Whose country is it anyway?

The other night I needed a break, so we went to see the Legend Of Zorro. While I enjoyed the movie, there was a bit of departure from the other version - but overall it was great. "nuff said about that.

The movie was set in the months before California was to become a state, right before the Civil War, and there was a lot of Spanish spoken. It took me by surprise - mostly because I think to Spanish speaking as a modern phenomenon - like people from south of the border just started coming to the United States. Let me first say that I stink at American history - I don't apologize exactly, but I should have paid more attention.

When we lived in Logansport, I am ashamed to admit it, but there were people there who talked about "those Mexicans". These same people had forgotten that their Irish and German and Italian ancestors didn't hop off the boat speaking English, and that there were lots of sections of town that were ethnocentric - where German or Italian could be heard fluently. My family has been here since the late1800's, and in one of my grandfather's family history lessons, he recounts how his grandmother - a Schmidt - would interpret English for the older folks who spoke German. Another friend, who was about ten years older than my folks, recounted interpreting the English into Italian for his older relatives when he was young.

I have seen countless families where this is the case - the younger generations interpreting for the older ones. Let me assure you that I see this in Spanish-speaking families and those from Bosnia, and Cuba, and China, and Japan and a number of other spots I can't even find on a map. I don't think this means the older people don't try to learn English - I think it means that English is hard to learn.

I remember being upset when my children repeated things about "Mexicans", so I did what any good parent would do - took them to an Indian Reservation where they were the only blonde kids in their classes - but that is another story.

We tried to learn Navajo - a spoken, not written language - and even though we were immersed, after two years I learned enough to ask for a bathroom - and that was about it. My kids, though, were nearly conversational in Navajo - because they learn it more readily than adults do.

When the United States was colonized, there were people from many countries who had grandparents who never mastered English. Frankly it is not an easy language. All through out the movie, there were people who spoke both English and Spanish - people who made up a good portion of California - people who named cities like Los Angeles and San Diego with the blatantly religious names they still carry.

It bothers me when I hear people say that if folks come to the United States, they should learn the language. It can be a real pain trying to find educational materials in other languages, or using an interpreter - but the truth is in an information age, we have to try to adapt to our audience. Even if someone knows enough English to ask for a bathroom, quoting pathophysiology to them and discussing hormone function in their second language is just asking for misunderstanding.

But mostly it bothers me because it means we have forgotten who we are - we are the descendants of people from all over the globe who decided to leave oppression in search of a dream - the dream of a better life. We are descendants of people who farmed the land, shoveled manure, hammered nails, built dams and felled trees - doing those dirty jobs that people who had lived here for a couple of generations didn't have to do anymore. Most of our family members who came here first did not speak English - except for those few of us descendant from the English settlers. My family spoke Gaelic, German, and maybe English - but who knows, that was about 130 years ago. They packed everything they could and came through Ellis Island without much - I saw the signature of Jacob Loner who came through in the 1800's - it was not the ornate, bold signature of a wealthy man, but the modest signature of a man who worked with his hands, whose son would grow up to have a lumberyard and build houses with his own sons.

It is important to know who you are, but more important to remember who you came from.