by Jean Eden

As I sat in the Central City Meeting House in May, I became aware that our two meetings had a strong connection coming out of a shared history. Although the two meetings are affiliated with different branches of Friends, over the years we have gotten together as there were few other Friends in Nebraska. Both groups of Friends shared the reality of being European settlers in a land already settled by other people. We Quakers wanted to practice our shared values and had little understanding of the colonialist mindset we had inherited and were living in.

It was probably the early 60s when a young family from each of these two meetings participated in a family camp sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee. There were young children in both families, and the Central City family included an adopted Native son. The connection with this family “planted a seed” in the Lincoln family which later also adopted two Native (Omaha) sons and a daughter who is not Native. The Lincoln family is, of course, my own and I can say that I had no understanding of the long history of our European culture taking Native children from their families and cultures, attempting to remake them into settlers. I also had no understanding of how hard it would be for these children to grow up alone in a culture that did not really accept or value them. Good intention was high; real awareness was low.

During the next 20 years or so, these children became adolescents or young adults having experienced a variety of messages from the communities they lived in along with love, but not adequate understanding, from their own families. We could love our children, but could not share nor understand what they were experiencing with their peers, their teachers, and others in their communities. And they lacked meaningful contact with others like themselves who might have been able to provide the support of shared experience and background. One exception to this was an excellent opportunity provided by an AFSC friend for the younger son in the Lincoln family during his teen years to spend many months in a Native community in the Black Hills, known as Yellow Thunder Camp. So there was wounding within these adoptive families which was in a way a microcosm of the wounding of the larger culture.

Randy, the adopted Native son in the Central City family, was now a young adult, living and working in the Lincoln area. A young woman, Janet Mesner, who had grown up in a different family in that same community, was at that time the resident caretaker of our Meeting House in Lincoln. The unthinkable happened. Janet and a friend who was visiting her were murdered in the Meeting House. Before she died, Janet identified the perpetrator as Randy. Two flowers appeared the following Sunday morning in the Central City Meeting House… one for Randy and one for Janet, showing the community’s love for both young people. Deep and stunned sadness hung over us.

A trial was followed by a sentence of death which was followed by efforts to repeal Nebraska’s death penalty law. Surely Spirit was at work in bringing a Quaker, DeCourcy Squire, to Lincoln to work for repeal. As Coordinator of Nebraskans Against the Death Penalty, she organized testimony at committee hearings on bills to repeal for several years bringing people to testify from both Meetings. Notable among testifiers were members of Janet Mesner’s family.

Now more than 40 years after that tragedy, I am beginning to recognize what we (white settlers) have done. Many social justice activists and writers are opening my mind and heart to the big picture of what it means when one people come to live among another as a dominant force. I feel a special gratitude to Paula Palmer of Boulder CO Meeting for following her leading to learn more about this part of our history, and in particular about the many boarding schools for Native children Friends had run in Nebraska and elsewhere.

In a sense, our two adopting families experienced on a personal level what society at large experienced. In our families we felt the pain at a very personal level. Not only did Randy’s family experience the reality of their child being on death row, but our family knew that it could have been our child. We also know that one of our sons died of alcoholism, and a granddaughter died when a car she was driving crashed into a tree.

Has the time come for us who are settlers in this land, to let go of any idea that we know what is best for others? Can I let go Of any idea that I need to be in control? Am I willing to listen to and be led by Native people? I for sure can be grateful for the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding the Indian Child Welfare Act.