I was born in around the mid-20th Century in Australia, as I alluded to here. What I didn’t mention there was that I was adopted, at around two weeks old - a little old, for the practices used then (they tried to prevent any bond forming between mother and child). That happened in response to social disapproval: my parents were too young to marry when they had me - they did marry when they were old enough, and had two more children.
The laws in that Australian state, at that time, banned making any information available to either party about the adoption.
When the laws were changed, in the early part of this century, to allow information to be made available (provided neither party objected), I decided to try to make contact.
The announcement of the changes included some good information on what could happen - i.e., this could be a good experience, a poor experience, or have no effect at all, so I knew the risks up front. After receiving details of my original birth certificate, I started contacting people with the same family name as mine at birth, and eventually I found my birth family.
So I now have two families of origin - birth, and adoptive (I also have families of choice [friends] and through relationship), and the experience of making contact was very good (although I have a stack more birthdays to remember, and I’m not good at that).
I went through a complex set of emotions during this process: I won’t go into all of my experiences, but, as an example, one issue was balancing my love for my adoptive family with guilt for having looked for my birth family - i.e., does the search lesson my love for my adoptive family?
The answer is no, as love is additive.
Having found my birth family, I knew from an early stage that there was a strong Indigenous connection (including marriage, and extensive contact) - in fact, I gave a book I had on Indigenous food to one of my birth siblings, as they would appreciate - and use - it far more, and to far greater effect, than I.
I didn’t think through, or realise, what that could mean - at that time.
Life has been busy-to-hectic for all of us since then, with a strong focus on family, personal, and other issues for all of us - and I am in awe of what members of both my families of origin have coped with.
Thus, it is only recently that I have found out just how close that Indigenous connection is - close enough that identification as Indigenous is a genuinely viable option, although official recognition includes being recognised by the people you are descended from, which I suspect may not happen.
I am now going to write about my experience of that discovery, and some of the aspects in my decision making about whether or not to identify as Indigenous.
This is NOT a post about Indigenous experience - only (some of) my personal reactions to discovering how strong my Indigenous bloodline is.
So, my first reaction to discovering that was joy; my second, close behind, was getting caught up in the “what percentage Indigenous is enough to be Indigenous?” mistake.
There are a whole stack of reasons why “percentage of Indigeneity” is a mistake; others are more able to explain that, so I’m not going to try to. I will, however, consider my reaction to one of those arguments, which is that if a drop of Indigenous blood is enough to condemn one to a life of too often violent discrimination (as has been the case in “Australia” * ), a drop of blood is also enough to identify as Indigenous. My initial reaction was that it was verging into a double wrong, but I realised - given some clear thinking! - that it was about taking pride in something that is being used as an epithet or trigger for abuse, much as reclaiming “queer”, or, from the side of the elites, police transforming the epithet “pig” into an acronym “PIG”, for “pride, integrity, guts”: if the agents of the oppressor show this sort of reframing/reclaiming is good, who am I to disagree? 😀
As it is, I have a reasonable “percentage of Indigeneity” (I won't go into details for a range of reasons, including personal privacy, and protecting those in my life), but a far more compelling motivator for me to accept being Indigenous, and identify as such, is my commitment to being as authentic as I can.
A truth of my life is that I am female; another is that my heritage includes being Indigenous.
However, I cannot escape the other truth of having had (and still having) a life of white privilege - what happened to the school child in WA a couple of weeks ago is unlikely to happen to me on the basis of race (although various forms of violence for other reasons have been a part of my life, and, for my safety I do not go to certain places/situations [some online]). I’ve been as inclusive, activist and caring (including this form of generosity, which I came to through the issue of “Right Livelihood” when I was a Buddhist in my teen years, back in the 1970s) as I can, largely simply because it is right, but there is still an inescapable element of white privilege - actually, I can somewhat relate a little to the character Kay in the film “The Sapphires”.
Considering this more deeply, my concern is actually, to quite an extent, a fear of being unwelcomed or criticised by Indigenous people who did not have the benefit of passing as white.
The principles and emotions associated with this issue are similar to the issue of “passing” for trans and gender diverse (TGD) people, and in that area, I came down firmly on the issue of choosing not to pass personally and cop all the flak that comes with that, but I understand and accept those who do choose to pass - survival is a desire all of us have, although our paths to that goal may vary.
That realisation also helped me to come to feel accepting of both that issue, and the issue of “percentage of Indigeneity”.
What also helped was reading that a widely respected Elder, who is no longer with us, was also proud of his Celtic heritage.
When I came to terms with all that, I wrote the poem at https://musingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2022/10/from.html, which is also copied below (and I have also posted it on Medium):
From the ancient forests of Europe
came my people
to be
here.
From the hills and dales and mines
of lands green and lands braw and wild
came my people
to be
here.
my people joined
to pass to me
the braid of many threads
that is I.
However, I also realised that I had missed out on - been robbed of, in a sense - key parts of my heritage.
I am working at recovering those missing parts of my heritage. I have my birth family siblings for help, but I have strong sympathy for those who have made similar discoveries and have no-one to help them - and I have read some stories in mainstream media about people in that sort of situation.
I’ve spent some time looking back and wondering what I could have missed in realising, or even suspecting, this aspect of myself before now - and, much as there were people who were aware of my true gender before I transitioned, I can see where some people had picked up my Indigenous aspects well before now.
So ... here and now, I am trying to learn the language of what I think was my grandmother’s people (there is an excellent podcast on Indigenous languages called Word Up, at https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/word-up/id1252891387), and looking forward to ticking the “I identify as Indigenous” box ** when it is next available and appropriate to do so (ticked once so far), and learning more.
* Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.
PS - there are two other aspects of this that I want to touch on.
The first is that I also have a spiritual lineage that I am proud of - partly the paths I have walked in this life, partly those I know who are not of this Earth (my BPM Guides, my spirit family, etc), and the personal experiences I have had in past lives, which include African (pre-colonial era), various Asian, ancient civilisations, Siberian (more than ten thousand years ago, that one), Jewish and other religions, etc.
I know at least some Indigenous cultures here accept the reality of reincarnation - apart from the Dreamtime stories, there was, for instance, a white woman in Queensland a century or so ago, a noted writer who covered peace processes where she lived, who was recognised as a former Indigenous person who had reincarnated (just as I was recognised from my last reincarnation prior to this one by a former comrade).
Those lineages share importance equally with my other families.
The other issue is focus.
There are terrible wrongs that have been and are still being done to Indigenous people in this land (such as the killing I mentioned above), and those must be addressed urgently.
Other wrongs also need to be addressed, such as those being done to people with disabilities, LGBTIQA+ people, those trying to exist on social security, those in lower socio-economic classes, those who are ill or young or aged, etc.
Many of those wrongs also exist in other parts of the world - including, in particular, the spiritual / moral crime of policies that allow, or fail to remedy, poverty. I was very pleased when the name of the electorate I live in was changed away from one of this city’s founders and an abuser of Aboriginal people to that of a respected elder who, in the 1930s, took a petition to the German Embassy in Canberra urging protection of Jewish people in Germany.
Knowing my Indigenous heritage has given me a stronger focus on Indigenous rights, but I’ve been an advocate for Indigenous rights for decades - to the extent I was invited at times by government departments to join organisations that were for an Indigenous membership (something I can now note the irony of); key to this note is that I won't ease up on my focus on helping others, especially globally, existential threats such as the climate crisis and nuclear threats, and problems caused by wars (not only Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine), and globally severe problems such as poverty (and Australia has NO excuse for any poverty).
Charity starts at home, but it doesn't stop there.
** PPS - after further reading and thinking, I’ve now come to accept that, in many circumstances, I can’t claim Indigenous heritage, other than as one factor in my heritage, until I've made contact with my grandmother’s people and been accepted by them.
Given my life circumstances - age, being a carer/distance/the ongoing pandemic, etc ... and the fact that my paternal birth family grandparents [including my Indigenous grandmother, who was in the fierce grip of Lutherism] were responsible for me being adopted out in the first) - that may never happen.
And yet, given that my grandparent's people include my full siblings in my birth family, that MAY actually happen ...
*** PPPS - ... and I now know I am descended from the Wiradjuri and Widjabul peoples, and will hopefully know our skin names soon ...
PPPPS - for an updated perspective on some of this, see here ... and also here.
PPPPPS - see also https://medium.com/@lauramquainoo/stunning-news-biracial-people-like-halle-berry-are-not-actually-black-344efa9ff329.
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