How I Got My Names

During the course of a lifetime, a Native may receive many names. This is because what one does, or what one is, or what one is intended to do, or what one is intended to be, can change over one's lifetime. These different missions in life, these different identities, can come to one from the Spirits, through dreams or visions, or they can be things that one sees or experiences, or things that one accomplishes, even mistakes that one makes. Sacred Men and Sacred Women can give one a name if asked, or if they feel it is appropriate. Only two of my many names, so far, have come in these Native ways. But as we say that "everything is related" and none of my names are unrelated to my Native identity. I must start before my own beginning - because everything is related, past and present and future, as well as all things and beings in one time.

I must start with my birth mother's names. My birth mother was born in Canada. Her own mother's name is a mystery, but her mother was a European American or a European Canadian. Her mother broke Canadian law, and refused to reveal the name of her father - my grandfather, because that man was a Native of Turtle Island, a "First Nations" Canadian man. So, my mother had no name. But she was given a name, by her possibly truthfully, possibly falsely named mother - my maternal grandmother, Catherine Marie *****. That name, without a surname, was Mary Kathryn. My mother was illegally adopted from Canada to Michigan, to a Scottish couple. She was given a name by them - but no legal papers: JoAnn *******. I will go to Canada to seek the identities of her parents and my maternal grandparents. My birth mother cannot travel to the land of her birth, because she has no papers, and this is the age of the so-called "war on terrorism". One can no longer travel to Canada without papers. Even if one is a 76 year old Canadian citizen, legally speaking.

My birth mother married a Greek man in Michigan. She had several children with him, several miscarriages, and several children who died very young. He did not earn much as a teacher, and what he did earn, he spent on himself, not on his wife or children. Official causes of death of the young ones are malnutrition. Unhappy with this cruel and patriarchal man, my mother had a relationship with another abusive man, my father, a mixed blood Native and Scottish man. I have seen his photos. He looks very unhappy, and very Native, and very mean. He "passed" as Scottish, or mostly Scottish among whites, but a Native can tell at a glance that he is likely almost a full Blood. Perhaps because of his blood, perhaps because of his height - five feet eight, short for a Euroamerican man - he was a drinker, a philanderer, depressive, and abusive. So, my birth mother, herself a half Breed (though she did not know this, was not told this), became pregnant by this mixed Breed Native/Scottish man, pregnant with a love child, an illegitimate child, me. She went to Detroit for her pregnancy and childbirth. No one except me and her know of my existence in her life. The hospital where I was born knew she was giving me up for adoption, but cruelly enough, they left me with her for eleven days - long enough for a bond, long enough for her to name me. She named me Sally Ann, and gave me her last name, the last name of her Greek husband, whom she divorced at this time. This was my first name: Sally Ann ******. A Greek from Detroit, I thought, when I first looked into my past. Name One.

The adoption agency in Michigan had a couple who asked for a child. I say asked for - not wanted. It was after the baby boom, and they had married late and had been without child for five years. Out of place among their Protestant friends, all of whom had precisely two children - a boy and a girl. So, not really wanting a child - the woman wanted to continue her professional career, the man...this will become clearer - but painfully aware of the pregnant stomachs and baby strollers that surrounded them on the street and in their Lutheran Church - this couple asked to adopt a child. No psychological testing was done at that time, perhaps not now. I laugh and say, it was an income test, and they passed with flying colors. They both had educations beyond college, and they were upper middle class. So the adoption agency rushed to find, and describe, an infant for them. A girl. A blonde haired, blue-eyed, white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant girl. That is how I was marketed. My parents were both listed as "English" and "Protestant" and "intelligent" "educated" and "good looking". And the deal was done. I became Jennifer (a nod to my "pure" "English"ancestry) Marie (a nod to my adoptive maternal Norwegian grandparents, my grandmother's name, Marie meaning "Mary" as in the Christian Virgin Mary in Norwegian) Lehmann (after my adoptive German paternal grandparents). Name Two.