Jaqueline and Joseline Annable

It’s been over six years since my mother passed. I think about her every day; perhaps most unsettling or comforting, depending on my mood, is just waking up in the morning and looking in the mirror. I’ve been told throughout my life how much I look like my mom, and while I’ve always thought I looked more like my father’s grandmother, as I get older I’m seeing the resemblance with my mother more and more … the inescapable reminder of she and I and all of the things I loved and hated about her and our relationship. Recently, she’s been present in my mind as I’ve been developing a new project with poet and artist Kim Shuck, exploring the history of Manifest Destiny, its impact on California’s multi-cultural and multi-ethnic communities, its legacies of inherited and perpetuated violence, trauma, and addiction, and the outgrowth of inherited and perpetuated resistance, resilience, and movements for change.

As part of this work, I’ve been digging into my family’s history. Long before his death in 2008, my father had been interested in genealogy and collecting our family’s history, which wasn’t too difficult since the Wilsons on his father’s side had been part of the early Mormon Church. My great, great, great, great grandfather Bradley Barlow Wilson Sr., his seven sons and their families were baptized by George Albert Smith (Joseph Smith’s first cousin) in 1836. Mormons believe families are eternally sealed to one another, meaning previous generations / ancestors and future descendants must make sacred covenants with God in the holy temple through priesthood authority (LDS Doctrine and Covenants). Therefore, the Church of Latter-Day Saints has one of the largest genealogical databases in the world, and given our family’s history as Mormon pioneers, my father was able to find a significant amount of information. This vast collection has also allowed me to add to what my father had compiled – as well as update some information he had, which is now more accurate.

My Aunt Beverly and my Mother, Betty at my parent’s wedding

My mother’s family history is more complicated. She and her twin sister were adopted by my Canadian grandparents at 8-months of age. My mother always felt rejected by my father’s family because they couldn’t trace her bloodline, which I never understood because our branch of the Wilson family was not raised Mormon; my grandfather had left the church at the age of 17. My mother was adamant about recognizing her adoptive parents as her only parents and wasn’t interested in finding her birth parents. As a child this was somewhat confusing, I adored my grandparents and never questioned their relationship to me or to my mother and my aunt. I grew up hearing accounts of their privileged storybook lives - horseback riding, piano lessons, ice skating, travels, beautiful clothes, jewelry etc. I also heard the fights between my mother and her sister - how my Aunt Bev believed my grandparents loved my mother more and questions of whether they were even related. They were not identical twins, and it was a stretch to see any resemblance. My mother had light brown hair, light green eyes, and light skin; my Aunt Bev had jet black hair, dark brown eyes, and brown skin, which would get very dark with any exposure to the sun. In high school and college, the two of them worked at the Prince of Wales Hotel in Waterton National Park and my Aunt was not allowed to sunbathe because of how dark she would get – it was a story they both would recount often. Again, confusing, since I was the only one in our family with red hair and one of my brothers had black hair, brown eyes, and olive skin.

My Aunt Beverly, cousin Trevor, my Mother and me in Billings Montana when I was three

However, something did change when I was 12 or 13. While visiting my grandmother in Lethbridge Alberta, following the death of my grandfather, my grandmother took me into her bedroom to look through her jewelry - over forty years’ worth of treasured gems my grandfather had devotedly and lovingly given her for every birthday, Christmas, and anniversary of their lives together. As we looked through boxes of her collection, she picked out several pieces to give me – an opal set (my birthstone), a gold bracelet with a heart locket and matching pendant, and a pearl necklace. Then we came across a beaded blue and green pendant which seemed out of place. She picked it up, turned to me and said she was going to share something and asked if I could promise to keep it to myself, that she was trusting me; I agreed, feeling special to be her confidant. She told me the piece had belonged to my mother’s birth father who was Indian (American) and that she wanted me to have it and to please take care of it. She didn’t offer any additional information and I could tell it wasn’t my place to ask. I wondered if there was another one, she was giving to my cousin Trevor, but I never had the opportunity to find out. Subsequently, other things took on a different meaning – the American Indian Halloween costumes handmade by my grandmother for my mother and aunt to wear as children, their beautiful collection of glass and bone beads and beading materials, and the dark-skinned Inuit baby doll I’d been given as a young child by my grandparents.

The first beaded rings and bracelet I made for my mother as a child - I found them when I was going through her belongings following her death as part of the legal process between my brothers and myself that I had to go through to place claims on items I wanted

I stashed the pendant and secret away; however, years later both promises made to my grandmother would be broken after her death. During college in Eugene, Oregon I began wearing the beaded pendant on a hoop earring. One night while out drinking heavily and dancing at a party in the country, it fell off, not to be found. A decade later while visiting home in Montana, after sharing a bottle of wine, I told my mother the secret her mother had shared with me and trusted to keep to myself. We didn’t speak of it again until several years before her death when she asked if what I had told her many years before was true; I said “yes.” As I write this, for the first time openly acknowledging both breaches, I feel sick to my stomach – for my recklessness in losing something so precious, for the betrayal to my grandmother, and for the alcoholism that fueled both. Yet, I also feel a sense of relief – as I did when I finally began to share the brutal assault I suffered at the hands of my mother’s married, alcoholic boyfriend, leading me to move out on my own at the age of 16.

Me and my best friend Carolyn in Billings, Montana, age 10

For years, I thought perhaps the reason my grandmother had shared the identity of my mother’s biological father with me was because my best friend throughout elementary school and junior high at that time was Sioux. I had introduced the craft of quilling to her, and she had introduced beading to me; I felt so proud to be able to contribute my mother’s and aunt’s childhood collection of beads to our practice. One year I also suggested we dress up for Halloween in the Indian costumes my grandmother had made; at the time I didn’t understand why my mother had to meet with Carolyn’s parents to ask them if it would be okay for us to do this – she said it was out of respect and that if they said “no” it meant “no.” I remember sensing her feeling awkward and embarrassed. In the end Carolyn’s parents allowed it; now looking back, I feel the embarrassment and shame of such a request.

Today I believe my grandmother shared my mother’s and my aunt’s origins because she was in a vulnerable place, having just lost her husband of over 40 years and feeling her own mortality, she wanted someone to know, and I was the oldest grandchild. It’s quite possible too, she told me, knowing I might someday share it with my mother, if it ever became necessary – possibly to put to rest any questions of whether my mother and aunt were truly related, and why my aunt was so much darker than my mother.

I received my mother’s adoption records last week, which included my aunt Beverly, confirming they were indeed twin sisters – Jaqueline and Joseline Annable, born in Calgary, Alberta to Helen Marie Annable, who was a beautician. Sadly, there is no mention of their father; but there are notes that my grandparents had been asking around Calgary about the biological parents/families, which must have been how they learned of the father’s Native origins and came to be in possession of the pendant(s), assuming there were two. While I feel a sense of closure, I also feel a bittersweet aftertaste, as I did when I found the legal records thirty years later between my parents documenting the assault by my mother’s boyfriend, which somehow having the actual papers affirmed my experience.

My grandparents Harold and Louise Templeton, Alberta, Canada, 1930’s

On a personal level, I see the tragic trajectories of my mother’s and my aunt’s lives and how it perpetuated in our family - raised in a supposed storybook home of privilege and comfort yet subjected to an alcoholic father who was abusive to his wife, their mother, and likely to them as well; questioning their origins and relationship to one another with my aunt feeling less loved; and both ending up in relationships with abusive, controlling men. My aunt died at the age of 47 of kidney failure due to years of prescription drug use, administered by her husband, who she had been separated from for almost 20 years and who took custody of her son, yet they never divorced, and who then claimed her inheritance. My mother fell victim to the vicious abuse of the man she left my father for, yet never married, Robert E. Lee, who fit the bigotry and violence of his namesake. She was also subject to the abuses of my brothers, who took on Bob's cruel mocking and violence towards my mother; it is them who I believe are responsible for her death, also claiming her inheritance.

I wonder why Helen Annable gave up her twin daughters - was it because their father was Native? Was it because they were unmarried? Was it because she couldn’t afford to take care of two children? Based on the knowledge my grandmother had of their father and the pendant she was in possession of, it seemed Helen and their father were still together, or at least on good terms. I wonder what tribe their father belonged. What might my mother and aunt’s lives been like had they not been adopted?

From a greater societal perspective, I think about the legacy of settler colonization and its impact on generations of families like mine who have been shattered by its violence and trauma and left with questions of legitimacy, belonging, and worth. I think about the imperialist mindset that speaks to the sense of entitlement of a wealthier white family as the better choice for a child to be raised within, and yet I know through inherited and firsthand experience just how false that assumption can be.

I’ve been listening to the podcast This Land (https://crooked.com/podcast-series/this-land/), hosted by Rebecca Nagle, activist, writer, and citizen of the Cherokee Nation. The current season, season two is focused on a legal case challenging the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), the law adopted in 1978 which recognizes the history of the U.S. federal government forcefully breaking up Native families, and mandates that whenever possible Native families and communities remain together. The story is centered on Jennifer and Chad Brackeen, a white evangelical couple who were placed as foster parents in the care of a 10-month-old Cherokee and Navajo boy removed from his Navajo mother because of her drug use. After a year the couple intended to adopt the boy, however, were stalled when the Navajo tribe found a Native family, unrelated to the child to take him in, under ICWA. Sadly, the plan fell through and the Brackeens were allowed to adopt the boy in 2017. The Brackeens then decided to adopt the boy’s sister through the state court, however, the girl’s extended family stepped in to take her in. In response the Brackeens filed a federal lawsuit on the grounds of racial discrimination. The case was heard in state District Court by Judge Alex Kim and the Brackeens argued they had more money than the child's Navajo family/community and would therefore be better for the child. The Texas federal district judge ruled in favor of the Brackeens on the grounds that ICWA is racial discrimination. The case was then sent to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. On April 6, 2021, the 16-judge panel split evenly and the case will now go the Supreme Court, a challenge that ultimately will have significant implications on the future of Native Sovereignty, which is what it appears the intention was from the start - to use this case to challenge ICWA and further challenge Tribal sovereignty.

This case is heartbreaking on many levels - micro and macro, and while the circumstances are different, it feels close to home in the way it reflects the devastating culture of white supremacy and capitalism embedded in the history of the Americas - a culture that has created these cycles of addiction, violence, and trauma. Yet, what I keep coming back to is the power we have through solidarity to fight back and to create change for a better world – to be the phoenix that rises from this land and from these ashes and heals through collective action.

Rebirth, etching I created as a student at the University of Oregon, 1991 — *Rebirth*, etching I created as a student at the University of Oregon, 1991