Truth in the Blood: Ancestry, Identity, and the Message of Conflicting Roots

There is a message delivered in my new novel Conflicting Roots (Maine Authors

Publishing, 2025), as is explained in the Introduction. Simply stated, my goal was to portray

the troublesome history of relationships between European colonists and Indigenous New

Pilgrims gladly accepting assistance from the Native people led by Ousemequin Massasoit.

England peoples that led to bloody King Philip’s War (1675-6) and to illuminate some of the reasons those same troubles continue in modern times. Why modern protagonists Matty and Tim still must work hard to discover and accept truths and values of their Native ancestors is an example of how many of us are unable to understand the messages of America’s first citizens. They try to tell us there is a better way for us to live with Mother

EARTH, but often we don’t listen.

Some people, however, are finding another strong emotional signal shared with my characters Matty Wheet and Tim Romney who lived in Plymouth County, Massachusetts 300 years after the war. Twenty-year-old Matty reacts forcefully to the realization she has Wampanoag ancestors and loses her own sense of family identity. She can’t accept that she might not be the “white girl” she always thought she was. Several early readers have told me that they, too, had difficulties believing in the reality of their own family roots. Timmy was Matty’s guide in learning to be proud of her indigenous gene pool. Yet, although he knew a bit about Romney family history, he denied it played any significant role in his life. Through his genealogical research he also learned to appreciate his own ancient family.

The opening quote by Penobscot Morgan Talty (Night of the Living Rez, Fire Exit)

enforces messages of both the author (me) and the characters. He says “first, we are our

history – the good, the bad, the ugly and traumatic, and the strength and courage we carry

in our blood.”

So does the late leader of Wampanoag People Tall Oak Weeden. “We have lost the

ability to follow the spiritual patterns of our Indian tradition. But we have not lost our Indian ties. We still have these things from deep down inside. We still have the basic concepts and the basic Indian sense of values. We realize that we are all brothers because we are all children of the Great Creator who made us all. We are all children of the Great Mother who nourishes all.”

One might criticize Conflicting Roots for portraying the positive and negative aspects of

both European colonial and Indigenous American cultures and action in such a bloody period of U.S. history. However, as John Fire Lame Deer, medicine man of the Rosebud Lakota said at a 1974 prayer ceremony in Boston , “You must learn the bad things to be somebody. You must learn the good things in order to be somebody. I have to experience both ways in order to understand what human life is. The darkness has more power than the light. If the light goes away right now, everything is gone. You want to walk home, but you can’t see anything.”

At that very same ceremony Rod Skenendore of the Blackfoot People spoke words that I

have never forgotten, words which each reader will hopefully take away from Conflicting

Roots. “You now see and hear people who have been ready to talk to you for five hundred years. Take these things which you have heard home with you. Put you heart into the Earth and you will find an amazing truth there.”