WilmaDavisBoggs.txt

-n -n -n [ Background Conversations ] We're in Harlan County, Kentucky today. It's Saturday, May the 14th, 1994. Approximately 10.30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Interviewing, Norma Davis Boggs, Royal Kentucky. This type is being made for the Kentucky Historical Society. >> I belong to the Harlan County Historical -- >> Okay, the first thing I need to do is just ask you a few questions for the Kentucky Historical Society. When did your parents move in here? Your grandparents? Where did they come from? And their names and all those kinds of things. Who was your -- how far back do you know on your family, how long they've been living here? >> My father came here about 1919. I think after World War II. >> From? >> From Haversham and Richmond, Joe Cortenzi area. My mother was here about the same time. She had lost her father. She was 14 years of age and she had lost her father. So she came here to live with her grandmother, who was Anderson over in Sunshine area that time. >> And your mother's name and your father's name? >> My mother's name was Nora Champlin. And my father was Samuel J. Davis. And my mother's family, the Champlin family, I've really traced their names all the way back to 1066 AD where you were a hardware when he came here. And that is French name. Samuel L. Champlin was the one who founded Quebec City in Quebec, Canada. And there's a monument there for him. He made the first home there in 1608. And I had a privilege of going to school in Quebec, Canada to study French. I teach French. Yes, at James A. K. Dickens. And so I had the privilege of being there where I felt my ancestors first came to North America. And then Jeffrey Champlin, which the family goes back about eight generations with the name Jeffrey Champlin, was with Roger Williams in his party play. And my father was an orphan. His mother died when he was about 12 years old. And a month later, he was walking along and saw his father get hit by a train. So he was an orphan. And he is the one that has the Indian blood in him. But I never got to trace a lot of his ancestry because none of the family really knew a lot about it. But there was an older brother that our family was associated with. I can't tell you a whole lot about my father's family. That's something that has always intrigued me. And I wanted to explore this Indian heritage. Everybody can't discourage me in saying your Indian heritage has to come through your mother. I said, "Well, that's all right. I'm French." So yours comes through your father. Yes, through my father. And you see in Cherokee, well, I suppose in many Indian tribes, in Cherokee, if a man marries, he takes the woman's name, I would say. And he becomes... Part of her family. Yes, yes. I didn't realize. He drops his last name, it takes her last name. I met a man that I bought this necklace from in Cherokee at the Kuala Reservation. And I met his wife on so many pictures that I haven't developed yet. But he's the one that explained that to me fully. And he told me what his original name was. His wife, he became Wolf. His best name was Joe Wolf. And the Wolf Clan, of course, is this group here, Black Wolf Clan. Right. What was it like growing up in the Kovars? Were you born here? Yes, I was. I was born in the town of Olive Hill. In O.S. And my father came here with the L.N. Railroad at that time. He helped build the first... Got laid off from the railroad. And that's how I moved in that year. So I worked on the railroad, and she was working with the grandmother. And she was working at the old Eagle Laundry, as it was called that time. And this railroad man brought their shirts and clothes that they laundered, and the girls signed them over. And some of them were brave enough to put notes on the cardboard. They put the shirts over. And somehow my mother met one of her cousins. Also, he was working at... They met their husbands at that time in that way. And of course, being young on the... On the Division C, Dad was cut off a lot. So at one period, when he was cut off, about the time I was born, I won't say how long it was, because that... Well, I don't care. I was in 1922, and he was laid off. And I was about three days old. He helped build the first bridge across from Loyal, from what's called Old Wall over Antony, the New York edition. And while he was working on that bridge, he fell off and fell into the river. And the older men... I guess the water is pretty cold in January, because that's the one January the 7th, so that must have been around the 10th or something like that. And the older men just teased him all his life about falling in the river, so he could go home and get dry clothes and see that baby. And we just lived at that time about five houses from the bridge. So I watched the town grow up, you know, as a child. And I'm still there. My family's the... They have all gone away. And I don't want it still. How many brothers and sisters did you have? I had one brother. I had one brother. His name's Samuel J. Davis Jr. He went by it that time. My father told me that his name, Samuel J. Davis, went back five generations. And so my brother has that name, and he named his son that name. And it was his son that's only just one son to carry on his name. But when I was studying Native American culture in Berea, a couple summers ago, an institute that was funded by the Mellon Institute. And in the private collections in Berea College, I found this old census that went back to 1800, something I forgot exactly, but it's in my notes. And I found my father's family there, so that gave me a good start. Did it identify them as Native Americans? Yes, see, it was the Kuala Indian Reservation. It was right there on the reservation where this census was taken. Yes, it was the census of the Indian Reservation. Oh, I see. I see. My father had, he really looked Indian, you know? He had jet black hair and dark piercing eyes and heavy eyebrows. And his hair, he was 58 when he was 59 when he died. And he didn't have any gray hairs, except just that jet black. And so, very handsome. Once I was on, we went to the Kuala Reservation to take Cherokee into the play. And there were a number of times while that was leaving. We were just drawn to that, even though we didn't know what his roots were, see. And we were going through the Indian village that's for tourists to see how life was a long time ago. And there was a man there burning a canoe, you see. They took big trees, tree trunks, and they burned that out to make the canoe. And I've got a picture at home of that, this man who was making the canoe, and my daddy could have passed for twin brothers at that time. Are you, were you married in... In Harlem? When you graduated from high school? No, no. I went away to Berea College. And then I came home during the war to teach school. Right. When there was a merchants and teachers one of them. And during the time I was employed as a teacher, we did have a summer pet. So I went to Louisville to work during the summer between schools. And in the meantime, my husband sort of grew up next door to me. But see, he was overseas in the war for 42 months without furlough. And so my family in the meantime had moved to Louisville. And when he was discharged, he came back through Louisville. We got together there. And I was living in Louisville when we married. But he was probably the boy next door. Because the first time I saw him, he was the one who moved in next door to us. Did you have any children at all? We married in Louisville. And after the war, he had a hard time finding a job because he couldn't get into the unions. He gets the jobs, but then they wouldn't employ him because he didn't belong to the unions. It was a terribly unfair thing. And so we came back to Louisville for his family lived, see, after we married. And he worked down in Louisville for a while, and then he worked with Chirngold Marge and Brown Brothers. And so he was the salesman in Louisville's life because he got food from that. But we had two sons. One of them is James Samuel Boggs, named after my father, Samuel Davis. And he's the vice president of WYMT Television in Hazard. And my other son is Stephen Parker Boggs, named after his dad, Parker. He goes by Parker Boggs, and he's an attorney in Harlem. And I have four grandchildren. I have two babies, I say. Parker has a little girl, two little hives, Mary Margaret, and a son, four years over last week. He was named James Parker Boggs, a second after his grandfather. And my older son, Jim, has a 25-year-old son, Charles Parker Boggs, and 21, who I say 21 or 22, I forget her age, daughter, Jamie Cornelia Boggs, and she's in school at Eastern Kentucky University right now. Charles says, "Graduate from Averett College in Danville, Virginia, and he's an artist, and he's making his living at the present time in his artwork." And they're both getting married this summer. So I've got to visit summer ahead. Did you, I guess some of the questions I wanted to ask about now, you said you're the clan. Yes. Now that's, would that just be spelled with a capital C or a letter? No, C-L-A-N. Okay, mother, all one word right together. You say clan mother, two words. Two words. Two words, clan, mother, and capital C, capital N. Okay, for both of them. Okay, I wanted to get that right. Now what are the exact duties of a clan mother? This group here was pulled together to work in education to help interracial and intercultural education in this area. And it's been very interesting to me because of the Kentucky Educational Reform Act, CARE, we call it, that in every discipline that we have, in every grade and every subject level, we're supposed to integrate all the world cultures and all the world influences. We can't possibly get into that, even, you know, no matter what. And certainly those that are directly from the region. Yes, yes. And so what we have proposed to do, I think what I'm speaking for the others, but this is as I see what our goal is, is to, because I know my father never wanted to talk about his Indian heritage. Why do you suppose he did? I know why, you see. The ones who went to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears were considered brave ones and the ones who stayed behind because they couldn't leave and hid out in the mountains were considered cowardly. And for that reason, and also there was a time when they could have been, you know, really persecuted because of that Indian heritage. I'm part Indian myself. Well, do you understand that? Oh, yeah. But I had to get it from you. Yes, but there's a girl here in this area. I don't know her name because she's only been to one of her meetings and she lives at Cambridge and she said all her life that they were taught to disguise, to hide that Indian relationship. And she's a hundred percent charitable. And you take somebody that's a hundred percent. It's hard to hide who you are. Yes, because you've got looks. Well, see, certainly it wasn't. Now, I'm in the same situation that you were in with her. My father and all of his brothers and my grandfather, my great-aunt and my great-uncle are all very pronounced Cherokee. They live by the same name. My mother was Dutch. So while I may have some features, I'm not obviously recognized as a Native American. But I can remember my grandmother, the first thing that she ever told me when I was five years old, grabbing my children and saying, "Remember, no matter what anybody says, you're not an Indian." Oh, yeah. And so that made a real impact on me. Like, well, what difference does it make? So obviously, you know, I'm very aware of what you're talking about and how, but now getting back to that, you were, to you, getting off me and back to you. You all were very aware that it was something that you shouldn't talk about. You shouldn't bring out. At what point did it become, like, say, for instance, when did this group form itself? This group? I'd say it's been in existence a little over two years, or at least my knowledge of it. So 1992 would be a problem. But you need to ask Chief Hosskes. Right. That's when the Black group formed. I saw the advertisement in the paper and I said, "Hey, I want to be a part of that." So I came the first meeting. I came to this in January. What made you want to be a part of it? What made you say it? The interest, the educational need to find out all I could that I'd never been able to learn from my father and from his family. About that part of your heritage. Right. Curiosity and wanted to look for my roots. See, I had explored a lot of the French connection from my mother and from the chairman and family. But because my father didn't have any family, we didn't know anything about him. Except there's a statue in the city to Samuel Davis, which is an eye-enrolled group that's called the Davis Family. They circulate a newsletter so often. I got one of those yesterday. I just got a natural curiosity. Did you, when you came to the group, why did they decide to make you plan? Oh, that's an honor. That's bestowed, you're not elected to it. It's bestowed upon the oldest woman in the group. That's why. And the oldest woman is the oldest woman. And the Cherokee culture and tradition. Then age is good. Very much. And the elders are much like the Chinese. Oh, yes. Yes. And the Asian cultures, elders would be highly revered. And another thing that made me want to be involved in is the great reference that the Cherokees themselves hold for women. Well, certainly, as you mentioned about taking the woman's name. Now, that makes it almost, now, although it wouldn't make it a matriarchal society in the sense that the chief is the chief always a man, or could it also be a woman? No, the president of the Cherokee Nation is a woman of Wilma Chirokile. I've heard that. She's the chief. So then being a man isn't necessarily a requirement for being a chief of any particular group. I forgot the name of the chief. I've got a newspaper on there that mine had it. But I forgot the name of the chief of the quality reservation. Do they circulate a periodic? Yes, I have. I have some papers I picked up in April, I believe, this year. I have subscribed to several things on Native American culture and I took membership in the Native American Museum that's being built through the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. And I want to be a part of that very much. So I've got a lot of things to do, which are things I'm ready to do. After you all got started and got formed, how has the community reacted? I saw a lot of criticism first, and I think it's still there. So I was supposed to ride with the Klan in the Christmas parade, for example. I was too sick to even get out of the house because I'd been in the hospital. But one of my acquaintances said to me, "Oh, your son will just die when he sees your picture and the paper in the grave with that guy." And the first time we met, I'm going to be blunt about it, because I resented. We met at Western Sydney. They were very rude to us in two different times when I was there. And I just resented that, and that's why we started meeting here in the Brooklyn. One of the things that happened when the first time I went in to the first meeting and said, "Where are those Cherokee Indians? Where's that group meeting?" I'm going to say it's not. But anyway, he said that, "Oh, there's a bunch of people back there in the car lane." "There's a bunch of scums." And I really didn't like it. I didn't like it at all, because I had eaten there a lot and I was interested in other people. Then a little later we had a meeting, and we had a chief from the Quarrel Reservationist, to speak. And the assistant manager then came in just very bluntly and told us we had leave, that there was another group coming in. And so our medicine woman at that time was conducting a meeting, and she just stood on her end and did my thing. She said, "We've had this room reserved for three months, and we'll leave when our meeting is over." And who was that one? She doesn't have to live here anymore. Her name is Debbie Cox. You can ask Chief, I'll hold on a little bit about her. She got married, and I really can't tell you. Well, she moved off and got married after she got married. She lived in Marlborough, and she worked, I think, for human resources, so for some Kentucky State. She was employed in that way sometimes. So people in the group, members in the group, come from pretty much all walks of life. Yes, yes. Teachers, blue collar workers, government workers. Now you said that you felt like initially the community was prejudiced against the group. Has that, during the intervening two years, have attitudes changed? Yes, they have. For example, I think people now are like what's expressed me in April when I was down on reservation. I was making pictures and interviewing people and so forth. People just had a big time by myself. And I went over to, I knew that the amphitheater under these hills was performed was closed, but I wanted to go out and make some pictures, and I saw an Indian family up there while I was there. So I walked over and again, talked to them a little bit, and they're very reticent about talking with you. Why is that your support? I think it goes all the way back to the persecution and disdain and low position they had in society. And there's a group, I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but there's a group over near, in speed row in Tennessee called the Melungeons. Are you familiar with them? You see, they stayed up in the mountains because they were just so discriminated against. They could even come down into town and just see. Stuart wrote a book about them called The Daughter of the Legend. It's in the local average. You might want to read that sometime now. I've read most of these books. I haven't read them. The Daughter of the Legend. That is a true story. You will be amazed about it because it really gives all the things that we got when we went there on tour. And we saw where this woman lived. So she was in the Melungeons. Yes, she was in the Melungeons. And I think that must be some sort of Indian background. See, they don't really know what the background is, where they came from. Who they are. Let me ask you this. I've got a theory about culture and dislocation that the more dislocated you are, the more problems you have. Yes. And I was part of the great hillbilly migration to Ohio in the '50s and then we moved back. And that creates a lot of problems within the family and whatever. But when you think about you're part of a group that was cut off from the land and then you're part of another despised group. Yes. You know, it doesn't do a lot for yourself. That's right. So I'm wondering when you talk about this not knowing. Is this a big part of what everybody's about here you think this trying to reconnect with? I think so, yes. And to bring back the old traditions because even on reservations they followed that out. They don't follow the customs and say it's interesting. But I was what I was going to say. This father and family said to me we were talking about it and we were talking about a lot of different things. Well, there's a whole lot of people out there we call the wannabes. You see, it's right now nationwide and any so much interest has been for several years now. I'm involved and bothered about that because I say that the Indians are being robbed now of their spirit. They've been robbed of the land, they've been robbed of their traditions and the ways of life, their language. They were punished for speaking their language in school even. And now they're being robbed of their spiritual heritage because the New Age movement is drawing in every Indian circle. And all the things concerning the environment and everything good that the Indians stood for. And they're incorporating that into the New Age community. And that's what is happening in this group. Now when you talk about traditions, how do you go about rediscovering traditions and customs and practices? Read, read, read, read. Now, when you say you read, what are you reading that you know of course supporting? You've been it. That's right. And I've been to the museum to him. He's actually one of my wife's great uncles, not on the Indian side, but his father was a gist and she was a gist. Yes. His father's brother was her right. His father's brother was her right. He was a gist. Yes, so my kids, I always get kicked out of that. They're related to support. Yes. And you know, that's the interest of him too. It's like I've always identified myself as an American. And since I don't look like I've had people give me a return. And I always tell them, I said, well, I said that I've had two great grandparents, great, great grandparents on the trail of tears and my wife's related to support. Does that make me an Indian? But it really is difficult to discover those connections because we just live on, I've just lived on family legend. You know, it was always said and accepted in total family and that was all just done about it. Nobody has pride. And I never had any of that. My father from my new family. So I have from, I've tried to rediscover. Yes. And so when you say you read, are you reading accounts where people have talked to Native Americans or are you reading historical accounts or are you reading what kind of accounts are you reading that you're getting your information from as well? I'm reading a book called Seven Era. So we had a lot, a bibliography was given to us at this Native American seminar in Brewer College. So I have a more or less following that bibliography. And just reading all the books. And what I'm exploring is the traditions and the customs and the beliefs and the spiritual ways. Oh, I'd love to get a copy of your bibliography because I'm starting a PhD program in the fall. And one of the classes I'll be taking is a Native American course that's going to be taught by a soon, I forget the woman's name, but she's there on campus. So I would be really excited about that. Well, while I was at Brewer, there were two Cherokee Indians there with the seminar. And there were a lot of things that came up that I got a lot of notes and things on that I was very conscious of, even there in that group studying Native Americans. Still a lot of prejudice against them. I saw it in the group. And then offered Hazel Green. So everybody that was in the group studying this wasn't necessarily a Native American. No, no, no. We didn't have much interest in it except curiosity. And why were they there? Just to get a credit or what? No, no, because we didn't get any credit for it. It was realizing that the Native Americans, regardless of whether Cherokees or what, Shawnee or whatever they are, that they have been the neglected Americans. And we need to get the big thing and the big focus on that meeting was to get rid of the stereotype of the Indians as the wild bad guys portrayed in Western movies. And to bring out the real truth of what the Indians like. Right. And what was that real truth? What is that real truth? Well, I remember things. One of the things that the confederation of five different nations of Indians formed a confederacy that our Constitution was modeled after. I want you to know they were highly civilized. And the Cherokee is a highly civilized nation. It has been from the very beginning. They never lived in TPs. They always had houses that were built similar to what's on the preservation there in the village that set up for tourists to see. And they were the Spanish under the soda taught them how to scout people. And some of the things about ways the story of Custer's last stand and all of those, my history is hazy because it's been so long since I've studied red. But the story of them being given blankets infested with smallpox in order to kill them off, that is a true story in my opinion. But that's not a view. Well, I've always thought that official American policy up until the last few years was to kill off all of them. That's right. And the reason would be because they are the only ones who have a real claim to the land. That's right. So if you get rid of a real claimant, then you don't have a problem. And the other interesting thing, they didn't feel they owned the land. That's why treaties and things were so easy to push stuff on them. They didn't realize that they were selling them because they thought that land belonged to everybody. And in a way, I always thought too that it was a joke that they played on the white man. It was like, he's going to give me these three blankets for that land that nobody can own. And I was like, oh yeah, you can have it all. And they didn't realize the concept of proper ownership was so alien to them that they thought they were getting the best end of the deal. And they had certain boundaries now that they considered for their tribal family and so forth. But Kentucky, for example, was the long-term all the tribes. It wasn't just Cherokee's, but it was a hunting ground for all the tribes. Well, I'm from the Cumberland Plateau, and that's of course the plateau was used as a hunting ground for the tribe. No group specifically lived. I met a woman, see, she was some of the prejudice. I met a Cherokee on the reservation a couple of years ago, and we were talking about certain different things. And when she learned where I was from, she said her mother was buried over to Jackson, Kentucky. And she said that, and she was Indian, of course, and she said she went to look for her mother's grave. And her heart was broken because she moved pretty well where it was from. And there was a marker there that said, just said, "Simply Indian." Indian woman. And that was her mother's grave. And then that was in the burial mounds. I had been desecrated and shopping malls and highways and things put through there, and she was lucky that she found it. She promised to come visit me sometime, let us go there and explore that area and see what we could find out. Do you, we talked about how do the Native Americans that you talked to on the reservation in different places, how do they react to what you're fighting? Different. And I said to the one I interviewed, it depends on who you're talking with, you see. So many of them are financially insecure and deprived, and there are others that are teachers and educators. Now I interviewed people from the boys' club, for example, that had done a lot of things there. The American Legion, the daycare centers, and the school just tried to get some idea of what the school background was and what the hierarchy was. And they call the principal chief, see. At the school. Yes, he's chief. And the assistant principal is the vice chief. That's great. And now they were very responsive, they showed me films, they really helped me a lot when they learned I was a teacher, you see. If they feel that you're there to be educated, they'll be more open with you. But if you're a curiosity seeker and you want to pretend you're an Indian, you've got that attitude over there. Well, we call them, that's what they said about the Black Wolf Clan here, that was their response, we call them the wannabes. So you've got two different viewpoints there, depending on who you're talking with. And you can't take one thing and say that's how they all feel, that's not so. So you've got a broad spectrum. That's right, you have to. You have to. Do you see this, what, well you've already said attitudes are changing here in Harley County. So if your goal was to educate people and change their attitude about the culture, then certainly you're successful in that regard so far. Other than that, other than changing these adequately, individually, what are you guys getting out of this? What are you getting out of this as a person and as other folks? What are they? Real close fellowship and love, friendship and loyalty and honesty and the integrative character that you don't find anywhere. Well, it's pretty dominant in the mountains among your most people, the Appalachian way of life. It's scorned everywhere, but to me it ought to be esteemed. Are there other clans like the Blackwood Clan, the Brown and the Mountains? Not at all. This is the only one. Now you all are affiliated, as I understand it, with the Southeastern Cherokee Trail of Tears Group, as opposed to the Eastern Cherokee, which would be the Cherokee North Carolina group. No, no, that Cherokee North Carolina group is the group that we're affiliated with. See the Western expansion ones in Oklahoma now, there's not a lot of them. Contact. Yes. And now on the reservation in Cherokee North Carolina, they don't consider, well, a man killer as the president of the entire Cherokee Nation, though they don't accept that. Oh, I understand now what you were saying about the division even within the Southeastern. That's right. They see all these people as those cowards who hid out and didn't. Yes, yes. And you see, it's very easy to find material because of the Trail of Tears and because there's a larger group in Oklahoma. They're well-settled in the middle of the town. That's right, they know where their roots. You see, but this group, there's nothing available on the Cherokees. When I took this seminar, see, I went to learn about the Cherokee Indians. And we got from the teachers who instructed, we got mostly Aircoy history, Navajo. And what I got on Cherokee, I had to dig from those two women who were Easter fan Cherokee and from the library myself. But my appetite was wedded and I wouldn't take anything from the seminar. Cherokee, Arlet and in the mountains in Cherokee, North Carolina on the reservation, are there five thousand, ten thousand? I don't know. I would have, I'm typing up some stuff right now and that and I would just be venturing a guess because, there's not so much stuff up here and everything. I can't be specifically acting on it, but I can give you information. If you just give me a chance to look it up at home right now. Since you are officially affiliated with the Southeastern Cherokee, that means that you have political sanction from the, from the ruling higher, from man killers, political entity, is that correct? I'm not sure of that because see there's conflict even between the Cherokees on the reservation and those who are pulling together in groups here and there to revive traditions and cultures. Now one of the women that I met in Maria, Nancy Baskett, is her name and for generations her family had made baskets and that was her tradition, what she's doing. She's had books published about her work, but she told me then at Maria, I spent a lot of time with her because I learned so much from her and she told me then she said, you know more about the Indian traditions and their Indian ways than the people on the reservation. See they've been deprived of knowledge even about their culture. What has caused that deprivation? I don't know if it's that pronounced in Oklahoma or not because those people seem to be well organized out there. Yes, but in Cherokee I think it's just the, in Cherokee, North Carolina, it's just, they've been made like a gazing stock. A zoo. Yeah. It's like a zoo. And they've risen all that commercialism see. But it's the only way they've got to make any money. Yes, and there are very few native owned and operated shops there. Most of that is commercialism that's not really Indian crafts and especially not Cherokee. And I remember the first time I went there was my father years ago. There was somebody there that had on the Indian headdress, a chief's headdress. And people were paying to have their pictures made with a chief. Now that I know more about it, I doubt that that was a chief. I think that was just a commercial. Venture. And even the things that are sold and that take place that are there, Indian crafts that are handmade there, they don't get much percentage of income from that. So they're being exploited economically, commercialized. Right. By business people who are just playing on the stereotypes. And then you know there's a lot of government money available for grants and for the people who can claim any up to the government. It says if you have one 32nd, for example, of Indian blood, you would be helped for some of those grants. And the Cherokee Indians on the reservation in North Carolina won't that limited to one 16th Indian blood, which makes me what I've studied back in my father's family. I am about one 16th Cherokee. But even if I'm just one 32nd, I would. But I'm not interested in those grants. And you see, I hear people in this area talking about it all the time, the college students. I sit around in restaurants, you know, and just kind of a lot after I can just can't get over here in conversation. And there's a lot of people grabbing for that money now that ought to go up to the reservations. Are you aware of that? Well, the perception, the perception of grant funds to the reality and the perception is different. Like, say, for instance, when I was as closely as I can figure it, my great grandmother was full-blooded. If I had no other Indian blood, I got an Indian blood. If I had no other from her, then my grandfather would be half. My dad would be a quarter and I would be an eighth. I have an other that comes in. So I'm somewhere between an eighth and a quarter. An a quarter. I applied for a... whenever I identified myself when I graduated from college, I changed all my papers to say that I was a Native American simply because I decided that it was time for somebody, family to tell the truth. Yes, that's where it is. To acknowledge it. That's where it is. To say it's neither good or bad, it's just the truth. It's good. And then when I applied for my MFA program, the way that it worked out was I didn't receive any special treatment or consideration because I was a Native American, but whenever I was selected for the program, instead of my money that paid for my fellowship coming out of the big pot, it came out of another pot for minority students. And then there was other money available for a girl by the name of Ben Logs who came because I was there. They had a free-dump other money. So it all came... the idea that if you sign up and I'm now enrolling in a PhD program, where I will be, my money will come out of the same pot again, but it's not like they're going to give me some big pile of money. I had to go through the same strict, strange of requirements. It's just that whenever I finally was included into the program, then instead of my money coming from the state of Ohio, it will come from the federal government. That's the only difference. And people think they're going to give you hundreds of dollars a week for whatever. That's what I hear. Just to go to space. These talking about... see, they're the ones primarily that I hear. Right. And it's not... it doesn't... it has been... and in fact, it has been my suspicion that identifying myself as a Native American in some instances may have hurt me, John. That's right. Because I know who I am. That's right. I've wondered, you know, if I would be better off, not at any point, so to see if I would be better off getting a job. But it's very... it's a confusing world of grants and that's what I know about. But in terms of anybody, I'm saying over in Indian and here, we're going to give you money. No, you have to fight for it. Yeah. And in fact... The discrimination maybe would go in the opposite direction, you think? I'm not even claiming that. I'm saying it's just that I'm saying the perception of the dollars that are out there. You know, like there's some pot of gold out there for... and in fact, I applied last year for this PhD program and they didn't have any money available even for me. That's how tight their budget was. So they said, "Wait till next year, until we get new money." So it's not like there's some great pot of gold that you can just go dip your hands into. And so it's really interesting too that the idea that the folks on the reservation have that they want to cut it off at a certain place. It's almost like they're saying, "Well, we want to save it for ourselves." You see, if you're up to one sixteenths, you can live on the reservation if you want to. I never thought of it. I mean, I never... This group here, I'm not saying that I'm not saying that. There are a lot of things that are into it. A growing thing that is being commercialized, particularly through women's fashion, you know, I'm a fashion. Yeah, it's very trendy to be in here. Yeah. To be a wannabe. Yes, we are. But we got all the way off of what it was like growing up in a coal company. But this is what we were. Projecting. See, my father worked in a coal mine in Joe Cotinacy when he was fourteen years old. What did I do then? Now, back to the coal mining relationship. My father, because he was an orphan, had to take care of himself however he could. And at fourteen years of age, he was driving a mule in mines during a man's work. And then working at the commissary, and I think it was Habersham, and Richard and Tennessee, and for his room and board. And then when he was sixteen, the war broke out and he volunteered for the army. And was only sixteen years of age, but there was no family to question that. So he went to World War I and spent a great deal of time in France and was wounded in service even. And he was only eighteen years old on his way back. His eighteenth birthday after the war was over. And so he had followed coal mining as a child, but when he came back, all he needed to do was sort of get involved some way in the coal. He didn't want to go into the mines or go back to that. So the old Monroe Road was just starting in this area. He hired on today. He followed that for a long time. But during the Depression, he had to go back to mining. And see, he had a back-end tree that he got a veteran's pension because of that, because he was thirty-three and a third percent disabled when it was hard to get a pension because of that back-end tree. And I saw my father load coal in Blue Diamond Coal Company at Chevrolet back then during the Depression years. And break the record of the only more coal-run in-man who had ever worked there with that back like that. And then when he would come home, my sister and I very well remember this. We heated hot towels and things like that after supper. And daddy would long catch and we would put hot towels. We'd take turns putting hot towels to his back to just get him through the thing that he could work under the date. I would love to do a book on my father. He's the most fascinating, most interesting person I've ever met. But I don't know much about his background. I just know him. Because he was an orphan. That's right. I know his strength and what he was. What do you see as getting back to this? What do you see the future for the Black Wolf plan here in Arlington County as getting bigger and stronger, going with people in it? They're getting a lot of publicity now from going into schools and doing programs and showing artifacts and that sort of thing. You see, that's helping a whole lot. And then at Cambridge High School, where I teach, for example, there's myself, there's David Powell, Gail Pack and Sandra Mullins. That many teachers out there that belong to this group. But we just sort of promoted among our students. And I take material and we give it to other teachers that are doing more in the way of, to history teachers, for example, that are doing more. And you just teach great, right? That's right. I'll teach half day because I'm a retired teacher. So when you retire in Kentucky, they just make you teach half day? No. No. This is how I look at it. I heard somebody say that when a minister is hired, he retires. And when he's called, he goes to the day he dies. I had an uncle who did that. I had a neighbor who sang in church services all her life and she always said that she wanted to die doing what she had always done. And two weeks ago on Saturday night, singing in the church, and she was 83 years old, I believe. She left us on the soul and her family said it's the most beautiful singing she'd ever done. She didn't die. So I use that and I say, I'm called to teach. I've taught all my life before I ever started to school. We played school and I was always a teacher. I was never a student. And so I'm called and I've retired three times. And I'll just go and drop a kiss. No better way to go. Well, I tell you, I think we've about done the interview. What I'd like to do is, if you'd like to sum it all up, your whole life, growing up in Harlan County, the idea of this, the Blackwood plan, what would you, one thing, leave us with one statement? Have you got one thing that you'd like to leave us with? I've been fortunate enough to be able to travel to different countries. Had a lot of experiences. But my most memorable experience was when I was about five years old, I was walking on the steps at my little house there, close to that bridge I told you about. Looking at those mountains, I wonder what's beyond those mountains. And that's been my life to look beyond the mountains. And see what's out there. But to have my dreams come true. I'm the one of my family that's still here. [BLANK_AUDIO]