Traverse City Record-Eagle from Traverse City, Michigan • Page 21

Record-Eagle, Travene City, Mich. 4NH 'I've learned to walk a double line 9 BY MARY GODWIN Record-Eagle staff writer TRAVERSE CITY Known to some as Keewaydinoquay and to others as Margaret Peschel, she is a woman Bearing her sixties who has learned to walk with her feet in two worlds. "Indians who don't know me say who's that crazy white woman dancing at the Peshawbestown Indian Pow Wow," she said. But she is the minority Indian teacher at.the Leland school where Keewaydinoquay teaches life sciences, such as biology and ecology. "I've learned to walk a double line," 'Keewaydinoquay told about 40 people attending the Central Methodist Arts Festival talk recently on the religious symbolism of area Native Americans.

Keewaydinoquay says she doesn't know the year she was torn. "I guess my folks didn't keep a very good record of know what kinds of birds were calling, how blue the water was and the day but I don't know the year." Native Americans keep written records as we are accustomed to today, she said. She welcomed the audience with a greeting in the language O.jibwey, in sign language and said she would have done the same in symbols if a blackboard had been available. The vibrant speaker narrated the tale part Caucasian; Her mother, described as an English lady till-the day she died, spent her first nine years in England, She fell in love with Keewaydinoquay's father but, they weren't allowed to marry because her felt Indians and Christians shouldn't mix, Keewaydinoquay said. Her father told his; parent "he was white on the top" Traverse City Record-Eagle of ancestral history including a-grandfather who was an Anglican priest, a mother who was Indian looking but learned to say "God save the Queen" in her first breath, and a grandfather who practiced the Indian Midewin religion.

Both her parents were part Indian and when they said he couldn't marry the Christian girl. "When my mother was 32-years-old, her parents said she could marry my father because "no one else would want you now," she said chuckling. Keewaydinoquay said she grew up at The drum, owned by Keewaydinoquay's grandfather's grandfather, is her pride and joy. Used for Indian rites, it is the only item that she didn't pass around to the audience. The porcupine box with a bear on it represents Keewaydinoquay's childhood name "walks with bears." These are only some of her treasures.

(Record-Eagle photos by Mary Godwin) 'Her child gave us oy' "Field Syndicate Columnist Dear Ann Landers: Recently an 18- year-old girl wrote and asked if she should have an abortion. She said it was not against her religion but was afraid the guilt might haunt her forever. You said, "Don't do it!" May I say a few words to that young woman and to others who may be struggling with the same decision? My husband and I were told we would never be able to have a family. We immediately put our names in at two adoption agencies. We waited for two years and were becoming very discouraged.

Then we received that wonderful phone call. A young girl was about to deliver in three weeks. She had decided to give up her child for adoption. You should have seen my husband. We went into orbit.

It was unreal. I was on Cloud -19. We immediately called in the painters and the paperhangers. The den was turned into a nursery. Our families, friends and neighbors brought gifts.

Now all we had to do was wait. "'Then the call came. The doctor said we had a beautiful, seven-pound baby girl. After five days of indescribable we dfbve to the hospital to pick up our angel. We never saw the mother, which I'm sure was best for all Concerned.

I would like to say a word to that courageous young woman. Thank you, Bear little mother, for having the maturity and wisdom to give up your child. She has brought real meaning and joy to our lives. There will be times when you will wonder how your little girl is getting along, and what been like had you kept her. Let me assure you she is being cared for and loved by a grateful family.

Hopefully you will one day marry and have other children, but the memory of your first-born will always be with you. Please know you will be remembered in our prayers as the most courageous and unselfish person in the world. No Name, No City, No Initials Dear Friends: I wonder how many young mothers will wonder if this letter was meant for them. A good many, I hope. Tha'nk you for writing.

Dear Ann Landers: My problem is no big deal, but I hope you will print it because I'll bet there are loads of teens like myself who are bugged plenty by this. (I'm a 15-year-old high school sophomore.) When.someone phones me and I am not at home, nobodyever bothers to tell me. The next day at school, Mary or Bill or Joanie will say, "Why didn't you call me back?" I have to tell them'l didn't know they called. This is embarrassing because it looks like nobody in my family cares enough about me to give me a message, which is humiliating and irritating. It also makes me wonder how many good times I have missed out on because of my family's lack of consideration.

Meriden, Conn. Dear Read this column aloud at the dinner table tonight. Tell your family you wrote the letter. Offer to put a message pad by the phone with a pen or pencil attached. Ask them if they will please jot down the name of anyone who calls in your absence; Offer to do the same for them.

If you make this request like a lady (no yelling or accusations) it should generate a feeling of peace and harmony and I'll bet you'll get your messages in the future. A no-nonsense approach to how to deal wifh life's most-difficult and most rewarding arrangement. Ann Lander's booklet. "Marriage What to Expect," will prepare you for better or for worse. Send your request to Ann Landers, P.O.

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Look at all those brown- haired people" It was an occasion when, Keewaydinoquay said, "I should have been sad'' but she was overwhelmed with the discbvery. The woman, dressed in a maroon Indian tunic and wearing braids, reminisced about her early years when her Christian grandfather and her Midewin grandfather each tried to persuade her to believe in their religion. "They were very opposing religions but both have some good and a lot of superstition," she saig. "I got the same treatment from both a i i Keewaydinoquay in either direction and the brown-haired girl felt left out when her school friends received their First Communion or other- religious rites without her. "I thought you got to keep them," she said about the white communion dresses and veils, so she attended the preparation for the ritual but was allowed to take in the ceremony.

She then decided to align herself with the Midewin religion. As a young girl, she learned "all that I could about symbols and herbs from a Nodjimahikwe," an herbalist who lived in the Indian village Onominee, which was north of The knowledge of the herbs learned as a child will become the basis of a project Keewaydinoquay is doing with a University of Michigan-fellowship. "I knew all the herbs but I didn't know why they worked," she said. She will document the scientific effects the herbs can have and retain part of the Indian culture in doing this. The mixture of religions that Keewaydinoquay was exposed to in her family sparked her curiosity and ended with some study at a divinity school.

She found out there wasn't any room for women in the Midewin religion and then studied the sciences in school. Keewaydinoquay explained some of the symbolism in the Indian culture by passing around a porcupine quill box with a bear on it, or a grouse fan with a i i sign which are family treasures. She owned the quill box as a child because her Indian name was "walks with bears" then she grew up and became "woman of the northwest wind." "One day you're a kid and then you work all the time," she laughed telling about the maturation process. The grouse fan fertility sign can be seen on jewelry worn by mothers and grandmothers, who are telling the Keewadinoquay tugs on her braid while talking about the religions symbolism of area Native Americans at the Central United Methodist Church Arts Festival last week. Known to others as Margaret Peschel, Keewaydinoquay is an ebullient woman full of life and love for the Indian culture world, "I am fertile and available." Keewaydinoquay chuckled.

"What they are really saying is I can afford to pay for this She asked the to-take particular care of a small hand made from bat skin, that her mother received from an Indian military strategist who aligned himself with the British. The drum is used in Keewaydinoquay said tapping the instrument lightly- and dancing. A mother bear's claw worn around the neck is comparable to the cross, she said. The cross is a- symbol of love where the claw is one of strength. "You remember it in a time of need that there is a strength, beyond strength," she said.

"The bear claw could be superstitious but so could the cross," she said. "Pardon me if I don't pass this," Keewaydinoquay said with reverence about another drum, "It belonged to my grandfather's grandfather, a real antique. My pride and joy." She said he was a strict man, who used the drum only in prayer and in a religious dance. Keewaydinoquay has a note of bitterness at times in her voice when she speaks of the current American Indian situation. Perhaps this feeling can be best expressed in a letter she wrote in Ojibwey for the Leelanau Township Bicentennial book.

"It's a pointed letter," she explained. "They told me. to -write anything I wanted as long as it was Indian sounding." She paraphrased the letter as follows, "Congratulations. We'd like to celebrate with those who walk in beauty in the land of Leelanau. They say Indian people were unwilling to take part in the feast they didn't 'love our country.

They found green forests and happy people and villages; now the forest, the happy people and the villages are gone. How can you ask us to celebrate. We no longer have any land. We can't cut down trees and you can't fish legally." The Indian culture has a great respect for the land, she said, adding it is a religion of conservation because they thought all life was a reflection of the spirit. You owned continuance to the spirit if you took away life, she said.

The Indians said a prayer if, for example, they took a bulb by thejoot to guarantee life to the grandsons of the plant. To some it was a superstitious practice and to others a way of life. "Nothing had been run into extinction when the Indians lived here," she said. The ebullient woman speaks with pride of her Indian heritage when she says there are "many ways a red man can help the white man to develop individual worth, spiritual development and the balance of the world around him." But Keewaydinoquay says the human race as a whole is top of her list over any particular race or ethnic group. We should think of ourselves as a human race, not as ethnic groups," Keewaydinoquay says after spending her life walking a double line in the Indian and white American cultures.

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