Sierra Clark
Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians
While on a journey to connect with her family’s history, Sierra became a storyteller for her tribal community.
Sierra Clark is many things: a mother, a self-described radical, a journalist and a Kitchi Wikwedong Odawa Ansishinaabe. “A direct descendant of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians,” she tells me.
Her emails and greetings are always a mix of Anishinaabemowin, the native language of her tribe, and English.
“Aaniin boozhoo Lindsay!” she’ll write before switching to English with a traditional word or two making its way into her farewells.
Sierra grew up attending school in Suttons Bay, a small town in the northwestern Michigan. She recalls the school providing some Anishinaabemowin language classes because of the prevalent Native American population in the area.
Sierra holds an eagle feather fan on the shores of Lake Michigan in Traverse City, Michigan
“Most of it is me reclaiming it as an adult, I’ve taken classes here and there. I need to be better at it,” she said about her ability to speak the language.
The ability to speak the language is a feat in itself, as it’s estimated that only 1,000 people can speak the traditional Anishinaabemowin language.
Generational trauma and forced assimilation through Native American Boarding schools led to many Native families, like Sierra’s, losing their language.
Sierra’s great grandfather and the generations before him all attended boarding schools, stripping her family from the culture and its practices.
“My great grandmother, she spoke the language. And she may have been the last person in our family that had seen traditions or ceremonies or, the culture in a way that we have never known,” she said. “But she didn't pass that language down to her children because she was afraid of them speaking it.”
Erasure of traditional culture has left younger generations with the task of reconnecting to their Native American heritage, and in a way, resurrecting the culture itself.
“I grew up on my reservation, but I wasn’t a card carrier, I’m not tribally enrolled,” she says. “Because I am mixed European Anishinaabe I felt like I was on the outside of my community looking in.”
That feeling of being disconnected from her culture, and a part of her identity, is why Sierra took it upon herself to teach herself the “history, ceremony or culture” that she wasn’t taught growing up.
“I always knew I am Native American; I didn't know what it was to be Odawa Anishinaabe,” she said. “It was the same (lack of) identity that my mother went through…and my grandmother.”
That feeling came to a head when Sierra went on a solo trip to the Standing Rock protests in 2016 to help deliver food and supplies to Water Protectors that were residing there.
“Something happened to me there spiritually. It’s like something just kind of awoken, and I know that sounds super cliché,” Sierra recalls.
When it was time for Sierra to return to Michigan, she remembers feeling like she left a piece of herself at Standing Rock, but came home with a new aspiration to reclaim her Native culture.
“I found a piece of me that was kind of hiding,” said Sierra. “I really made a commitment to myself that I wanted to be a good ancestor, and that mean respecting my culture.”
So, for the past decade of her life Sierra has found herself working to do just that, with one question at the center of it.
“Who am I as an Odawa quay?”
The first thing she did to piece together her family’s history was finding out her original surname, as it was Christianized in the past.
“It varies, depending on what document I read, but the most familiar version I’ve seen is Nayatoshing,” said Sierra. “That would have changed like five or six generations ago.”
From there, she worked to find who some of her distant relatives and get in touch with them to learn more about her family history and what it meant to be Anishinaabe.
“Residential boarding schools and assimilation really colonized my family in a lot of ways. And it broke us up.”
Seven years ago, Sierra was able to reconnect with an uncle, Tom Antoine, who is an elder in the tribal community.
“My Uncle Tom, he's been very influential on my Red Road Walk as we call it, my road in recovery and my road into my spiritual aspects of being Odawa Anishinaabe,” Sierra said.
Since reconnecting with her uncle Sierra has been able to learn long-forgotten stories about her family and piece together their history. He’s also shared with her his knowledge of traditional plant medicines.
Medicinal plants, Yarrow (L) and Labrador (R), grown by Sierra
“He has a wealth of knowledge regarding plant medicine,” says Sierra. “And makwa medicine, I’m bear clan.”
In the Anishinaabe culture there are seven original clans that define someone’s role in society. The Bear (or makwa) Clan are known as Medicine People, or healers, and keep the knowledge of medicinal plants and their uses.
Throughout this journey, Sierra has even changed her profession in a way to honor her Odawa culture, and other Native American people in northern Michigan.
“I was working as a water data analyst,” she said. “And it wasn’t fulfilling. It was really hard; I had a hard time after graduating (college) finding something that was meaningful to me.”
In spring of 2020, a friend working for Report for America reached out to her and asked “have you ever thought about journalism?”
Sierra hadn’t, but the project that was proposed helped change her mind.
The goal was to partner with the Traverse City Record Eagle newspaper, and work to indigenize the news through the creation of the Mishigamiing Journalism Project.
The project included the work of Sierra and other Native American women from all different tribes with four goals in mind:
“1. Put Indigenous reporters in newsrooms in Michigan. Train them, pay them, and create jobs for them.
2. Make newsrooms in Michigan safe and inclusive for Indigenous journalists.
3. Make coverage of Indigenous issues and tribal affairs in Michigan more thorough, just and meaningful.
4. Empower Indigenous people to report in their own communities and beyond.”
https://www.indigenizingthenews.com/aboutmjp
“We basically collaborated with the Record Eagle and other newsrooms and wrote Native American stories,” Sierra said.
The project took off and has since partnered with additional organizations, and led to a new career for Sierra.
Sierra wears a ribbon dress, a garment traditional in Native American culture
“I applied for RFA (Report for America) last year, and was awarded a position with the Traverse City Record eagle to be the first and only Indigenous Affairs reporter.”
Sierra recalls the first six months as a blur, being thrown into the world of journalism but once again looked to her traditional culture for guidance in her new role.
“As Anishinaabee, we are storytellers,” she said. “It took me a little bit to stop trying to identify myself as a journalist who is Anishinaabee, and start identifying myself as an Anishinabee storyteller who is in mainstream media.”
Working as a journalist and to indigenize the news is important work for Sierra because “representation matters.”
American Indian or Alaska Native made up less than 1% of journalists in 2019, according to data from the career analyst site Zippia.
Having more Native journalists is important because of the historic, and present day, portrayal of Native American people in the media which often is stereotypical.
“They (mainstream media) show up to doom and gloom stories and don’t hold any interest continuing to report on other aspects of that sovereign nation,” Sierra said.
While it’s inevitable for her to report on trauma herself, Sierra has been actively reporting on more cultural, scientific and historical stories in her area through her “Anishinaabe Neighbor” series with the Record Eagle.
“I highlight Anishinaabe people in different communities throughout Michigan who are on the pursuit of something great for themselves, or their community,” she said.
An idea that feels very similar to what Sierra is doing through her own work telling these stories.
Sierra said the younger generations of Native American people are living in a way to bring the culture back to life.
“I have seen children being raised in the culture fully,” she said. “They are raising their kids in rice fields, taking them to language classes, they’ve got the matching mom and tot ribbon skirts.”
She hopes that, through this new honoring and resurrecting of the culture, future generations are “raised in Anishinaabe love rather than colonial destruct” that has impacted previous generations.
“It’s very humbling to know that the least I can do is to honor myself as an Anishinaabe Odawa quay and keep learning,” said Sierra, when she reflects on how her ancestors persevered to maintain the culture to the extent they were able to.
“We’re unapologetically Anishinaabe, we’re not just Anishinaabe. We are loud and proud about it.”
