In search for her ancestral roots, Houston woman finds a bigger tribe
Shana Ross always felt a deep connection to the Earth. She says she knew how to ride a horse long before she ever rode one.
She feels something in her blood gave her an innate ability.
Ross, who was adopted as an infant in 1959 by a white family and raised as an only child in a small conservative East Texas town, knew that she was different. She had darker skin and much higher cheekbones than anyone she knew.
It wasn’t until 2016 that she understood where her feeling of a connection to the land came from. A DNA test through Ancestry.com revealed hundreds of new relatives, including her biological mother, Mildred Yazzie Silversmith, a member of the Navajo Nation in Arizona. The Nation occupies parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
Ross, a well-known Houston fitness trainer and entrepreneur, shares the poignant story of finding her mother, and ultimately herself, in a new memoir, “Tribeless: Discovering the Truth About Nature vs. Nurture as One Woman Finds Her Birth Mother” (Difference Press).
They met for the first time in Stamford, just north of Abilene, where her birth mother had a large family. Balloons hung outside of the house so that
Ross and her wife, Mary Beth Reuter, couldn’t miss it.
Inside, her mother was sitting, and Ross knelt down in front of her.
“She grabbed my face with both hands. She was crying. Of course, I was crying, and she said, ‘Oh, my little girl, I’ve waited for so long,” Ross remembers.
She held Ross tightly, rubbing her back, then touching her hair. “You have grandpa’s hair,” she told her.
The next day, her family made Navajo tacos with traditional fry bread.
Prior to the 1970s, many Native American children were routinely removed from their communities and placed with white families. The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 was established in response to the practice of separating Native children from their parents, extended families and communities through adoption or foster placement, usually in non-Native homes.
The law was designed to help preserve their traditions and culture. At the time, 25 percent to 35 percent of all Native children were being removed, according to the National Indian Child Welfare Association.
In 2018, white couples in Texas and several other states who sought to adopt or foster Native American children sued, claiming the law discriminates against non-Native Americans. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court agreed to review the case.
In celebration of November as Native American Heritage Month, it is important to recognize the tribes’ rich histories, as well as acknowledge this nation’s systemic racist practices that have eroded their culture.
Unsealing her roots
Since hers was a closed adoption, Ross’ birth records had been sealed, making it nearly impossible to find her biological parents. She did try in 1994 and appealed to a Fort Worth court to open her records. She even had a paralegal friend use the Indian Child Welfare Act to petition the court. It was granted, but she only received the redacted file.
The yearning to know where she came never left her. One of Ross’ longtime friends shared her story with a guide during a vacation trip to the Navajo Nation. “The Navajo have no tradition of adoption. She needs to find her family because she needs to come home,” the guide told her friend.
Silversmith was 27 and working as maid for a wealthy white family in Fort Worth when she met Ross’ father, a white soldier, at a Valentine’s dance at a YMCA. The family told Silversmith she could continue to work, but only without her child.
“My mom just really doesn’t talk about it much. She’ll just say, ‘I don’t remember,’ and she might not. She’s 91 years old now,” Ross says.
Ross was her mother’s oldest child. She has a half-sister, four years younger, and a half-brother, who died in April. No one in Silversmith’s family knew of Ross’ existence, except for a late sister.
Growing up in a rural East Texas, Ross was used to hearing racial slurs. She learned about Native Americans from John Wayne movies. Hollywood often depicted them as savages and uncivilized, an image that Ross struggled to understand.
At age 7, her parents had told her she was adopted and that her mother was Native American. But that’s all they knew. They once took Ross to the Alabama-Coushatta Reservation near Livingston to see people who looked like her. They watched them perform traditional dances, then left.
“Most of the people in my town thought I was Mexican. When I found out I was Indian, I told people at school, and they started calling me, ‘squaw.’ I was always different.”
Ross never met another person of color until she attended college at the University of Houston.
“You would think I would have been in culture shock, but I fit in,” Ross said. “I felt like I was with my people, just with many differences. There were people interested in things that I was interested in. It was wonderful.”
Living in two worlds
Though her blood is part Navajo, Ross said she needs her original birth certificate, which is in Tarrant County, to be officially enrolled into the Navajo tribe. Her mother has written a letter relinquishing her right to anonymity so that the birth record can be unsealed. Still, Ross gets the runaround.
It’s a travesty that bureaucratic chains can prevent a person from claiming their roots. But Ross’ adoption, which crossed racial boundaries, is a lesson for prospective adoptive parents.
“If people are going to adopt, especially if you’re going to adopt a child of a different race than yours, learn about their culture,” Ross says. “They have it inside them. I firmly believe nature implanted so much into me that nurture was not going to overrule.”
It’s been six years since Ross met her birth mother, and she has visited the Navajo reservation in Arizona more times than she can count. It feels like home. Much more so than East Texas, where her adoptive parents lived until their deaths. She still has family there, but not much of a connection.
“I belong to a bigger tribe now,” Ross says. “But in so many ways, I still feel like I’m walking between two worlds. I never really fit where I grew up. I’m trying to fit now where I belong.”