Wis. Women of Color Network celebrates Women’s History Month
“Women of Color: Honoring Our Past and Challenging our Future”
“Women of Color: Honoring Our Past and Challenging our Future”
(L-R) WWOCN
Pres. Jan Saiz;
panelists Milele
Chikasa Anana,
Ada Deer. Jan
Miyasaki and
Anita Herrera;
Agnes Cammer
Pres. Jan Saiz;
panelists Milele
Chikasa Anana,
Ada Deer. Jan
Miyasaki and
Anita Herrera;
Agnes Cammer
By Heidi M. Pascual
With this theme, "Women of color: Honoring Our Past and
Challenging our future," the Wisconsin Women of Color Network
aptly presented a panel of four distinguished women leaders to its
members on Saturday, March 26, at Madison College (MATC) Truax
Campus: Anita Herrera (Latina educator); Jan Miyasaki (Asian
American lawyer/activist); Ada Deer (American Indian social
worker/educator); and Milele Chikasa Anana (African American
publisher). They were to talk about their life experiences focused on
goal achievement and to provide the inspiration to all women of
color present in this quarterly WWOCN conference.
After a warm welcome by WWOCN President Jan Saiz, Karen
Goulet read her poems that touched the hearts of her audience,
mostly women members and a few men (Click Here). Afterward,
Kellianrae Hartshorn played her harp, and Heidi Pascual sang
“Memories” both in dedication to the WWOCN women who are
trailblazers in their own ways.
Following a lunch buffet, Sharyl Kato introduced the panelists,
punctuating each introduction with an anecdote about how and why
she holds them high in her wall of fame.
“We need to be really strong because of what’s happening in our
city, our county, our state, our country and the world,” Kato said,
adding that one way to be strong is to be with each other, to be
proactive and to be with strong women who are role models in the
With this theme, "Women of color: Honoring Our Past and
Challenging our future," the Wisconsin Women of Color Network
aptly presented a panel of four distinguished women leaders to its
members on Saturday, March 26, at Madison College (MATC) Truax
Campus: Anita Herrera (Latina educator); Jan Miyasaki (Asian
American lawyer/activist); Ada Deer (American Indian social
worker/educator); and Milele Chikasa Anana (African American
publisher). They were to talk about their life experiences focused on
goal achievement and to provide the inspiration to all women of
color present in this quarterly WWOCN conference.
After a warm welcome by WWOCN President Jan Saiz, Karen
Goulet read her poems that touched the hearts of her audience,
mostly women members and a few men (Click Here). Afterward,
Kellianrae Hartshorn played her harp, and Heidi Pascual sang
“Memories” both in dedication to the WWOCN women who are
trailblazers in their own ways.
Following a lunch buffet, Sharyl Kato introduced the panelists,
punctuating each introduction with an anecdote about how and why
she holds them high in her wall of fame.
“We need to be really strong because of what’s happening in our
city, our county, our state, our country and the world,” Kato said,
adding that one way to be strong is to be with each other, to be
proactive and to be with strong women who are role models in the
community. “They give me the fuel I need and I hope that happens with you as well and that we feel each other today. We want to
really highlight these women of color leaders who blazed our trail for the advancement of our lives. We want to know what has
inspired them and provide us with some enlightenment as to how to be the best we can.”
Family values
All four panelists talked about the values their families inculcated in them while growing up, and kept these values to this day.
Anita Herrera was born in Texas in a big migrant family of nine children. “I remember my values that my parents passed on to me—
hard work, family, respect for others and others’ property, as well as respect for elders, so I carried my values that they taught me. My
dad was always busy, not a whole lot of play. He was very strict about his family. We came up to Wisconsin for 10 years in the Racine-
Kenosha area. I feel very close to the earth for some reason , having worked in the fields. We always thought there’s something about
the earth that grounds you and keeps you grounded for the rest of your life. “
Jan Miyasaki’s grandparents immigrated to Hawaii from Japan in the 1880s to work on the plantations.
“From the beginning, in Hawaii where I’m from, to much later as a child in the 1960s, I was surrounded by strong women, my
grandmother and my mother, who you might think were traditional … with respect to the time they were living in, but now, I believe they’
re not as simple as that. They have to be, because they were pioneers. To make a family in America under the circumstances my
grandparents were in -- low wages, poor working conditions, and barred from citizenship, they built a community now being the old and
new. My mother took over the task and there were so many women, aunts and cousins, and everyone was so interested. I don’t think I
ever had a baby sitter who wasn’t a close family member. When I close my eyes and I could quickly go back to that. I can hear it, I can
smell it. And I was really fortunate.”
Ada Deer talked about her identity. “There are three pillars of my identity: I’m a Menominee Indian, I’m a social worker, I’m a woman.
People often ask me how I got involved in various issues, and the answer always comes back to one or more of these pillars. First of
all, we start off as being human, and then, all other things come in. All of us in our involvement… it comes from our compassion for
one another, our caring for one another and for our desire to help.
"Like many of you, I am my mother’s daughter -- White mother, Menominee Indian father. I’m the oldest of five, 2 brothers, 2 sisters. I
tell people I was born an adult, taking care of people. My mother told me early in life that I was an American Indian, and that I was put
on earth by the Creator for a purpose, and my purpose was to help my people – the Indians. I had no idea what Indians meant; that was
when I was under 10, I just said ‘Okay.’
Milele Chikasa Anana grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “I was adopted by some people who found me when I was 6 months old and
because they thought I was worthy of being rescued, they took me home in a cardboard box and they kept nourishing me.”
When she was completing high school, Milele’s mom asked her one day, “What are you going to do now?” “I don’t know, I think I’ll get
a job “ was her answer. “Oh no; what you’re going to do by 2 o’clock this afternoon is write three colleges and get applications and
then choose one to go to.” That was in 1950-51 when you do what your elders told you to do without talking back to them. “
Life Experiences
Herrera always had a plan and a vision. Growing up in a migrant family and in the inner city of Racine, she knew she had to change her
future. “When I was 9 years old, I remember working behind a field with tools on the ground, rows that I was supposed to clean. I can
remember saying to myself. ‘This is not going to be for my kids! I’m not going to put them in the filed under the hot sun.’ Always, in my
life, I’d ask, ‘Where do I want to be in five years?’ When I got married and had five kids, that became very useful.”
When a school counselor told her, “You’re not college material,” Herrera didn’t listen because she had a plan to go to college. “I’ve
heard other people being told that. And I thought, how could it be, when I get all As in my classes? I’m not going to listen to that. My
mother once told me, ‘You can quit junior high school because you’re going to walk a mile to the bus and it will already be dark when
you get home.’ No, I’m not going to quit! When I think back, that would have been terrible. I would have been a drop-out. Anyway, I didn’
t always listen; I had my own ideas about what I wanted to do all the time. “
Herrera entered the field of education at the time when segregation was in place. “My first job in the educational field was
Instructional Aide, working with two or three teachers, where they taught minority kids assigned in schools outside of the city. I was
learning all the time.
“I actually told the teachers, ‘You challenge is, teaching those kids that are slower and don’t have advocates. It’s not a challenge to
teach the bright ones; they’re going to learn without you, because they have parents who know; they’re basically their advocates. So it
was hard because they never thought of that. They actually told me they like to teach the brighter kids because it was just easier. I said
‘Yeah, but we’re doing desegration, and now you’re getting more minority kids that have greater needs. I learned that I was not going to
raise my voice in the classroom. You raise your voice and the kids will get mad and also raise their voice. As a parent, I didn’t want to
do that. I found out that if you lower your voice in the classroom, then they would be quieter.
“Most of my experiences have been through my peers. At some point, because of my planning and my vision, I decided I was going to
school. I told my husband it’s either you go to school or I go to school, because we had to make more money. He was a custodian in a
school and I did office work. So I went to school, went to work in a college to get free tuition, and took my BA. I promised myself I’m
going to live life, take chances and have fun.”
Miyasaki’s family in Hawaii associated with the Young Buddhist Association (YBA) which doubled as a temple. “The association didn’t
just (promote spirituality). Women and children socialized with others and men and women talked about our culture. Looking back,
when the adults gathered there, they did to work on issues of concern to the community as well.
“I attended the ethnically diverse public schools in Hawaii and I learned about other Asian ethnic groups there and how to live together
in a diverse place which is Hawaii.” From this beautiful stew of cultures and diverse learning activities, Miyasaki learned the meaning
of love, as well as inequality, fighting and conflict, and community.
In Madison, Wisconsin, Miyasaki met a number of women of color who inspired her to join their group called Women of Color Support
Group. “And we began to plan to take action like march and rallies to highlight violence against women of color.” From then on,
Miyasaki met other women of color such as Wendy Hall and Peggy Choy and that association led to the founding of the Pacific and
Asian Women’s Alliance. She, together with the growing number of Asian Americans that Miyasaki came to know, led to the founding
of the Wisconsin Organization of Asian Americans.
Miyasaki also participated in another movement, this time a minority coalition brought together by racist acts at the University of
Wisconsin in the mid ‘80s via a fraternity party that had a mascot of a black face caricature with a bone going through its nose. “They
were called on by the African American community about the black face caricature and in s sense they said, ‘Well, it’s not a black
person, it’s a Filipino.’ And so together-- as a minority coalition along with the African American students, Chicanos of the program La
Colectiva and faculty, academic staff and community members of color-- the University was pushed to establish ultimately after much
work, this system, an ethnic studies requirement. That was a big win and from that effort we were able to push forward later to become
the Asian American Studies Program. That was a moment of success. The Asian American Studies program brought other women into
our Asian American women’s movement in Wisconsin.
“Many of the women I mentioned have founded organizations that support the Asian American community, other communities of color,
and also the marginalized.”
Deer got involved when her tribe, the Menominee, a federally recognized nation, faced its treaty termination by Congress in the mid’
50s. “It was a political act. I returned to the reservation to lead the movement to restore the Menominees to federal recognition. This
was also a political act and we embarked on a political process to change the law. My tribe is very famous; we’re one of the few tribes
in the whole country that’s in our ancestral homeland. It’s about 45 miles west of Greenbay. We were a federally recognized tribe for a
hundred years, and the government decided that the treaty should be terminated; that means treaties were ignored: land became
subject to taxation; it was cultural, economic, political disaster, and it was a very very hard experience for my people.
“So we decided to fight. We built coalitions of supporters, accessed legal help from a federal program called JudiCare and the Native
American Rights Club, that’s the NAACP legal defense fund of the Indians.
"I lobbied the halls of Congress for the passage of the Menominee Restoration Act. Let me say that being a social worker that the
movement came from the people. I didn’t start off wanting to be the leader because I felt it should be other people. It’s very hard getting
involved in social action and lots of people aren’t able to do it. You have to have a degree of knowledge and skill and experience. You
also have to have anger. I remember what my mother told me to help, help Indians. We walked the halls of Congress, we got the act
passed. It was a historical victory, with reversal of a terrible policy that small tribe with no money really was able to get Congress to
reverse this terrible injustice. So other tribes were able to be restored as a result of the hard work that we did. Our movement was
called DRUMS (Determination of Rights and Unity for Menominee Shelters).”
Deer didn’t want to be the chair of her tribe after this victory. “But people told me that I know the legislation the best and that I needed
to do it. This wasn’t universally accepted at first, because both men and women said our tribe has always been led by the men. And I
said, ‘Well, that could be part of the problem.’ And since then, that’s over 30 years ago, we’ve had about five women that have been
elected and have served as though we broke TRADITION.”
Her tribe also had to draft a new constitution because the Menominees were setting up a new relationship with the federal government.
Organizing people from different places and asking their views were tough. “None of these was easy. .. Now, the Indians have been
really conditioned to be dependent, so at first people didn’t know what to say. Finally, people started responding to this. So my tribe
spent two grassroots efforts : restoration in the act and constitution. And still not enough because time moves on and young people are
not aware, they’re not informed and so it’s important to all of us to educate young people as much as we can.
“I didn’t have a grand plan when I started. I wouldn’t have predicted the path I’d taken during my life. I didn’t plan to lead the tribe to
restore the tribe. I didn’t plan to become the Asst. Secretary of Indian Affairs. But my mother has been writing to me when I was in
college telling me about the terrible aspects of termination and she kept saying I had to do something. “Mom, I’m down here, going to
school full time; it’s a lot of work. It’s not my job; I don’t know anything.”
Deer wanted to go to law school but finally dropped her dream to work on the Restoration Act. “Oftentimes, growing out of your own
heritage or the conditions around you, you could decide, are you going to sit back and do nothing or are you going to be involved? I
decided my tribe was more important than my completing law school. I thought I would go back but I never did because I had the feel of
what I wanted to do and I knew I could always find a lawyer whenever I needed one. “
Anana talked about lessons that she has learned if she knew she couldn’t fail. “What would I do if I knew I couldn’t fail? I’d do the
same thing that I’ve done. The difference is that I will be bolder, I would be more confident and I wouldn’t have anybody to dissuade me
from what was inside me. Mostly my background has been empowered and it was empowered precisely because I came up in strict
segregation. No public libraries; no checking out the books; no going to the park. When I went to the university it was the first time for
me to meet White people, and they depowered me. I remember a professor telling me ‘Oh don’t worry about getting an A in this class,
because colored people can’t get an A in Shakespeare.’ Well, he just gave me more determination. Another instance where I forgot my
master’s degree a man said to me, ‘You think you deserve the job, don’t you?’ So all of my life I have been struggling to get that power
back that my original family gave me, that you can do good.”
She narrated her experience of going to the March in Washington, because she was tired of being depowered. “My whole background
has been one of empowerment because my family gave me confidence and had high expectations of me and told me I could do
anything that I wanted to do and I had the responsibility to help others and all the good things that families tell you. But then when I got
in society and met White people, a lot of people began to depower me. When I got on that bus to go to Washington DC, there were no
restaurants and no restrooms along the way that we could stop at. It was Black churches that fed us…. Once I reached the March to
Washington, I became empowered again.”
She said she founded UMOJA magazine to highlight the life and accomplishments of African Americans who belong to the spectrum
between “criminals” and “athletes.” “I started UMOJA because White people who are in charge of communications like to portray
Black people in four words: #1 criminal; #2 athlete; #3 as Superman and Superwomen colored folks—high degrees; #4 or as ‘selected
one.’ We have been denied and rejected on the basis of some superficial quality. So my job with UMOJA is to applaud us, to help us
recognize all the people between that spectrum of being an athlete and a criminal.”
Inspirational Messages
Herrera said having a plan and a vision made perfect sense to her. They guided her throughout her life and made her accomplish
things as if following a road map to success.
Miyasaki said, “We are a diverse group; but we cannot not allow ourselves to be pitted against each other. There’s so much to
remember not just about our own community but also how we work across race and ethnicity. We have to continue to empower and
mentor our young women. Our movement worked with trial by fire, training us like we were trained by our ancestors. It has built our
skills. It created a beautiful network that many of us depend on. And finally in doing this we continue to make together and make
American culture for the better. And in doing so we are promoting equality, social justice, and peace.”
Deer said , “We have our own power, our own personal power. We have political power. We have moral power. We have financial
power. I think many people think that one person can’t do much, but the choice is always there and you never know where your
decision is going to take you. As we look at the future, we know that there’s a lot of work that will keep many of us busy for a long
time.”
Anana concluded, “So what would I do if I knew I couldn’t fail? I would love some child everyday. I know I’m on the short end, I like to
live my last years, whatever that might be, sitting in a school, waiting for that rebellious school boy to come along and hugging him. I
just like to sit there with those kids and one side will be called Milele side. Hug some child and give them the confidence that my folks
in Oklahoma gave me.”
The conference ended with a Unity Circle Dance led by Jan Saiz, and the attendees left with the words of wisdom and inspiration of
these women trailblazers tightly held in their hearts.
really highlight these women of color leaders who blazed our trail for the advancement of our lives. We want to know what has
inspired them and provide us with some enlightenment as to how to be the best we can.”
Family values
All four panelists talked about the values their families inculcated in them while growing up, and kept these values to this day.
Anita Herrera was born in Texas in a big migrant family of nine children. “I remember my values that my parents passed on to me—
hard work, family, respect for others and others’ property, as well as respect for elders, so I carried my values that they taught me. My
dad was always busy, not a whole lot of play. He was very strict about his family. We came up to Wisconsin for 10 years in the Racine-
Kenosha area. I feel very close to the earth for some reason , having worked in the fields. We always thought there’s something about
the earth that grounds you and keeps you grounded for the rest of your life. “
Jan Miyasaki’s grandparents immigrated to Hawaii from Japan in the 1880s to work on the plantations.
“From the beginning, in Hawaii where I’m from, to much later as a child in the 1960s, I was surrounded by strong women, my
grandmother and my mother, who you might think were traditional … with respect to the time they were living in, but now, I believe they’
re not as simple as that. They have to be, because they were pioneers. To make a family in America under the circumstances my
grandparents were in -- low wages, poor working conditions, and barred from citizenship, they built a community now being the old and
new. My mother took over the task and there were so many women, aunts and cousins, and everyone was so interested. I don’t think I
ever had a baby sitter who wasn’t a close family member. When I close my eyes and I could quickly go back to that. I can hear it, I can
smell it. And I was really fortunate.”
Ada Deer talked about her identity. “There are three pillars of my identity: I’m a Menominee Indian, I’m a social worker, I’m a woman.
People often ask me how I got involved in various issues, and the answer always comes back to one or more of these pillars. First of
all, we start off as being human, and then, all other things come in. All of us in our involvement… it comes from our compassion for
one another, our caring for one another and for our desire to help.
"Like many of you, I am my mother’s daughter -- White mother, Menominee Indian father. I’m the oldest of five, 2 brothers, 2 sisters. I
tell people I was born an adult, taking care of people. My mother told me early in life that I was an American Indian, and that I was put
on earth by the Creator for a purpose, and my purpose was to help my people – the Indians. I had no idea what Indians meant; that was
when I was under 10, I just said ‘Okay.’
Milele Chikasa Anana grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “I was adopted by some people who found me when I was 6 months old and
because they thought I was worthy of being rescued, they took me home in a cardboard box and they kept nourishing me.”
When she was completing high school, Milele’s mom asked her one day, “What are you going to do now?” “I don’t know, I think I’ll get
a job “ was her answer. “Oh no; what you’re going to do by 2 o’clock this afternoon is write three colleges and get applications and
then choose one to go to.” That was in 1950-51 when you do what your elders told you to do without talking back to them. “
Life Experiences
Herrera always had a plan and a vision. Growing up in a migrant family and in the inner city of Racine, she knew she had to change her
future. “When I was 9 years old, I remember working behind a field with tools on the ground, rows that I was supposed to clean. I can
remember saying to myself. ‘This is not going to be for my kids! I’m not going to put them in the filed under the hot sun.’ Always, in my
life, I’d ask, ‘Where do I want to be in five years?’ When I got married and had five kids, that became very useful.”
When a school counselor told her, “You’re not college material,” Herrera didn’t listen because she had a plan to go to college. “I’ve
heard other people being told that. And I thought, how could it be, when I get all As in my classes? I’m not going to listen to that. My
mother once told me, ‘You can quit junior high school because you’re going to walk a mile to the bus and it will already be dark when
you get home.’ No, I’m not going to quit! When I think back, that would have been terrible. I would have been a drop-out. Anyway, I didn’
t always listen; I had my own ideas about what I wanted to do all the time. “
Herrera entered the field of education at the time when segregation was in place. “My first job in the educational field was
Instructional Aide, working with two or three teachers, where they taught minority kids assigned in schools outside of the city. I was
learning all the time.
“I actually told the teachers, ‘You challenge is, teaching those kids that are slower and don’t have advocates. It’s not a challenge to
teach the bright ones; they’re going to learn without you, because they have parents who know; they’re basically their advocates. So it
was hard because they never thought of that. They actually told me they like to teach the brighter kids because it was just easier. I said
‘Yeah, but we’re doing desegration, and now you’re getting more minority kids that have greater needs. I learned that I was not going to
raise my voice in the classroom. You raise your voice and the kids will get mad and also raise their voice. As a parent, I didn’t want to
do that. I found out that if you lower your voice in the classroom, then they would be quieter.
“Most of my experiences have been through my peers. At some point, because of my planning and my vision, I decided I was going to
school. I told my husband it’s either you go to school or I go to school, because we had to make more money. He was a custodian in a
school and I did office work. So I went to school, went to work in a college to get free tuition, and took my BA. I promised myself I’m
going to live life, take chances and have fun.”
Miyasaki’s family in Hawaii associated with the Young Buddhist Association (YBA) which doubled as a temple. “The association didn’t
just (promote spirituality). Women and children socialized with others and men and women talked about our culture. Looking back,
when the adults gathered there, they did to work on issues of concern to the community as well.
“I attended the ethnically diverse public schools in Hawaii and I learned about other Asian ethnic groups there and how to live together
in a diverse place which is Hawaii.” From this beautiful stew of cultures and diverse learning activities, Miyasaki learned the meaning
of love, as well as inequality, fighting and conflict, and community.
In Madison, Wisconsin, Miyasaki met a number of women of color who inspired her to join their group called Women of Color Support
Group. “And we began to plan to take action like march and rallies to highlight violence against women of color.” From then on,
Miyasaki met other women of color such as Wendy Hall and Peggy Choy and that association led to the founding of the Pacific and
Asian Women’s Alliance. She, together with the growing number of Asian Americans that Miyasaki came to know, led to the founding
of the Wisconsin Organization of Asian Americans.
Miyasaki also participated in another movement, this time a minority coalition brought together by racist acts at the University of
Wisconsin in the mid ‘80s via a fraternity party that had a mascot of a black face caricature with a bone going through its nose. “They
were called on by the African American community about the black face caricature and in s sense they said, ‘Well, it’s not a black
person, it’s a Filipino.’ And so together-- as a minority coalition along with the African American students, Chicanos of the program La
Colectiva and faculty, academic staff and community members of color-- the University was pushed to establish ultimately after much
work, this system, an ethnic studies requirement. That was a big win and from that effort we were able to push forward later to become
the Asian American Studies Program. That was a moment of success. The Asian American Studies program brought other women into
our Asian American women’s movement in Wisconsin.
“Many of the women I mentioned have founded organizations that support the Asian American community, other communities of color,
and also the marginalized.”
Deer got involved when her tribe, the Menominee, a federally recognized nation, faced its treaty termination by Congress in the mid’
50s. “It was a political act. I returned to the reservation to lead the movement to restore the Menominees to federal recognition. This
was also a political act and we embarked on a political process to change the law. My tribe is very famous; we’re one of the few tribes
in the whole country that’s in our ancestral homeland. It’s about 45 miles west of Greenbay. We were a federally recognized tribe for a
hundred years, and the government decided that the treaty should be terminated; that means treaties were ignored: land became
subject to taxation; it was cultural, economic, political disaster, and it was a very very hard experience for my people.
“So we decided to fight. We built coalitions of supporters, accessed legal help from a federal program called JudiCare and the Native
American Rights Club, that’s the NAACP legal defense fund of the Indians.
"I lobbied the halls of Congress for the passage of the Menominee Restoration Act. Let me say that being a social worker that the
movement came from the people. I didn’t start off wanting to be the leader because I felt it should be other people. It’s very hard getting
involved in social action and lots of people aren’t able to do it. You have to have a degree of knowledge and skill and experience. You
also have to have anger. I remember what my mother told me to help, help Indians. We walked the halls of Congress, we got the act
passed. It was a historical victory, with reversal of a terrible policy that small tribe with no money really was able to get Congress to
reverse this terrible injustice. So other tribes were able to be restored as a result of the hard work that we did. Our movement was
called DRUMS (Determination of Rights and Unity for Menominee Shelters).”
Deer didn’t want to be the chair of her tribe after this victory. “But people told me that I know the legislation the best and that I needed
to do it. This wasn’t universally accepted at first, because both men and women said our tribe has always been led by the men. And I
said, ‘Well, that could be part of the problem.’ And since then, that’s over 30 years ago, we’ve had about five women that have been
elected and have served as though we broke TRADITION.”
Her tribe also had to draft a new constitution because the Menominees were setting up a new relationship with the federal government.
Organizing people from different places and asking their views were tough. “None of these was easy. .. Now, the Indians have been
really conditioned to be dependent, so at first people didn’t know what to say. Finally, people started responding to this. So my tribe
spent two grassroots efforts : restoration in the act and constitution. And still not enough because time moves on and young people are
not aware, they’re not informed and so it’s important to all of us to educate young people as much as we can.
“I didn’t have a grand plan when I started. I wouldn’t have predicted the path I’d taken during my life. I didn’t plan to lead the tribe to
restore the tribe. I didn’t plan to become the Asst. Secretary of Indian Affairs. But my mother has been writing to me when I was in
college telling me about the terrible aspects of termination and she kept saying I had to do something. “Mom, I’m down here, going to
school full time; it’s a lot of work. It’s not my job; I don’t know anything.”
Deer wanted to go to law school but finally dropped her dream to work on the Restoration Act. “Oftentimes, growing out of your own
heritage or the conditions around you, you could decide, are you going to sit back and do nothing or are you going to be involved? I
decided my tribe was more important than my completing law school. I thought I would go back but I never did because I had the feel of
what I wanted to do and I knew I could always find a lawyer whenever I needed one. “
Anana talked about lessons that she has learned if she knew she couldn’t fail. “What would I do if I knew I couldn’t fail? I’d do the
same thing that I’ve done. The difference is that I will be bolder, I would be more confident and I wouldn’t have anybody to dissuade me
from what was inside me. Mostly my background has been empowered and it was empowered precisely because I came up in strict
segregation. No public libraries; no checking out the books; no going to the park. When I went to the university it was the first time for
me to meet White people, and they depowered me. I remember a professor telling me ‘Oh don’t worry about getting an A in this class,
because colored people can’t get an A in Shakespeare.’ Well, he just gave me more determination. Another instance where I forgot my
master’s degree a man said to me, ‘You think you deserve the job, don’t you?’ So all of my life I have been struggling to get that power
back that my original family gave me, that you can do good.”
She narrated her experience of going to the March in Washington, because she was tired of being depowered. “My whole background
has been one of empowerment because my family gave me confidence and had high expectations of me and told me I could do
anything that I wanted to do and I had the responsibility to help others and all the good things that families tell you. But then when I got
in society and met White people, a lot of people began to depower me. When I got on that bus to go to Washington DC, there were no
restaurants and no restrooms along the way that we could stop at. It was Black churches that fed us…. Once I reached the March to
Washington, I became empowered again.”
She said she founded UMOJA magazine to highlight the life and accomplishments of African Americans who belong to the spectrum
between “criminals” and “athletes.” “I started UMOJA because White people who are in charge of communications like to portray
Black people in four words: #1 criminal; #2 athlete; #3 as Superman and Superwomen colored folks—high degrees; #4 or as ‘selected
one.’ We have been denied and rejected on the basis of some superficial quality. So my job with UMOJA is to applaud us, to help us
recognize all the people between that spectrum of being an athlete and a criminal.”
Inspirational Messages
Herrera said having a plan and a vision made perfect sense to her. They guided her throughout her life and made her accomplish
things as if following a road map to success.
Miyasaki said, “We are a diverse group; but we cannot not allow ourselves to be pitted against each other. There’s so much to
remember not just about our own community but also how we work across race and ethnicity. We have to continue to empower and
mentor our young women. Our movement worked with trial by fire, training us like we were trained by our ancestors. It has built our
skills. It created a beautiful network that many of us depend on. And finally in doing this we continue to make together and make
American culture for the better. And in doing so we are promoting equality, social justice, and peace.”
Deer said , “We have our own power, our own personal power. We have political power. We have moral power. We have financial
power. I think many people think that one person can’t do much, but the choice is always there and you never know where your
decision is going to take you. As we look at the future, we know that there’s a lot of work that will keep many of us busy for a long
time.”
Anana concluded, “So what would I do if I knew I couldn’t fail? I would love some child everyday. I know I’m on the short end, I like to
live my last years, whatever that might be, sitting in a school, waiting for that rebellious school boy to come along and hugging him. I
just like to sit there with those kids and one side will be called Milele side. Hug some child and give them the confidence that my folks
in Oklahoma gave me.”
The conference ended with a Unity Circle Dance led by Jan Saiz, and the attendees left with the words of wisdom and inspiration of
these women trailblazers tightly held in their hearts.
Kellianrae Hartshorn
Kathryn Moore, Gail
Johnson and Georgia Euler
Johnson and Georgia Euler
| (L-R) Sharyl Kato, Elizabeth Reyes, Al Poliarco |
| Jan Miyasaki and Mari de Moya |