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My DS, 13 months old, is a quarter Mexican, quarter Apache, quarter German, and then the last quarter is a mix of Cherokee, Irish, and Scottish. I would like to incorporate each of these cultures into his life, but am unsure of how to do that, or to what extent. I am huge into genealogy and love to learn about other cultures, but am not sure how to make learning about them fun for him. I'm not sure if it matters much at this age, but as he gets older I think it would be a great thing for us to do as a family. His bparents don't celebrate their cultures or anything, but I would like to do something, and not just his but also include my husband's and my ancestral cultures as well. I'm wondering what other's have done with their children who are of different race(s) than themselves. How much have you incorporated into their lives, if anything?
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No, he's not enrolled with either. There are quite a lot of Native Americans in my area, but the most popular tribe here is Shoshone, but I have some friends that I'm going to talk to who are NA and are heavily involved in the powwows here and see what sort of activities we could get involved in to learn about DS's roots. I was just wondering what others have done on here, even if their children don't have the same ancestry as mine.
My son was Omaha and Santee Sioux and neither myself or my ex husband was native. Everything I incorporated was just part of daily life for us. We listened to Omaha and Santee music in the car, I have a lot of native friends that he was around and he received his Omaha name shortly before his death. There's a lot of great books for kiddos too.
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You reminded me of a family we used to have, here. The father was native American; Northwestern Shoshone. The mother was white. They had two kids together and then adopted several more, who were native American. I don't remember all the tribes, but I know they had a Navajo and a Paiute, both of which are common here. They were very interested in helping preserve their cultures, so they learned specific things about the tribes that the adopted kids were from. Then, they got everyone native costumes and learned some dances and chants and other things and put them together into a presentation that they would put on at schools and other places, like out adoption group. It's been about 20 years, but my three oldest boys, who must have been about 9, 6 and 3, just loved it, as did the other children there. That's probably more than you want to do, but maybe you could combine some customs from the two NA tribes. The Mexican part may be much easier, depending on where you live.
devildogwife
My son was Omaha and Santee Sioux and neither myself or my ex husband was native. Everything I incorporated was just part of daily life for us. We listened to Omaha and Santee music in the car, I have a lot of native friends that he was around and he received his Omaha name shortly before his death. There's a lot of great books for kiddos too.