An Irishman In Indian Country? An Introduction.

Soon it will be St. Patrick’s Day, 2010.  If I used all my names, I’d be known as Michael Douglas Patrick Kelly Meuers.

My mother Irene was full blooded Irish.  Her four grandparents were born in Ireland.  Her mother was a Johanna Frazier, her father James Kelly.

My father Virgil was half German and half (Canadian) French.  His father John Meuers (pronounced Moyers) was born in Germany.  His mother Rose de Lima Goulet was from Quebec.  Genealogy shows the family in that Province going back to 1663.  English was her second language.

I am a mixed blood American without tradition in the sense of my ancestors.  I am neither German, nor French, nor Irish culturally. Perhaps because Irish blood flows through my veins in twice the amount of German or French, I relate more to the Irish.  Or perhaps it is because I have been blessed with a touch of the blarney.

“When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”  Personally I have found a certain validity in this adage.  When I resided in Hawaii and Korea, courtesy of the United States Army, I spent time learning about the history, culture, and language of it’s peoples.

I knew little of American Indians before moving to Minnesota’s Great North Woods from the Twin Cities in my early 30’s.  Soon I heard of “Indian Time”.   I thought at first it to be a light-hearted disparagement used by Indian and non-Indian alike.  I learned later it to be a multi-layered time concept of an Indigenous people.  I was in the midst of a different culture without leaving home.

Non-Indians have lived in the Bemidji area for little more than a century.  Often I work and socialize with American Indians.  The greater history, culture, and spirit of these woodlands - is Ojibwe.  I came to this place to study at a young State University, but graduated to learn of an ancient land and it’s heritage.

And so I watch and learn of Indian Country Through the Eyes of an Irishman.