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VY: It's interesting that you understandably had these very deep trust issues, yet both of you went on to do things that are very giving and a lot of social activism and like your parents, really trying to make things better and welcoming people into your home and all the different kinds of things that you're involved in, so it's kind of interesting.

MM: Well, my parents always kind of implied that "they know not what they do." They're not fully aware, just like I was saying, we were shot at, they didn't really understand that it would be hurting or all that. I don't think they meant to hurt us that much. But the scream was so loud and the crying and the so on was so great, that everybody ran the opposite way. People don't really think about what they do often, and that's what you just have to be aware of. But we knew that if you're on a one-on-one, they would be nice to you. As soon as the second person came in, it was a pattern. They would turn to this very judgmental leader of the opposition kind of a thing, we learned that early.

VY: Yeah. And I mean, I think it's a good, probably, philosophy to sort of understand that people don't know what they're doing or maybe not understanding it, they don't get that it's going to hurt somebody. I think that's a good way to kind of get through these things. But that doesn't mean it's not affecting you, right?

MM: Oh, absolutely. I couldn't talk. I was working in desegregation, and we had this man come who wrote a book about races, Daniels and Kitano. Harry Kitano, Japanese American, was one of the consultants that came to work with us. And he talked about the Second World War, and I couldn't talk to him without crying the first three years because I had held it all in. And this attitude of being so hurt, you have put away, you don't really know about it. And then, although I'm talking about it now, I could not have done it in the 1970s. So Harry Kitano was one of my advisors when he knew I was going to Washington as a Fellow. He and this other lady, she was a Native American, came and took me out to lunch and told me that if I went to Washington, I would be ruined for life. Because, "The mentality of Washington is going to color your life and your future if you continue to stay there." And it was so right. They said you shouldn't stay there more than three years because you're going to become like one of the people. My value (would be): do I get a parking spot or do I get a windowed office? And when I went, I was there as part of HEW Fellows, Health Education and Welfare Fellows, Vernon Jordan wanted to integrate the big bureaucracy because it was too white and too unsympathetic to people of poverty and people who are of color. And people who were women. We didn't have women there.

So I was one of the first women administrator types. And you had to know when you worked for the government, you're a GS, government service worker. You get started at one, and by the time you get to three, level three, you may get fifteen dollars. But if you have a more administrative experience, you get into eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, those are the top levels. And because of my work in filling out all these detailed forms, I was a GS-14. And when you get to work for the government, my brother and I would laugh. We'd say, "You know, we're used to going around in the East Coast, and people would say, "What school did you go to?" And that would make a difference. But, when you get into the government, they say, "What's your GS rating?" So we would laugh about it because he was also a GS-14 when he worked for the National Institute of Health. And there are just certain roles that you get into when you work with people at that level. The first person that I worked with was a man who said, "I'm sorry, but I can't have you as a Fellow in my work. I can't talk in front of a woman, so you'll have to find another supervisor." But that's the whole reason why we were there.

So we would meet once a month as a group, there were ten of us, and we worked in, most of them worked in the Department of Education, but it was quite an education for me because I got to go out on a trip with two cars of people, and we would visit the Indian reservation. Well, unless you visited, you don't know what the Indians are going through. And one of the things that we found was that the Indians have reservations, but they talked to the educators, they run the schools. Then the Aviation Administration, they run the... if you can have an airfield on your property, then you can take off and then you could go to different, other airfields. You can have medicine on your property but it's not coordinated. HUD has, give you a free house -- well, actually, you have to pay one dollar, but (it's not) at a place where it would be convenient. So there was one on a mesa that looked down at the school, she and her two children stayed in this one bed, this double bed, and they could look down. And she made bread with all the townswomen, the men brought in the (twigs/firewood). Now she had a house given to her for a dollar, but it's off this mesa. How would you get a ride to town? Then it turns out that these Zia Pueblo, Pueblo Indians, Zia people, have a problem, an eardrum getting a hole in it. They can fix it up, but they had to go to a hospital because they can't do it on (their health care centers). Their airstrip was not in compliance, so their plane couldn't go to the assigned hospital that was over the mountain. But they could go to Albuquerque, which they could drive to. But the Health Education (and Welfare) decided it was over there. So you would see a lot of people who had balance problems that looked like drunk Indians. So we were able to see that one part of the government didn't talk to the other on the Indian reservations. And there is no interagency group that deals with it.

VY: So there's no coordination.

MM: None. And they think they had difficulties working with the group, and they think it's the group's fault that they're not complying. But they need to have...

VY: Right, they set up this imperfect system and there were people that the system's supposed to help, suffer even more.

MM: And I got to stay overnight at this Zia Pueblo. And her name was Rafaela, and she was so upset because this Indian reservation was very Catholic. So the priest comes, and she had to give her children, about ten and twelve, cigarettes. Of course, me, I'm thinking, "What is she giving them cigarettes for?" For gambling! Gambling with a priest. So this program for young boys is gambling, that the priest organized. But her big concern is there is a lot of problem with suicide on that Indian reservation, either alcoholism or young people committing suicide due to so much frustration. And so a recent suicide was with this young... and he couldn't be buried in the cemetery because it was a Catholic cemetery. And he had committed suicide, whereas the man had just committed suicide by drinking himself to death, but he could be buried there. So the mother was so upset for her friend whose son couldn't be buried in the (Catholic) cemetery. So it's the parents that paid the price. So you learned a lot of things on these kinds of government, and then you had nobody to tell.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.