Two Worlds: Second Edition: Vol. 1: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects book series by Trace L Hentz

Two Worlds: Second Edition: Vol. 1: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects book series by Trace L Hentz

Author:Trace L Hentz [Hentz, Trace L]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: BIO028000, HIS028000
Publisher: BLUE HAND BOOKS
Published: 2017-12-12T16:00:00+00:00


28

Tosh’s daughter

Rhonda Serges-Teeple (Bay Mills Ojibwe)

Rhonda's favorite past-time is riding

I guess you have to start somewhere, even though being adopted starts right then and there at your birth.

I really can’t blame my natural parents. They were only human. I can’t blame the wonderful people that adopted me. I got lucky and had pretty good parents.

But my earliest memories are me wanting to go home, to family, to where I felt safe.

Because of unknown delays, I wasn’t given to my adopted parents until I was almost six months old. I obviously was in a foster home. When I was finally adopted, I really didn’t want to be there because I’d bonded with them, my foster family.

It wasn’t that I didn’t have a loving Serges family of parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, but I didn’t feel as if I belonged to them.

It is kind of funny but I never missed my natural mother or thought about her; I missed my father. At that time, there was no reason for it; it was just how I felt. I felt guilty for feeling that way. I also thought I would never disrespect the people who raised me by looking for answers to my existence as an adoptee.

So I never really knew who I was; I just stumbled along trying to make myself fit. I made it work. At age thirty-nine, raising my son alone, I got very ill, and while I was recuperating, I began to wonder about all these unknown medical problems I had, including diabetes. I didn’t know where they came from. I knew my adopted parents medical issues and saw how they related to their family history. But their medical history was not mine. So I began my journey, not knowing how it would end.

My first step, since I lived in Michigan, was to contact the Child and Family Service of Michigan. Through them I was able to obtain my non-identifying adoption papers. I got my first surprise when I read them and found out that my father was a Native American; along with the fact that my natural mother had five sons who are my half-brothers.

My next step was to contact the Bureau of Indian Affairs. They told me since my father had passed away, there was no way to prove genetics, so ‘sorry.’ I did get the information as to what tribe before we hung up. But not his name! My father was a member of the Bay Mills Indian Community in Brimley, Michigan. They are Ojibwe and have always lived on the banks of the St. Mary River.

So how do you prove anything without a name? Well, I wanted to look around on the reservation so I went to Brimley with my adopted mom. I’m glad she went since it was one of our last trips together.

We stopped at this little railroad car museum and I found the book ‘The Place of the Pike (Gnoozhekaaning): A History of the Bay Mills Indian Community’ by Charles E. Cleland. Well, of course this made me more curious, like who am I related to in my tribe.



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