Should we have a conversation about this? Probably.

When I posted pages from this article on the book of faces on Thanksgiving morning, I did so because I was reading this website http://www.potawatomi.org and reflecting on the origins of the Thanksgiving holiday and was moved. As I reflected on that, that morning John ( my partner) told me that I should check my privilege. I gave him the whole story (speech) of how my third great grandmother on my father’s side was indigenous and married my third grandfather etc etc. Later on, that Thanksgiving night, my mom and brother came over. After dinner we started messing around on my Ancestry account, doing research on my mother’s father’s side of the family, my grandfather Dr. B.C. Page. We know the least about these ancestors from the Page line. Well let’s just say, the further we read, I did in fact have to “check my privilege.”

You see at that moment, it became very clear that I am very European. In fact all mixed up Euro. So much so that my 7th grandfather on my maternal side they called “England John” and he had 1000’s of acres of farm land, and cotton plantations in South Carolina. He and his sons fought in the Revolutionary War. I am a descendant of the Daughter’s of the American Revolution on my maternal father’s side and my paternal father’s side. Now my maternal mother’s side were very Irish and European. Then on my paternal mother’s side I have a 3rd grandfather who was from Graves’s County, Ky and was a Union soldier in the civil war. It was either him or his son who married the indigenous woman. She married one of my great grandfathers and changed her name to a white simple name. It is possible to trace it back and find her with a different name, with her family at about 15 years old as a member of a tribe. Then she is traced to a marriage where her name becomes, Jane I believe. Can you imagine not only changing your last name during marriage, but your first as well to blend in or be accepted by the European light skinned people who came and took charge of the land?! I do often wonder what the circumstances were of their meeting and life together. I will need a lot more research to figure that out, if ever. I can only imagine.

That is because I have enough English and European blood to almost cancel out the native. I never experienced living on a reservation, land given to a people for reparations, with generations of family members trauma right in my face. A few different decisions by my ancestors on my paternal grandmothers side and that would all be different.

So this Thanksgiving dinner, as we ate our non-traditional Asian inspired meal and then cupcakes and ice cream, tumbling down a generational rabbit hole of centuries ago immigrants and land grabs. I realized it was a lot of my blood that made the reparations.

I indeed that night on November 23, 2023 had to check my white privilege.

This place America 🇺🇸 is wild.

We are all mixed up immigrants.