Lorna Jones (Wolf Clan) lived the first 24 years of her life on the Onondaga Reservation. Prejudice made growing up rough, she attests. Despite a difficult childhood, the 77-year-old said she always felt safer on the reservation than off. But, as she became more involved in the outside community, through school and work, she noted differences.

“When I left the Onondaga School and had to go to Valley Academy, it was a different world,” said Lorna. “The girls at the academy liked the Indian boys, so if you had good-looking brothers the girls were all over you.

“Later, when I started working, people would just ask dumb questions. But there are strange people everywhere. In my travels I’ve seen a lot of prejudice toward others. Because I’ve experienced prejudice myself, I am sensitive to it.”

Some questions Lorna has been asked are those that many Oneidas have recounted in the past. Do you live in a teepee? Can you enlist in the service? But, Lorna said, after a while she began to feel sorry for the questioners.

“It’s ignorance and lack of education about Indians that cause people to ask these types of questions and to sometimes act badly toward us,” said Lorna. “It continues to this day. A neighbor asked, ‘What are you Oneidas trying to do, own the whole state of New York?’”

Her maternal grandmother, Lavina Hill Schenandoah (1895 – 1991), experienced the pangs of racism on a daily basis, growing up in a boarding school where her language was taken from her. Lavina was sent to the school at age 5 when her parents separated. But, Lorna said, she never complained about those early years because she was liked at the school for her washing and ironing abilities. She got along because she complied. If you behaved, her grandmother told her, you were OK.

“To this day I get a lot of looks when I go in some restaurants,” said Lorna. “But, I could care less what they think.”

A resilience hard won with age.