NATIONAL NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORY MONTH

My Mother is Watching Me

Some Sundays we drive 90 minutes North of our Portland home, paralleling the Columbia River, headed for the Zen Monastery in Clatskanie (Oregon), where we spend the morning meditating and then listen to a dharma talk (I translate “dharma” as truth).

We then break for lunch and visit with second daughter (Wey-Wee-Nah), who is spending several weeks at the Monastery as a resident.

Meditation (Zazen) is offered during two periods Sundays with a stretching and walking break in between, ending with a talk and acknowledgments before lunch.

During the break, we stretch and then walk slowly—at first—breathing into each step, and then walk quickly around the meditation cushions on the wooden floor of the Zendo for several roundabouts.

We are instructed to walk heel-toe.

I walk toe-heel.

I walk this way to remind me that—although I formally became a Buddhist a few years ago—I am a descendent of Osage and Sioux (Kiyuska) Native American families (and French and English settlers, too), and when women walk at our traditional dances in Oklahoma, we place our toes first, followed by our heels.

I tell myself I am not disrespecting the Buddhist traditions.

Rather, I am honoring my mother’s and grandmother’s traditions.

To be Native, I tell myself, is to recognize beingness as a constant—like breathing—and not only during occasions like pow-wows or National Native American History month.

We carry our Indigeneity with us, always.

Our Ancestors are with us: Always

On my most recent visit to the Monastery I slipped into the dining room during the break for a sip of coffee, and, while gazing at the empty chairs and tables, I thought I saw my mother looking at me.

I squinted.

From across the room, I saw of photograph of my mother, Margaret Sue.

She smiles brightly for the camera in her formal Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff’s hat and jacket, which is highlighted by a shining badge on her breast pocket.

Margaret Sue was a member of the department for several years in the late 1950s and early 1960s when my father was unable to work as a result of a brain tumor, and she had four daughters in her care.

During lunch at the Monastery, second daughter explains that the table with my mother’s photo was decorated with pictures from residents to honor their memories of family members.

Daughter carries the image of my mother with her, which was used to make a colorized copy for the display.

Maybe it was my mother’s smile—or maybe just my Sunday frame of mind—when I discovered I felt welcomed by seeing her during the break, as though it was OK to be a descendant of First Peoples and a practicing Buddhist at the same time.

Her presence seemed especially salient knowing that the Monastery—the former Quincy-Mayger school—was constructed on soil rich in Indigenous history.

All along the Columbia River Valley, which stretches more than 1,000 miles from Canada to Oregon, Native peoples called the region home “from time immemorial.”

That’s about the distance from New York City to Ames, Iowa.

And 1,000 miles is the length of the forced-march of the Cherokee from Georgia to Oklahoma during the Trail of Tears ordered by President Andrew Jackson in the bleak winter of 1835.

The Columbia River Valley’s Native History

Long before Sacagawea (Lemhi Shoshone), Meriwether Lewis and William Clark traversed the West in the early 1800s, the Columbia River Valley was peopled by dozens of Indigenous communities—some cordial to one another and some more ornery.

Western historians posit that Chinookean peoples lived in the region of the lower Columbia River (where the Monastery is now located) for millennia, where they were active fishers and traders.

According to the National Parks Service, the Chinook controlled much of the fishing commerce in the region until the Clatskanie people—who had lived on what is now called the Washington side of the river—“crossed the Columbia.”

“As game became scarce and their food supply diminished, they [the Clatskanie, or—Tlatskanai, Clackstar, Klatskanai or Klaatshan—] crossed the Columbia River to occupy the hills above the Clatskanie River, driving away…the more peaceful Chinook Indians.”

Although historians disagree on when and where the Clatskanie displaced the Chinook people, it was the settler-emigrants who dispatched Native life as they trekked along the Columbia and Willamette river valleys, bringing with them typhus, cholera, smallpox and measles: death sentences for communities with little-to-no resistance from foreign diseases.  

In the early 1840s, a self-appointed “provisional” government of settlers declared emigrants could “own” up to one acre of land: a decision never sanctioned by Native peoples. 

Settler records note local tribal peoples either moved away from encroaching travellers or were rounded up and forcibly relocated to unfamiliar land in the Pacific Northwest.

And while the Clatskanie city website says the area “was named after the Tlatskanai tribe of American Indians,” history books report that most of the tribal folks succumbed to diseases brought by settlers.

The town’s first newspaper was founded in 1889 (three years before Clatskanie became incorporated as a City) and was called The Clatskanie Chief, a name it held until 2014, when it became, “The Chief.”

Synopsis

Back at the Monastery, the Sunday service closes with an acknowledgement of our Buddhist ancestors, beginning with the Buddha, and a listing of the names of the teachers in the lineage of the Monastery’s founders, Jan Chozen Bays and Laren Hogen Bays.

I feel joyful imagining my mother and her ancestors are watching over me while I meditate with members of my Zen Buddhist community.

And I look forward to a moment when the Monastery community finds a bridge with the region’s Indigenous ancestral community.

~ Cynthia Coleman Emery

7 November 2023

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