“I never had a home of my own. Ironic for a Native American.” Irene
“Shhh! You know we have been robbed of our heritage and now we have to play the role of being latinos”.
I was born in 1945 and grew up in San Jose, California. I belong to the tribe “Milwaukee”.
At that time you couldn’t say that you were Native American. I mean, you could, but my aunt would say “Shhh! You know we have been robbed of our heritage and now we have to play the role of being latinos”. She used to wake up every morning to go out and work on the fields. I remember crying a lot thinking that this type of labor was child abuse. My mom had died, so my aunt was in charge.
“I’m sleeping at a church. Too many women being raped and killed out there.”
It’s sad to see how we Native Americans have been treated. I think some people have the wrong idea about us. We are not all drunks, you know? I followed my family tree and my ancestors fought for the American side in Vietnam and Korea. There’s a lot of us who are artists, it just runs in our blood. Russel Means was a very devoted activist. So, yeah, we’ve contributed to society.
I’ve been homeless for 10 years now. I lived in the Tenderloin for 30 years, but I don’t want to go back there. I feel that I have the right to have a studio or an apartment. At the moment, I’m sleeping at the Bethel Church. I can rest peacefully there, and they give you breakfast and dinner. Sleeping outside has gotten too dangerous, too many women being raped and killed. It’s horrible.
I’m religious, and that’s a big part of my life. My family is roman catholic, they were always praying the rosary. I’ve been reading my bible and going to church for the past 20 years. I love singing during mass. My family was very musical, too. Mom played guitar and piano. I remember how she would often make me a little stage so I could perform in costumes. It was a world of fantasy.
“In the 70s, I went to Mexico and felt in love with a coyote.”
I’ve had a lot of different jobs. I worked at a mechanical assembly company in San Jose. They saw that I was fast with my hands. I built computers. Then, I went into babysitting and bartending. The pay was never enough. I even thought about becoming a stripper, but stuck to serving alcohol. Nothing else.
In the 70s, I went to Mexico and felt in love with somebody. He was a “coyote”, you know, smuggling people through the border. He told me he would marry me as long I fixed his papers. I did it in a heartbeat, but he wasn’t in love with me. He took my station wagon and ran it across the border.
This is my story in a nutshell. You get out of this lifetime what you put into it, right? I think so. I’m 71 years old now. I have glaucoma and lost sight in one eye, but I would still like to see the world. Yeah, traveling… I am a woman of culture. My other dream is to have a place to live. I never had a home of my own. I know, it sounds sort of ironic when you look at the history of Native Americans.
Shared periodically on Medium, and soon to be published in a book, ‘Stories Behind the Fog’ is a compendium of 100 stories of people affected by homelessness in San Francisco. The project was triggered by one man’s story that will be released next year in the form of a feature-length documentary: www.mosesdoc.com
This story has been written by Josephine and Fran Guijarro, and photographed by Juli López in collaboration with our partner organization Bethel Church.
