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This Website is Dedicated to Alvin Alexander Cheyne January 10, 1921 - June 17, 2005 |
An outcast in her native land
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by
Ty Beaver
Marnie Morrow, 54, went to play with a friend who lived a few houses
down from hers when she was in grade school. Until the moment she
answered the front door, the friend's mother didn't know that Morrow was
part Klamath-Yahooskin Indian.
She
promptly told Morrow that she couldn't be friends with her daughter any
longer and closed the door.
Such moments punctuated Morrow's life growing up in the
“You
just have to get through the racial issues. You never truly forget these
things but you can work with them,” she said.
Morrow was born in Pendleton, along with her twin sister, Ruth, in 1954.
Their father, Vincent Castriotta, was Italian while their mother, Ruby
Dorris Charles, was Klamath-Yahooskin. In 1954 the federal government
still recognized the Klamath Tribes prior to Termination in the 1960s.
Her parents weren't married and also had trouble with alcohol. The
family was living in Chiloquin when Morrow, Ruth, older sister Theda and
older brother Nick were removed from their biological parents. Morrow
and Ruth were 5 months old when they were placed with a foster family,
Joe and Katherine Wirth O'Brien in
Two different worlds
As Morrow grew and explored what was around her, she said she lived in
two different worlds. One was the world she shared with her foster
family.
The family was well-known in the community. Joe designed the jovial
blue-and-white cow sign that adorned Crater Lake Creamery on
Joe
and Katherine were fair and kind parents, treating their foster children
as they did their own son, Morrow said. Their foster grandparents, Tom
and Delia Rogers, also embraced them, researching their Native heritage.
They would go on expeditions for arrowheads and other artifacts and go
home to research them.
“They did everything
they could to educate themselves,” Morrow said.
Dave also accepted and cared for Morrow and her sister and brother. He
was 5- or 6-years-old, when they moved in and while there was sometimes
the tension possible between a biological child and a foster child, he
still played with them and was protective of them.
“Dave and I, as kids, could fight like cats and dogs but we loved
it,” she said.
It
was a family she came to love and know as her own and see as a special
recipe of diversity and acceptance, a combination of Morrow's Native and
Italian ancestry and the O'Briens' Czech and Irish background.
School was terrible
But there was another
world Morrow and her siblings experienced outside the security of their
foster home, a world they first encountered when they entered school.
In school, Morrow said she and her sister and brother were the victims
of abuse from students as well as teachers, ranging from the subtle to
the flagrant.
Morrow
is dyslexic but such a condition wasn't known back in the ‘50s and
‘60s, leading her teachers to label her as retarded. She remembered
one time when her foster father got into a physical altercation with the
principal of her grade school after the man said Natives were a waste of
money and teachers' time because they were too dumb.
Students would make fun of her and her twin sister whenever they wore
braids, even when other girls also did. One of the more devastating
moments came when Morrow was 11 years old, soon after “Daddy Joe”
died.
During
physical education class, she was playing a sport with her classmates
and her team won. One of the girls on the opposing team came over to her
and told her that her foster father died because she was an Indian and
couldn't stand her.
Morrow said despite the mistreatment and abuse she and her siblings
suffered, their foster parents rarely knew about it. She did tell her
foster mother about a great deal of it when she was 20 and it devastated
her, causing her to feel she hadn't protected Morrow and her siblings.
“We felt we just had to take it and not say anything,” she said.
Friendly faces
School, and life, wasn't all about confrontation and prejudice, Morrow
said. One teacher, Ellen Reich, knew her from church and was protective
of Morrow and her siblings, especially after their foster father died.
As a very young girl, Morrow and her twin sister would accompany
Katherine into town to pay bills and take care of other business. Such
trips often meant a sighting of a man they called Rattlesnake Pete or
Pistol Pete.
The man was one of the characters of the town and was always seen
wearing buckskin. Morrow said he adored seeing her and her sister though
they were in awe and fear of him and hid behind their foster mother.
“He was always sorry when he made us cry when he shot his pistols
off,” she said.
As a means to console them, the man would give the two girls bags of
candy.
Morrow also spent time with her biological mother when she was about age
four or five. She would come and pick up Morrow and her siblings and
take them to the carnival that used to be on
High school had happy moments as well. She competed in track as a relay
runner and also loved to swim at the Ella Redkey Pool and play baseball.
Playing with Nick and Dave could prove problematic since they knew
exactly where she'd send the ball, she said.
Teachers were also more compassionate and understanding in her later
education, especially the choir teacher at
“Back then, you didn't even have to get to the reservation itself
before you saw large herds of deer,” she said.
Lasting effects
Despite the loving home Morrow grew up in, and a better learning
environment in her secondary education, the abuse she received from her
classmates and teachers in her early school years left its mark.
She had already begun to use alcohol in high school. That combined with
her lack of self-confidence caused her to drop out before she could
graduate.
The 1970s were difficult. Morrow continued to have problems with
alcohol. She wandered in and out of the Basin and her foster mother and
an aunt and uncle helped to raise her daughters as they came along.
An undercurrent of resentment and opportunism toward tribal members also
still existed in the Basin. In 1980, Morrow returned to the Basin after
living in
“Things had gotten better, but there were still problems,” she said.
Morrow said that in the days prior to tribal members going to pick up
their checks, Basin businesses and individuals saw the opportunity to
earn their own money. Car dealers filled their lots with the newest
vehicles and real estate was marked up. In one instance, someone parked
a boat on a trailer with a “for sale” sign in front of the bank
where tribal members were to pick up their checks.
Working as a waitress, Morrow said she also heard disparaging comments,
including once when one of her regulars asked why she was taking a job
away from someone who doesn't have the money she had from her federal
compensation.
Fighting stereotypes
The late '70s and early '80's brought better times for Morrow as well as
her people. She stopped drinking after a woman on the tribal council, a
tribal elder, told the congregated tribe that if they wanted to erase
the image of tribal members being alcoholics, they had to do it
themselves. Morrow said the majority of those drinking did so along with
her.
She met her husband, Dean Morrow, in 1982. He was a farm hand on a
Macdoel potato operation when they met on a night out with friends.
Seven months later, they married.
Dean is non-tribal and the couple learned years later that their friends
cast bets to see how long their relationship would last. Morrow said she
and her husband never told their friends they knew and the couple laughs
about it now.
Raising her three daughters was important to Morrow, especially because
she wanted to make sure they didn't have the same experiences she did.
That protectiveness was tested when Morrow said she learned a teacher
was mistreating one of her daughters. When she went to the school to
confront the teacher, the teacher closed the door in her face.
Morrow pulled her daughter from her classes to be home schooled before
sending her to another school. The principal and teachers at the new
school were excellent, with the principal visiting Morrow's daughters
daily to make sure she was all right, she said.
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