Dear 21st Century Dad, how’s this for irony? We used to be political activists in the 70’s. We adopted a First Nations boy rather than have a child of our own. Our son must have picked up our genes by osmosis. He’s using all the same tactics we used against the powerful oppressors we considered were responsible for the evil things of the world.
Fifteen years ago, we adopted our son as a two year old. Lately, whenever we have a family crisis, that is, when we have to set down discipline and some consequences, he goes political on us, and raises our differences in culture, history and skin colour, and rails that our guidelines are unfair, and get this, oppressive.
He’s right about the skin colour. We are white as the driven snow. About everything else, he is wrong. We have always tried to introduce him to his native background, his culture and his history. We tried to get him to go to a 3 day Vision Quest but he thought that was a stupid idea. When we take him to Aboriginal Day holidays, he says he won’t go with white parents.
We love our boy. We have always encouraged his uniqueness. Now he holds it against us. What can we do?
Dear Racially Oppressed Boomer, we have to be able to discern the differences between racial/cultural differences and the frictions caused by the teenage process of growing up? Our son is experiencing a coming of age crisis, an awakening. If our conflict is truly racial/cultural, let’s turn the tables on our boy and offer him every hand we can to help him discover and explore his uniqueness.
We need to find mentors, leaders, people who can support him in his identity quest. We have to be careful about full immersion weekends in which he can explore his genetic/cultural connections. Teens can have a hard enough time meeting strangers. If he is shy, meeting a room full of strangers can be like being thrown into very deep and cold lake without a lifebelt.
Here’s a clear cut case for using the Internet to find similar concerned individuals. Support groups exist for both parents of different race children, and children who have parents of a different race. Whether we perceive our difference as a separation or our difference as a diversity, a support group exists for every condition imaginable. Let’s use the Internet to our advantage.
We need to minimize the differences between our son’s genetic community and our own, not only for our son but for ourselves. We can explore the rich offerings our son’s culture presents to us for our own education and pleasure. Hungry? Do salmon burgers, pemmican, moose steak, wild blueberries, wapiti chili, smoked trout, Caribou blood soup, nettle tea, buffalo jerky, birch syrup, wild rice, hominy, batter fried dandelion blossoms, pickled morels, nut butter or bannock, grace our table tops weekly? Feeling an affinity to the earth? Do we know the significance of the pipe ceremony, the sweat lodge, or the pow wow? Generous? How about a potlatch? Have we ever invited all our friends over and given away everything we have? Sick? Have we sat in on a healing circle? Committed a crime or been a victim of crime? Have we held a talking stick and spoken from our heart? Let’s start exploring native culture locally and then explore native culture specific to our son’s birthplace. Though the intention may be the same, practices can be as different as the geography out of which the practices grew.
We need to change our son’s quest for individuation in a positive direction. Black Elk, could be an inspiration. Many others exist. As a twelve year old, Black Elk took part in the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876 and later was wounded in the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. He became a famous medicine man and visionary of the Oglala Sioux. Google him at Wikipedia. He wrote the following poem.
The Sunset
Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being.
And I say the sacred hoop of my people was one of the many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy...
But anywhere is the center of the world.
Google: http://www.adoptivefamilies.com/articles.php?aid=155
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