Mixing up the races

State ranks No. 2 in nation in proportion of multiracial people

 

By Julia O’Malley
Anchorage Daily News

 

Andrei Jacobs' father is Yup'ik. His mother is black. Make him pick a race on a government form and he will check the box that says "Alaska Native."

Ask him to talk about his race and the answer isn't as clear cut.

"Outwardly I'm mostly Eskimo," he said. "Inwardly I'm black."

Growing up between two cultures is a common story in the cities and villages of Alaska. The only state with more multiracial people per capita is Hawaii, according to the U.S. census. The most common combination here is Alaska Native and something else, most often white.

Jacobs, 31, is on the leading edge of a mixed-race boom that's especially noticeable among Natives. Native children under 18 are more than twice as likely to say they are mixed race as those over 65, according to state statistics. Close to one in four Alaska Native children are multiracial compared to about one in 10 children in the population at large.

People who call themselves Native live in villages on the Kuskokwim and condo complexes in Florida. They're brunette. They're red-headed. They speak Inupiaq. They speak Spanish. A few have never left the village. Some have never set foot in the state.

Each generation brings more diversity, crumbling old ideas about what race is and about what it means to be Native.

DEFINING RACE

Jacobs lives in Anchorage and works for a Seattle-based technology company. He grew up in a black home, raised by his mother in Bethel, an Eskimo town.

Race is far more complicated than what's found on the official certificate of Indian blood issued by the federal government at birth to all Native Americans, including Alaska Native children. That form just reports inherited blood percentages. But to Jacobs race depends on the culture where someone grew up, on the language they speak and sometimes the way other people see them.

"You know what was hard is that I didn't have a Native grandmother or grandfather. It's hard if you don't have family to feel accepted (in Bethel). ... The culture is so strong. ... There's an esthetic and a whole social system."

As he got older, Jacobs saw being Native as less about his blood and more about being part of his community, like learning to dance to the reindeer herding song, eating dried ptarmigan with seal oil, listening to elders' stories, learning to brine and dry fish.

"Now I'll speak on any black issue because I'm wholly black, and I can talk about Native issues too because I am wholly Native," he said.

For many years, the government has used a measurement called "blood quantum" to define who is legally Native. Some programs, like scholarships and assistance from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, still require a quarter Native blood. Having one quarter blood also was required for original enrollment in Alaska Native corporations.

The government definition shapes how people inside and outside of the Native community think about what makes someone Native, but it may not be the best measure, said Gordon Pullar, director of the Alaska Native and Rural Development department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Pullar is part Sugpiaq from Kodiak and part Scottish. He grew up in Washington state.

"I have known people who biologically might be less than one quarter, but they live in a village and practice a subsistence lifestyle," Pullar said. "Because they don't have one quarter, are they not Native?"

On the other hand, he said, if someone isn't from a village, and isn't connected to the culture, are they still Native?

Richard Perry, 36, says yes.

Perry has red hair and a milky complexion. He grew up in Louisville, Ky., and speaks with a light drawl. His ethnic background: "pretty much the whole European nation: German, Irish, Swedish, Dutch, I don't know about French. ..."

But his mother was a quarter Yup'ik and a quarter Athabascan, which makes him Native by the government definition.

His Native genes trump his European ancestry, he said. Growing up, he always felt his brain worked differently than others in his family. He was more community-minded, he said. When he came to Alaska and took a job at Cook Inlet Tribal Council, he felt at home.

"I was Alaska Native, but I knew nothing about Native tradition or values," he said.

For those multi-racial Natives who were adopted or taken out of Alaska, there can be feelings of being disconnected, Pullar said.

"Some people think they are not legitimate Natives because they haven't learned the life, but some have come back and become very involved," he said.

Gloria O'Neill, president of Cook Inlet Tribal Council, grew up between Soldotna and Bristol Bay. She's of Yup'ik and Irish decent, but when she went to college on the East Coast, people assumed she was Italian, Portuguese or even French. Being Native to her is foremost about family and culture.

"In my family, there are a lot of blond-haired, blue-eye Native people who are Native because of how they are raised and their culture," she said. "In Alaska you have to be careful about making assumptions."

'LAND CLAIMS NATIVE'

Attitudes toward being mixed race have changed over time. Historically, Native blood made someone a target for discrimination, Pullar said. Some mixed race people who could kept their Native connection locked away.

In 1971, on the heels of the civil rights movement, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act changed that. The act created corporations, giving those with a quarter Native ancestry shareholder benefits. Biracial people who weren't connected to the Native community started to claim Native blood.

"Some people who may have been one quarter, many of those people didn't look Native or were able to slide by and not be discriminated against," Pullar said. "Then when ANCSA came along, it was kind of like you have to step up or not. It caused some hard feelings in the Native community from those Natives who couldn't pass (as white)."

In those days, inside the Native community, "Land Claims Native," became an insult, he said. It's still common to hear painful stories about discrimination in the village against multiracial children, Pullar said.

Pullar said mixed-race young people still feel pressure to choose an identity. But in the 21st century, that often means downplaying their non-Native side, the exact opposite of what some did before ANCSA.

"It's also kind of an unspoken demand that often comes up within the Native community for people who are mixed. Its kind of like they are not allowed to celebrate both sides of their heritage," he said. "It's kind of like they are either Native or not Native at all."

Thirty-five years after ANCSA, for a generation of young people born after the corporation rolls closed, Native blood has a different meaning.

"I don't give a rat's ass about being in ANCSA," Jacobs said.

People of his generation are the most tolerant of being mixed race, and being Native isn't something to be avoided, he said.

Pullar also noticed that people seem more comfortable talking about both sides of their heritage.

"It doesn't have to be an either/or identity," he said. "I don't think it's totally changed but I think it's changing."

Carrie Baldwin, 26, is half Yup'ik and half white, but, like Jacobs, she calls herself Native. She grew up in Anchorage with her mother, who isn't Native, and it wasn't until high school that she started to see herself as Yup'ik. Her mother's ancestors came from Germany generations ago, but Native culture seemed so much stronger, she said. She doesn't feel like she's rejected her German side.

"After generations, you are just American after a while. There is American lifestyle here and American culture people follow," she said. "Alaska Natives are from here. We start here."

The Native culture he absorbed growing up in Bethel feels strongest to Jacobs as well, but he wonders about his black side. Before his black grandmother died, the family had her DNA tested and found links to the Hausa people in Nigeria.

"I can find out more about my DNA than I can about the stories," he said. "You know, like tangible stories. These stories are really interesting and we don't have them."

SEEKING EMOTIONAL CONNECTION

What many mixed-race young people share is the experience of looking for a way to identify, for an emotional connection. Outside the village, Jacobs always scouted for familiar faces. When he visited his Native father, who lives in Philadelphia, he took solace in a favorite television show: "Puerto Rican Panorama."

"All I knew was I felt like that," he said. "There was nobody else around like me. My hair was too straight to be black. My eyes were way too Asian to be black. Even if I didn't know the language, I felt like that."

Sometimes he would take stock of his Eskimo traits:

"My eyebrows ... My eyes look Yup'ik. ... And I can dance. Is that my black side? No, no, it's my Yup'ik side too. ... But, I'm tall. Eskimos are short ..."

Other times, he listed his black characteristics:

"My skin color. My brain -- How I frame reality. ... My lips. I have black lips ... No, Eskimos have big lips too ..."

Yani Morley, 34, is Tlingit, Tsimshian and black. She was raised in Anchorage by white adoptive parents. She's since found her birth mother who told her she was given up because she looked too black when she was born. She was the product of an affair. Morley never thought about her race until she started at Wendler Junior High.

"My best friend, who happened to be white, said 'How come you don't hang out with the black people?' ... I think it bothered everybody else more than it bothered me."

Black culture came to her mostly on television. Though her parents encouraged her to learn about her Native heritage, it seemed remote. As she became an adult, she began to see her race as dependent on setting. Working for a Native corporation made her feel her Native side, and a stay in Florida introduced her to black culture. Still she doesn't think of herself in terms of race.

"How I feel every day, I don't consider myself any way," she said.

Jacobs too feels his race is different depending on where he is.

"I feel Native in Alaska and I feel black in the Lower 48," he said.

FEELING DIFFERENT

People may be able to choose how to identify but they can't control how people see them. A generation ago, when former state Sen. Georgianna Lincoln, now the chairwoman of Doyon Inc., was growing up in the small village of Rampart on the Yukon River, she always felt Athabascan, even though her father was white.

"We never thought of dad as white," she said. "For trapping and mining and fishing he fit in really well."

She started school in Fairbanks in her long black pigtails and lace-up gumboots, surrounded by little white girls in anklets. She felt different for the first time.

"We had to stand up in the beginning of school. ... They did a head count for federal funding and we were pointed out," she recalled.

Being half-white didn't matter as far as the way others saw her. White students taunted her and teachers treated her differently because they saw her as all Native, she said.

Feeling that stigma pushed her into politics. Throughout her political career, young people sought her advice about being mixed race.

"I said, 'who do you identify with?' For 90 percent of the kids, it was Native," she said. "I said, 'that's who you are.'

"You can't continually divide yourself."

Daily News reporter Julia O'Malley can be reached at jomalley@adn.com or 257-4325.

NEW FACES NEW CITY

This is part of a series of stories about how Anchorage is becoming more ethnically diverse.

MULTIRACIAL RANKINGS

Percent of population who are two or more races: top states

Hawaii 21.0

Alaska 6.9

Oklahoma 5.7

Washington 3.3

New Mexico 3.2

California 3.1

Nevada 3.1

Oregon 3.0

U.S average. 1.9

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

BY THE NUMBERS

Percent of American Indians/Alaska Natives in total state populations:

Alaska 14.2

New Mexico 9.6

South Dakota 8.4

Oklahoma 7.4

Montana 6.0

North Dakota 4.9

Arizona 4.7

Wyoming 1.9

Washington 1.4

North Carolina 1.3

Oregon 1.3 U.S. average. 0.8

Source: U.S. Census Bureau