healing for Indigenous peoples.
Number eight stood out to me:
Teaching and identifying groups, tribes, and peoples as Lamanite (or Children of Lehi) needs to be fully done away with by official representatives of the church – regardless of if that representative identifies as Lamanite or not.
If they personally identify as Lamanite (or Children of Lehi) they should be directed to not teach it in any official capacity at church or as an official representative of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Please show respect and kindness towards those who find peace in self-identifying as Lamanite. There should be room made and respected for personal spiritual paths. However, all people should cease in labeling others with this for cultural healing and protecting the next generation of children.
I have little hope that the church will adopt these suggestions and make widespread change. But I do believe in the power of members collectively shifting culture as we individually speak up and take time to listen to a person’s pain and to learn their stories.
There is a fantastic episode of Code Switch that dives into the experiences of multiracial people. The last guest they interview is a biracial woman, Heidi Durrow, who is the founder of the Mixed, Remixed Festival. I love the way she describes the event:
I like to say we all know someone, are someone or love someone who’s in the mixed experience. So it’s for all of those people, which means basically all of us… And there is a lot of crying, too, because people walk into the room and they realize no one is trying to do math on their family. We all look like we fit with each other. To not have to hide or dissemble or pretend or make other people comfortable – it’s such a relief to be in that space.
And then Gene Demby, one of the Code Switch hosts, asks her how people are identifying themselves.
“What we like to say is, I am a story…
You get to be exactly the story that you are in all of its complication.”
5 Responses
This article gave me so much to think about. Thank you.
Fascinating, Tirza. Thank you for sharing this part of your story and family history.
I am mixed race with brown skin. My mother‘s ancestry is French. It is important to understand the difference between race and ethnicity. Race is something assigned to me at birth, but ethnicity is how I express my identity to the world. Today, we take acceptance of multiracialism as the norm, but when I was a child, it was still illegal for people of different races to marry. Multiracial children were social mistakes; the result of law breaking. We had the same social stigma as a child who was adopted. We were tolerated, but our place and priveleges was never defined. Ambivelence about racial identity has deep roots in our society. My mother was white, therefore I am white, yet I have been denied access to medical care because my father is Native American. Multiracial identity is too large an issue to blame on one single thing. Racism is still racism, regarless of how it is used to try and parce the worth of a human being.
Thank you! I appreciated you sharing your and your family’s experiences as well as the other sources you referenced, especially the aspects of connecting with identities instead of trying to help people others feel comfortable. Not letting others decide how you look == how you identify is so important and the church and our world does not make that easy. Need to change those structure too, and thank you for bringing this up here.
Thank you for sharing the story and the photos. I loved looking at the photos. This is a post I suspect I will read again and again because there is so much here to think about.