Tag: Rev Dr Doe West

I will not become what was done to me… Part 2, My Path to Peace and Social Justice Activism

Posted on by kathiemm

by Rev. Dr. Doe West

About a year after being forced out into a “normal” life that was terrifying, and being forced to learn that my life was not the life of all little girls, that something was terribly wrong with my mother, my life, and so, clearly, with me, I had what I call my “Habakkuk Moment.”

Habakkuk was a minor prophet in the Judeo-Christian Old Testament (a book I had never read). In it, he is brought to such immense anger over injustice that he raises a fist to God!

As I did. To the dark sky in the midst of another terror-driven night, I shook my fist and pressed my heart against the window screen and silently cried out “If you are REAL, if you are this God I am hearing about now, WHY!? Why would you create ME? Specifically ME? And have me live THIS LIFE!? WHY????

I stood and shook my fist and then my whole body as I convulsed into sobs.
Each night for seven nights.
I awoke the 8th morning with what I later termed “the peace that passes all understanding,” and that was the understanding that a creator existed.

My next life shift came when my Native American grandmother took me aside and told me the time had come for me to learn who I truly was. Specifically, I was of The People. I had not known anything about this heritage, this beautiful heritage.

Over the next 5 years, Gra taught me that heritage, and trained me as a “Wise Woman” as part of my lineage. She shared with me how when she was 8, she was orphaned and missionaries took her from the tribal community and placed her as a kitchen slave in a white woman’s home in the Hudson Valley in NY. Thus, we had kinship in a heritage of captivity as well as in understanding the critical role of our own response to it.

Nothing was within normal limits for many more years. I was found to have an IQ that startled our small-town village. In an era without gifted child options, I was “placed” in the library–denied basic education but given the freedom to read every book in that building and forge a lifelong love affair with knowledge! But I also became known as the “Library Gnome,” someone different, again isolated and living a life with the potential for self-hatred, shame, and fear. I chose to focus on the pursuit of knowledge and did research on my own beliefs and those of society around me.

When I finally skipped a grade for the 3rd time, and worked it out with the school system to show up for two classes a day before work, they got state aid and I got a diploma. I had worked full time since I was 13 but now had working papers and could do a regular job outside the village rather than under the table.

I worked three or more jobs to help support my family and pay my own bills and begin saving for college. I knew college was my huge wall to climb over or tunnel under to achieve my own essential form of freedom.

Then the adventure REALLY began… but I will leave that part for later, in simple yet profound celebration of life lessons and mantras that sustain, and lights that shine in the darkness.

I will not become what was done to me… Part 1, My Path to Peace and Social Justice Activism

Posted on by kathiemm
Doe West, self-portrait

by Reverend Dr. Doe West

Each of our journeys to the path of commitment to a life dedicated to social justice holds a story that has meaning to us very specifically. But we also find many times that our story generates resonance in others – or even shines a light into another’s darkness.

I offer my story with hopes of lighting a candle in all darkness everywhere.

The first seven years of my life were lived primarily in a closet in my mother’s room.

Also in her bed.

And often in the bathroom being very ill, as witnessed and unquestioned by our country family doctor.

I am not going to dwell here on the details of my early experiences, other than to offer that I understand those who suffer emotional, physical, and sexual abuse – as well as captivity and social deprivation.

Nor am I going to focus on my poor mother’s mental illness, which was ignored and, in some ways, enabled by the social beliefs, stigma, and fears in America in the 1950s.

What I will focus on are some of those life altering realizations/impact moments that people sometimes are allowed.

My first impact moment came when my eldest sister mentioned “the little one in mother’s bedroom” to a teacher who DID NOT IGNORE THE WORDS OF A CHILD. That teacher listened and took action to determine the possible (if not inconceivable) truth of a child’s testimony.

The first lesson was the importance of belief in what is told until or unless disproven by honest investigation.

The second lesson was the power of a witness.

And the third lesson was the power of taking action on behalf of another.

From that impact moment and the lessons learned, a cornerstone life belief / motto / mantra arose in me that led me to higher ground for the rest of my life:

I will not become what was done to me.

I could have stayed in that closet even following my removal.

I could have chosen the comfort of darkness over the terror of everything that lay outside in a world so alien to me, a world into which I was suddenly forced.

I could have chosen to keep the terror rather than undertake literally a decades-long fight to desensitize myself to touch, sound, and the pain of what can be done under the guise of words of love.

Yes, this is a story of faith. No burning bush – no voice in the dark. But yes – assuredly a tale of spiritual communion.

Note from Kathie MM: Please return to engaging peace next week so you can continue sharing sharing Dr. West’s journey to peace and social justice, and consider submitting the story of your own journey, your own movement towards hope and other superpowers.

Our histories, ourselves, Part 2

Posted on by kathiemm

National Day of Mourning Plaque, Plymouth, MA. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

By Rev. Dr. Doe West

The story of Native Americans/American Indians continues, with some glimmers of hope for the future.

Having failed to fully record the genocide, contemporary U.S. governments have decided to recognize 562 Native American tribes. To be included on those rolls, you must have an ancestor who was processed and counted–and most likely ended up on one of the reservations created while treaties were being broken and peoples moved like cattle across lands unknown to them.

As with all people who are deemed different and set apart, a number of Native Americans, ancestors of the survivors who may not be recognized as such today, voluntarily removed themselves from that processing and relocation. Within that group were my Grandmother’s family members.

The tales my grandmother told me regarding my lineage included ancestors hiding in the woods of the Hudson Valley area and coming into newly integrated groups of various tribes surviving there (Lenape/Delaware, Mahican, Wappinger, and others who entered that area) as well as African Americans, Cajuns, French Canadian trappers, and other European traders) in villages that developed on the Hudson river. This beautiful mélange of cultures created what I consider my “true American mutt heritage.”

When the Missionaries learned that my Grandmother’s parents were both dead, they came to “save her from the Savages.” To do so, they placed her in a white woman’s home in Peekskill, NY, as a kitchen slave.

The recognition of the history that Andrés Reséndez recounts in his  recent book, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America” is growing, as more and more people learn about and recognize the truth of this aspect of a generally unreported part of “American history.  But whether or not painful facts are recognized or understood, the facts are the facts. And for my grandmother and for me, America’s historical degradation and enslavement of native peoples was and is a fact of life.

When you read this story, you may suspect that it bears a tone of anger that I did not feel in writing it. Instead, as an academic, I speak with a voice that is intended to be one of education.

November is Native American Heritage Month.

Learn the truth.
Understand what was done.
Know that tribal affiliation and lineage does not exist only on ledgers on dusty shelves in official buildings in Washington, DC.

I trust my Grandmother’s oral traditions, passed on to me along with other true tales of her life that persist above and beyond the records made by those who enslaved her.

I celebrated my heritage throughout this month and I celebrate the next steps in our attaining all the rights and privileges owed me on the basis of my citizenship and my humanity in the land of my ancestors.

And I welcome the coming waves of immigrants and invite them to learn more about the true heritage of all the peoples who have struggled to build a decent life in this land of ours.

Our histories, ourselves. Part 1.

Posted on by kathiemm

National Day of Mourning Plaque, Plymouth, MA. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

November is Native American History Month  (and they’re not over yet–not the month and not the history)

by Rev. Dr. Doe West

Seventy years ago, Native Americans could not vote.  A few weeks ago, two Native American/American Indian women created wave upon wave of celebration by achieving membership in the U.S. Congress. Are these the first Native Americans to take on this responsibility?

Not even close. Please open your minds and hearts to a little history:

  1. The first NA/AI member of Congress with recognized Tribal affiliation was elected in 1783.
  2.  A page in Wikipedia provides names and dates of previous NA/AI members of the U. S. Congress with documented tribal ancestry or affiliation. [
  3.  That list includes only members of tribes on the  48 contiguous states—not Hawaii, not Alaska. (As of now, no Alaska Natives have ever been elected or served.
  4. Upon the election of Sharice Davids of Kansas and Deb Halland of New Mexico, we will have four Native Americans serving in Congress in 2019; these new members join Tom Cole and Markwayne Mullin from Oklahoma.

Those elections are important historical events, but there are other histories of personal importance to me and thousands of others.

Here’s an example: In the 1790s,  Secretary of War Henry Knox said to President George Washington:

“How different it would be if instead of exterminating a part of the human race by our modes of population  we had persevered through all difficulties and at last had imparted our Knowledge of cultivating and the arts, to the Aboriginals of the Country by which the source of future life and happiness had been preserved and extended. But it has been conceived to be impracticable to civilize the Indians of North America – This opinion is probably more convenient than just.”*

Washington and Knox were “reformers” who helped propel the concept of “civilizing the savage”;  it is pretty clear to me that their intentions reflected moral reasoning. Unfortunately,  stories that begin with decent intentions often, inevitably, lead to devastating outcomes because the intentions are based on ignorance and prejudice. In this case, the “Kill the Savage and Save the Person” campaign began.

Native American Boarding Schools (aka Indian Residential Schools) were created to provide institutionalized enforcement of intentions to “civilize.” Children were not just torn from their families and tribal communities. They were also stripped of their indigenous cultural signifiers: external signifiers were destroyed by cutting  their hair and burning  their clothing; linqual signifiers by forbidding use of their native languages; and personal signifiers by replacing their true names with European names intended to “Christianize” as well as  “civilize” them.

The history of these schools yields proof of true savagery – sexual, emotional, physical, and mental abuse in these mostly in church-run schools. Doctrine and dogma were created by those in charge to meet their interpretation of what their religion would demand (just as is found today).

Genocide took many forms in the early history of the United States and  came close to eradicating the original people of our Nation.   There is no definitive list of Tribes that inhabited this land before colonization. There are official narratives, but there are also extinct tribes, loss of original language speakers, and destruction of dwellings and artifacts, without which it is difficult to create a true history. [lightly edited]

*lightly edited