tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post7817230414240626708..comments2024-03-29T01:47:48.560-04:00Comments on Jungle Red Writers: The Cherokee Word for Role Model, a guest post by Linda RodriguezJungle Red Writershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16646429819267618412noreply@blogger.comBlogger50125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-4491514721793538332014-03-23T19:53:31.116-04:002014-03-23T19:53:31.116-04:00Judybusy, it sounds as if you've had a number ...Judybusy, it sounds as if you've had a number of great role models, especially Julieanne Murphy! I'm so glad you got to learn more about Wilma Mankiller.<br /><br />This has been a great experience--as guesting on Jungle Reds always is--and I'd like to thank all the Reds and the backbloggers and other visitors for such a stimulating conversation.Linda Rodriguezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11913741596693442469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-36958789197793367592014-03-23T18:41:27.124-04:002014-03-23T18:41:27.124-04:00What a great post--I knew only the name Wilma Mank...What a great post--I knew only the name Wilma Mankiller, but now I know a bit more and have added the autobiography and "Every Day is a Good Day" to my library list. I just finished Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In," and while it has many good observations,it's very limited in terms of race and class in what it has to say about women leaders.<br /><br />As a girl, my mom taught me a lot about resilience, I think, in terms of not dwelling on bad things. Of course, this is frequently taken too far in my family. Thankfully, I was a naturally proud, samrt girl who went to college and was introducd to feminism and radical politics. Emma Goldman was one of my early heroes, as was Barbara Smith, a Black author and feminist who taught a class at the U of Minnesota in '86. Later, as I was working to get back to school (parents lost the farm, and my tuition) I worked as a home chore person for a retired psychiatric nurse who was so supportive. She got me introduced to connections at the School of Social Work in Madison, and I earned my Master's in 1993. I thank Julieanne Murphy every day for my life as I'm living it!Judybusyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12932570621441908178noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-5762747810843159122014-03-22T14:38:06.859-04:002014-03-22T14:38:06.859-04:00Robyn, I'm so glad. I was surprised that so ma...Robyn, I'm so glad. I was surprised that so many hadn't heard of Wilma. She had received so much media attention when she was alive. But I'm really glad that I was able to help more people find out about her. She was a really remarkable woman and an inspiration for everyone, I think. I think you'll enjoy learning about her. :-)Linda Rodriguezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11913741596693442469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-41967443949594131942014-03-22T14:15:15.108-04:002014-03-22T14:15:15.108-04:00The comments are as full as the post. :) I love t...The comments are as full as the post. :) I love that. Thank you for sharing Wilma with those who have not heard of her. I plan to learn more about her this weekend.Robyn LaRuehttp://www.robynlarue.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-45690998664336602042014-03-22T00:20:18.804-04:002014-03-22T00:20:18.804-04:00Thanks, Joan!Thanks, Joan!Linda Rodriguezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11913741596693442469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-63626713116386280752014-03-21T23:21:03.554-04:002014-03-21T23:21:03.554-04:00So many wonderful examples of role models have alr...So many wonderful examples of role models have already been mentioned here today. Thanks for a truly thought-provoking post . . . .Joan Emersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06810313925049108163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-61358777815406503332014-03-21T21:08:19.326-04:002014-03-21T21:08:19.326-04:00As bad as Canada's record is with First Nation...As bad as Canada's record is with First Nations, the US's is worse. So take that into consideration, Reine. I think you'll like Deborah's book. It's beautifully written.Linda Rodriguezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11913741596693442469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-89797828502033687722014-03-21T20:59:53.756-04:002014-03-21T20:59:53.756-04:00Linda, thank you. I will order the book by Deborah...Linda, thank you. I will order the book by Deborah Miranda that you suggested, Bad Indians (Heyday Press). The tribes I am aware of for my family are First Nations from QC, NS, and NB, mostly Mi'kmaq. I'm guessing the principle would be the same, although my grandfather from Québec was good with that up there, he said the family went into denial in the States.Maureen Harringtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499876353651763590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-31198835771763598642014-03-21T20:04:35.705-04:002014-03-21T20:04:35.705-04:00DT, Helen Keller absolutely. Most today only know ...DT, Helen Keller absolutely. Most today only know her from The Miracle Worker about her childhood, not that she was a huge activist for women's rights, civil rights, worker's rights, and peace/anti-war.<br /><br />And Gloria Steinem, what a woman! She actually was a major funder of the film, THE CHEROKEE WORD FOR WATER. She's still active out there in the world, trying to make positive changes. Remarkable role model for all of us.<br /><br />And Wonder Woman, the first real feminist superhero. Still probably the only real one (though I understand they're trying to turn her into just Superman's girlfriend--gag!).Linda Rodriguezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11913741596693442469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-62952215294058194092014-03-21T19:54:45.989-04:002014-03-21T19:54:45.989-04:00Reine, I think I've mentioned before Deborah M...Reine, I think I've mentioned before Deborah Miranda's remarkable book, Bad Indians (Heyday Press). I reviewed it on my blog when it came out, and I push it on everyone I know. Though she concentrates on the history of the particular California tribe (Esselen-Chumash), the heartbreaking story she traces could have been that of many or most tribes in the US. For those who want to understand the legacy today of what has happened to Indians in the US and how recently they were still in danger, it's the best non-academic book (though Deborah is a professor) I can recommend. It's also useful for understanding how it was that many Indigenous people, even in fairly recent times, felt they had to pass as something, anything else. Perhaps it would help you understand your family members and their decisions more, dear Reine.Linda Rodriguezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11913741596693442469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-24277860766799133992014-03-21T19:48:19.833-04:002014-03-21T19:48:19.833-04:00Wow! So many role models. I am going to look for...Wow! So many role models. I am going to look for the autobiography about Wilma Mankiller. <br /><br />My mom and maternal grandmother are wonderful role models for me. Outside my family, I would include Gloria Steinem and Helen Keller. There are many wonderful role models out there. And though she's fictional, I loved Wonder Woman because she was brave. <br /><br />Look forward to reading your books,<br />dtAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-17170422351963642292014-03-21T19:32:07.069-04:002014-03-21T19:32:07.069-04:00Linda, you have helped with that. I still have a l...Linda, you have helped with that. I still have a little resentment to work on, I see. :-)Maureen Harringtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499876353651763590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-69323810123534107232014-03-21T18:56:04.256-04:002014-03-21T18:56:04.256-04:00Reine, it's a common situation. Life is very t...Reine, it's a common situation. Life is very tough for those who have mixed heritage in the US--and many who have mixed heritage don't know they do because someone in their line of descent decided to take the easy way (or in some cases, the way of survival) and passed for white. Not judging those ancestors because in some cases they were doing it to make life easier or even possible for their children and future descendants. For example, there was still a bounty for killing California Indians until the 1930s. People aren't aware of how recently it was absolutely dangerous to be honest about your Indian blood.<br /><br />If I've helped you in dealing with that, I'm truly glad.Linda Rodriguezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11913741596693442469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-33984782870910119362014-03-21T18:46:26.422-04:002014-03-21T18:46:26.422-04:00Linda, we may have discussed this privately… can&#...Linda, we may have discussed this privately… can't recall, but I want to say here that I've had that identity struggle most of my life. I didn't have it when I was a girl. Then I accepted easily that I had differences across my heritage, some that were not accepted by others even in my family, including some who rejected parts of their own heritage and identity, parceling themselves out to the highest acceptable bidder.<br /><br />Later on in college I found there was a great pressure to choose one over the other. I was convinced that I was splitting myself and weakening my sense of self, if not my place, in the world.<br /><br />When I was young there must have been some of that pressure in my family that I wasn't hearing or feeling. But when I was older it was unrelenting and dangerously logical. You helped me return to myself in a way that no one else in my life dared approach and could not, because how would they know. Since I have had this conversation with people, but you opened it up for me. I feel like myself again.Maureen Harringtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499876353651763590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-72899991040383527472014-03-21T18:08:24.977-04:002014-03-21T18:08:24.977-04:00Susan, I'm so glad your little one is learning...Susan, I'm so glad your little one is learning about Rosa Parks already. I'm sure the discussion of her story must have been very difficult for your child to understand. America's a particularly tough place for mixed-race, mixed-blood, mestizo children. This country has such a dreadful history that it's not really confronted, so it's got a lot of baggage and screwy thinking around concepts of "race" and "blood" and "worthiness." It's especially tough for a kid to learn that part of his/her family is acceptable and part is not when s/he loves them all. <br /><br />My own kids have such a mixed heritage--Latino, Cherokee, Choctaw, Scottish, English, Dutch and Irish (from the Latino!), Spanish, and several Mexican Indigenous peoples. Plus I've told them that since both sides of my family were in the deep South pre-Civil War, we probably have a good chance of having African American as well. I tried to give them a basis in all of their heritages because this country will try to force them to choose only one.Linda Rodriguezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11913741596693442469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-24963664048260905342014-03-21T17:55:06.423-04:002014-03-21T17:55:06.423-04:00Linda, so lovely to see you on Jungle Reds!
Here...Linda, so lovely to see you on Jungle Reds! <br /><br />Here's a story I hope will be encouraging — my 9-year-old is learning about the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. and already knows about Rosa Parks. Which lead to an interesting discussion of, "Mommy, where would I have sat on the bus?" The answer was, "Well, it depends on who you were with. If you were with mommy, who looks white, you could sit in the front. If you were with Grandmama or Daddy, who are Black, you'd have to sit in the back." Quite the food for thought.Susan Elia MacNealhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00349842866995778987noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-10874516889796287702014-03-21T17:07:02.733-04:002014-03-21T17:07:02.733-04:00Thank you, Linda. Especially thank you for telling...Thank you, Linda. Especially thank you for telling your own story. That has special power. xoMaureen Harringtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499876353651763590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-45365112613383686372014-03-21T16:54:36.777-04:002014-03-21T16:54:36.777-04:00Reine, your Auntie-Mom sounds like someone I would...Reine, your Auntie-Mom sounds like someone I would truly love. You're right. And I'm grateful to her--I'm sure we all are here at Jungle Reds--for saving you.<br /><br />I haven't talked about the women who did that kind of thing for me. My late Aunt Joan who took in six abandoned kids on a moment's notice without a cent of support to add to her own four in a house the size of my current living room without indoor plumbing or running water while in desperate poverty herself. She's also the one who made me promise to learn Tsalagi, the Cherokee language, shortly before she died. Woman of valor! It's her daughter, my cousin Marquitta, whom I named my protagonist after. <br /><br />And there were others. They are all the reasons that, with a violent, sexually abusive background like mine, I didn't wind up on the streets or dead of suicide or drug overdose at an early age. And I can't thank them. All I can do is try to pass it on to the next generation in need of protection and help.Linda Rodriguezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11913741596693442469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-4207231530811283852014-03-21T16:41:24.557-04:002014-03-21T16:41:24.557-04:00Linda, as a girl I had few women role models. Ther...Linda, as a girl I had few women role models. There was my great-grandmother who rescued me, then Auntie-Mom who started watching out for me when she was 10. I looked up to them, because they took care of me. I didn't realize how difficult that was for them until I looked back as an adult. Another aunt I loved tried to adopt me but was unable to. While she wanted to help she was scared off.<br /><br />Auntie-Mom just did what she saw she should do. Even at her young age she raised money from her sisters to buy me a pair of shoes. She wasn't afraid to tell the story that convinced them to share their allowance or earnings from work. If it were not for Auntie-Mom my family history would have destroyed me before it was able to sort itself out and repair what could be repaired.<br /><br />We watched each other grow up. I don't know what she sees when she looks at me. When I look at her I see strength and guts, and purpose, fun and dedication.<br /><br />Auntie-Mom is almost 80. She still goes camping and hiking. She drives to Mexico every year for her medical and dental care. She is married to her 4th husband who is 10 years younger than she is. She quit school at 15 to become a nurse. You could do that then. Now she is a retired RN who isn't really retired. It's time to call her before she and her current husband, Uncle-FrenchDude, take off on another camping and fishing trip. You would love them.Maureen Harringtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499876353651763590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-24638497623208392762014-03-21T16:39:55.721-04:002014-03-21T16:39:55.721-04:00Ellan, you're absolutely right. And one of the...Ellan, you're absolutely right. And one of the things I find disheartening is the number of younger women who really don't understand that not very long ago this is the way the world was. It was only in the 1980s that my own state of Missouri stopped allowing men to violently rape their wives and use marriage as a written-into-rhe-law, absolute defense and allowing men to take any money their wives earned or inherited in their own right away from them and deny them access to it. And Missouri wasn't the last of the states to repeal those laws.<br /><br />I think it's important for us to make sure that younger women (and men) are educated about what life used to be like for women if we want to ensure that things won't slide back to those bad old days after we're gone.Linda Rodriguezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11913741596693442469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-90480985873717070542014-03-21T15:46:38.891-04:002014-03-21T15:46:38.891-04:00Until the very late Sixties, the verbalized idea o...Until the very late Sixties, the verbalized idea of women role models didn't really exist. I had always admired my grandmother for managing to become well-read and literate in English (although her punctuation left something to be desired) after just one year in the "ungraded class" for immigrants. And I wanted to be a writer like Louisa May Alcott and the other women writers (like the Bronte sisters and Laura Ingalls Wilder) whose works I had read growing up. <br /><br />But actual role models? Until I went to college, I had never met a woman lawyer (my Government professor was one) or a woman physician. When I went away to school in New York, the only role models I could think of for how to act there were Zelda Fitzgerald (who married a Princeton man, and since I was attending a Seven Sisters college so that seemed one possible direction to go), Lucille Ball (whose persona was ditzy; who knew Lucy had brains when she wasn't in front of a camera?) or the Joan Crawford hard-as-nails types. <br /><br />Oh, yeah, there was Eleanor Roosevelt, but one couldn't really model oneself on HER unless one was born into that kind of family and then married into more of it. The First Ladies I knew before I went to college (Jackie appeared on the scene just as I finished high school) were Mamie and Bess, not exactly role models. Or Mary Todd Lincoln, who really wasn't one either. <br /><br />So I didn't really have role models until I was already on the verge of adulthood. I think today's young women are luckier; they have all of us, as well as the Sheryl Sandburgs and Nancy Pelosis and Hillaries of the world. You don't have to write as "George Elliot" or "George Sand" unless you want to. And discrimination is rarely verbalized as it was the day I started law school (1966) when I was told I was "taking a man's place" or three years later when I interviewed for a job in a law firm that wanted a woman lawyer because they "wouldn't have to pay her as much." (I walked out of that interview but a classmate was willing to work for them even on those terms!) Ellen Kozaknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-15333607677231191262014-03-21T15:31:52.704-04:002014-03-21T15:31:52.704-04:00Hi to you, too, Lisa! Wish I could be there at LCC...Hi to you, too, Lisa! Wish I could be there at LCC with all of you! Say hi" to everyone for me, please.Linda Rodriguezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11913741596693442469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-87938299367625830222014-03-21T15:30:51.357-04:002014-03-21T15:30:51.357-04:00Yes, I do think those women on-air reporters were ...Yes, I do think those women on-air reporters were and are important to women and girls as role models, FChurch. I'd love to see a list of all the women and girls who've been inspired by our own Red Hank. I know I'm one, and I saw her set an example for young would-be journalists of both genders at a local college that I know from their professor is still resonating in their lives.Linda Rodriguezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11913741596693442469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-44675184066444716772014-03-21T15:27:58.403-04:002014-03-21T15:27:58.403-04:00Linda, I'm at LCC but wanted to drop in to say...Linda, I'm at LCC but wanted to drop in to say "hi." And "yay"!Lisa Alberhttp://www.lisaalber.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1001156153899984046.post-13358292978421698402014-03-21T15:24:57.023-04:002014-03-21T15:24:57.023-04:00The women in my family were all strong--my grandmo...The women in my family were all strong--my grandmother was postmaster of a rural Kentucky post office--after her father's tenure--for decades, my mother made a choice to stay home and raise her eight kids--and I always knew it was a choice--my aunts all worked outside the home, so I never felt limited by a traditional notion of what a woman should be. I greatly admired Jessica Savitch. She reported as knowledgeably and adeptly as any male on a major TV news program in a time when most of the women on the news were doing fluff pieces on local stations.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com