Title: Why

At the beginning of the 20th century, many Native American children were removed from their parents and put into schools where they were dressed in the clothing of the white man, had their hair cut off, and were expected to speak only English. They were taught white ways, in the hope that they would then leave their ‘Indian’ ways behind and adopt the more ‘civilized’ ways of the white man.

At Fort Totten, North Dakota, Alvina Lavedure,a young French/Indian maiden, and Solomon Morin, also French/Indian, were taught and then worked at the boarding school. He was a painter, and she worked in the bakery. They married and had two sons, Eugene and Roger. When Eugene was about 2 and Roger was just an infant, Alvina died in a fire in the bakery. In the aftermath of this tragedy, a missionary teaching couple who lived at the fort, Arthur and Bessie Moon, took over the care of Eugene. The children’s maternal grandmother took care of baby Roger. The Moons moved east with little Eugene, and raised him in Maryland. He didn’t see any of his family, or hear of them again, until he was in his eighties. When Eugene’s daughter took him to Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota, he found out that his father had remarried, and had 7 other children after Eugene and Roger. All of them had died except for one brother named Richard, whom he met.

Eugene Francis Morin Moon was my uncle. He was half French, and half Native American, of the Turtle Mountain band of the Chippewa people. He was one of the most gentle men I have ever known, kind and loving and filled with humor that made his nearly black eyes sparkle. He had a belly laugh that was so contagious it caused everyone else around him to laugh with him. I will never forget him, or stop loving him. I know his white parents loved him and brought him up well. But I will never understand or cease to regret that white Americans felt a need to stamp their own culture on the people who were here before them, instead of living alongside of them.

This painting is taken from a photograph of a young Qahatika girl, made by Edward S. Curtis. He is famous for his photographs of Native American people. He wanted to document them and their culture and their clothing and lives before they disappeared. I hope I have captured all that I saw in her eyes. As you can see, she wears a missionary-provided dress, and has had her hair chopped off. She is draped in a rough blanket, and yet her spirit shines through it all. Even “stamped” with the American flag, who she is comes undeniably forth from within her.

I hope we can learn to see what is inside others without it causing us fear and distrust. I hope we can stop stamping others with our flag, and begin to love others with all of their differences. It is, when all is said and done, love that will bring us together, not a flag.

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