It was a century ago that Beverly Kiohawiton Cook’s relative was taken from his family and shipped off to Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. Those years at school, days of travel away from family and forbidden to use native dress and speech, were traumatic.
The tale is more than just an anecdote in the family history, said Cook, an elected chief of the Saint Regis Mohawk tribe in New York.
“He was very handsome, but he was a beast,” Cook said. “He had a large family, and he raised the children the same way he was raised at the boarding school. There was a lot of violence in the home.”
One of those children recently died, succumbing to disease resulting from the drug problem he developed at an early age, a way to cope with violence in the home and a rape that went unpunished. At his death, he wasn’t even old enough to qualify for Social Security.
“We have that kind of trauma going on, and to me that’s violence,” Cook said. “To me that’s a trigger that was pulled back when he was 5 years old. It took him down decades later, but it will take you down.”
So was there any way to avoid that ending to the story? Is it possible to keep the opening chapters of such tales from being written?
[For more of this story, written by Holly Kays, go to http://www.smokymountainnews.c...essing-health-issues]
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