“Try to find local native history by visiting Sunwatch Indian Village in Dayton, the Miamisburg Mound or the Serpent Mound Historical Site near Peebles in Adams County – but please do some research and gain information. Many times, Native Americans are underrepresented. People need to know we are still here,” she said.
“I feel Native American Heritage Month is very underrepresented.”
Turley, who is NCO in charge, Cyber Operations Center, 88th Communications Group, said she welcomes the awareness and discussions that have surrounded issues such as use of terms and images referring to Native Americans and First Nations as the names or mascots for sports teams.
"I think people are more aware of what is upsetting us, but when I read comments like, ‘get over it’ or ‘why are you complaining,’ my response is, ‘because it is still happening.’
“Seek to understand, and study our modern movements and causes,” she said. “They are valid.”
A very important one, Turley feels, is the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls movement (https://mmiwusa.org/, #MMIW). She is particularly interested in it because she and her husband have three daughters at home, along with her mother.
“There’s a task force to look into that issue, and we really need the help because it (murder and sexual assault of indigenous women and girls) happens a lot,” she said.
Today the Sault Tribe is 44,000 strong. While the tribal headquarters is in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, the tribe’s economic impact extends for hundreds of miles beyond that. The tribe has land holdings, businesses, housing and other service centers throughout Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
The Anishinaabeg, which means “Original People” or “Spontaneous Beings,” are the tribe’s ancestors and have lived in the Great Lakes region for millenia. They were fishing tribes whose settlements dotted the upper Great Lakes around Lake Superior, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, throughout the St. Marys River system and the Straits of Mackinac. Anishinaabeg gathered for the summers in places like Bahweting (modern-day Sault Ste. Marie) and broke up into family units for the winter.
Some of the oldest legends recall the ice packs breaking on Lake Nipissing in Ontario, and archeologists have found Anishinaabeg sites from 3000 B.C.
A family’s history
Turley grew up in St. Ignace on the Sault Reservation. When she was 17, a recruiter came around after Sept. 11. Her father, who had been in the Army, encouraged her to enter the Air Force. She has given 18 years of service. She has been stationed at Wright-Patterson since last November and was assigned to the National Air and Space Intelligence Center from 2003 to 2007.
Now she tries to teach her daughters about their heritage, but it is challenging. Turley’s mother is not native, and her father and his mother did not embrace their native background, due to their Catholicism.
Missionaries had encouraged her Irish/Chippewa paternal grandmother’s mother to send her daughter to a boarding school where she converted to Catholicism.
“She was very adamant; her mother would try to teach her native ways and the sisters (nuns) told her they weren’t true,” Turley said. "My father also follows more on the Catholic side.
“I’m trying to learn more; I’m trying to bring it back. I’m trying to teach my daughters our culture because they need to know it,” she said.
Turley focuses on history and vocabulary with her children. Her tribe’s monthly newspaper is a treasure trove of information, one that draws special interest from 10-year-old Kristina.
“She likes to take the vocabulary section and then figure out the crossword puzzle,” Turley said.
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