My Grandma Wing, who said she was related to Sitting Bull, Bear Runs Growling and Rain in the Face — all renowned Hunkpapa Lakota leaders — was born in 1902, just 12 years after Wounded Knee. That she was born at all during such a tumultuous era and then lived for 98 years astounds me. During her long life, she had five children, nine grandchildren, 22 great-grandchildren, and 16 great-great-grandchildren.
I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been present in the years throughout her life, even though she lived in eastern Montana on the Fort Peck Reservation, and my family lived outside Seattle. Every few years, she got on the train with her suitcase packed with gifts and traditional food stuffs like timpsila (dried prairie turnips) and dried corn and tatanka and arrived in Seattle to stay with us for a few weeks. And then of course, every few years, my mother would pack up the car during her vacations from work and take us out to Fort Peck to visit her and many of our relatives.
Grandma Wing was mother to Franklin, my sister’s dad, who died when she was just a baby. Yet even though I had a different dad, I was still considered her grandchild, and my mother was considered her daughter. Over the years, we came to know our other uncles and aunts, Grandma Wing’s other children, and they were always good to us. I loved my Uncle Dale, who I once visited during a trip to Washington D.C., and who drove me around the city and took snapshots of me posing in front of the Washington National Cathedral. Sometime after my parents divorced, he once traveled to Seattle on business, and he and my mother and sister and me all went out to dinner together. He wore a business suit and tie and I remember imagining that he was my dad. Though I love my white family, and my white dad, it was a novel experience to go out in public like a matching set of luggage — an all-Native family; to imagine how other people would assume my uncle was my father.
When my first book was published, he wrote me several pages of his responses and feedback. I had written about his family, after all. His responses were positive, and it was very kind of him to give a close reading of my book. He was a deacon at his church and respected in his community. In contrast to Uncle Dale’s and Grandma Wing’s Christian faith, Aunt Jewel, one of our aunties, was a pipe carrier. When she visited Seattle with her Meskwaki husband, she gave us all down comforters. I’ve kept mine all these years later.
I don’t know exactly where I am going with these recollections of the Wing side of my family, only to reflect upon how close this branch was to similar circumstances unfolding in Ukraine. And this is just one side of our family. There are many other Native relatives from my mother’s side: from the Iron Thunders and Brought Plentys of Fort Yates, N.D., to others with names like Wise Spirit, Afraid of Eagle, Two Teeth and Has Horns.
I am a descendant of people who survived invasion and war. Our meager allotments passed down were once massive tracts of land and territories and resources. And the U.S. Government wanted to displace us. And worse. Our lives were expendable and meant very little if nothing.
I know that people are displaced from wars and destruction all the time. And that different countries are full of immigrants and have taken in refugees. It is a deeply troubling reality. But merely acknowledging this doesn’t excuse it or bring any comfort.
My Grandma Wing’s father, Rev. Basil Reddoor, was a reverend with the Chelsea Presbyterian Church on Fort Peck. He would have been born around 1875, thereabouts. I have in my possession hymnal books that are written in Dakota. As much as I have mixed feelings about Christianity and church, I recognize that this was something that may have spared my relatives’ lives and safeguarded their families.
In the obituary it states that Grandma Wing attended Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas, where she received her high school diploma and a certificate in Domestic Science. I visited Haskell many times while I was doing a residency at the University of Kansas in 2019. I hadn’t known until a day ago that Grandma Wing attended there, somewhere around 1916 or so. That also astounds me.
If Grandma Wing was still with us, she would be praying for Ukraine. I know she would.
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Midge is a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation and was raised by wolves in the Pacific Northwest. Her book of essays Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s was a finalist for a Washington State Book Award. She enjoys composting and walks through dewy meadows. Midge lives in Moscow.
