Proud to Be a Remix, Part 6: The Sins of the Father Cannot Be Forgiven but Must Be Healed

Proud to Be a Remix is an extended discussion of my ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural bankground

This is a photo of my great, great, great grandfather (#1»#6). One of them, anyway. This photo was taken in 1847, about 11 years after the invention of photography, and it was taken in Ireland, two years into the potato famine that led 25% of the Irish population to either starve or leave. It appears he ended up in the same county in New York where my mother’s side of the family is from, and where they’ve lived since the New France Assimilation project, if not before then (the Native branch has been there much longer). I’ve been able to locate a marriage document for him from that time period. He gave his permission with the condition that his future son-in-law take her last name, as he had no sons. So, he was one of the ones that survived the famine by joining the Irish diaspora.

I can see where I got some of my features, too. Although I am not an enrolled member of Ireland Nation, I still claim my Irish heritage and cultural identity, including the inherited generational trauma of British colonization of Ireland. On my mother's side, one thing that united generations of people mixing in her corner of the American melting pot was historical memory of being on the receiving end of recent colonization, especially by the French. The worst year of the famine was 1847. You can see how loose his pants are, and how it appears he's wearing several layers of shirts to hide the gaunt figure his face betrays. Getting your photo taken was a rare and recent special occasion.

Because of the charter school system, which mirrored residential schools in the US and Canada that are the reason so many Native languages are just gone forever, Irish emigrés fleeing the potato famine often went to another English speaking country, such as a different British colony (or in the case of America, a rebranded British colony that no longer paid its taxes). I'm writing this on a plane to Dublin, and it's the first time anyone in my family has had occasion to return to the Irish homeland since British colonization forced us westward, to my knowledge. The English attitude towards starving Irish people was so callous it inspired probably the most famous piece of satire in the English speaking world: Jon Swift's “A Modest Proposal.” People sometimes overlook the fact that Swift was an Irishman who did not actually want to sell Irish babies to the English colonizers who were starving his countrymen in the name of cheap “Irish lumper” potatoes, for the English to eat instead.