Brooke Bauer grew up listening to the voices of native women sitting in the shade of a huge oak tree in front of her grandmother’s mobile home on the Catawba Indian Reservation.The older women, led by her Granny Evelyn George, breathed life into Catawba clay, shaping it into useful cooking vessels and art as they shared stories of struggle and celebration.
Unlike her grandmother, Brooke was allowed to attend public school. She graduated from high school in 1986, already the mother of two. She dreamed of college, but put that on hold and devoted herself to her children.
Two months ago, Dr. Brooke Bauer, 49, the first Catawba Indian ever to earn a PhD, became a professor at the University of South Carolina Lancaster, teaching Native American studies and early American history. Her office is in the Native American Studies Center on Main Street.
“I am just a girl from the reservation,” Bauer said last week. “That is still who I am. The PhD is what I do.
“At the end of the day, I am still Brooke.”
She said she wanted to come teach at USCL to help build its Native American Studies program. She has always found the Lancaster community welcoming to the Catawbas.
“This is exactly where I want to be,” she said.
The little girl who grew up listening and learning now has a voice rich with her people’s history and the highest of academic degrees.
Bauer recalls the days sitting near the women working their clay and telling their stories.
“This memory stayed with me, and I knew this is a story that needs to be told,” she said. “We see so little and we read so little about what women were doing. The men, the tribe, could not have made it without the women.”
Catawbas trace their roots and claim their place on the tribal roll through their mothers.
“For a long time, you could not be Catawba if you didn’t have a Catawba mother,” Bauer said. “The blood is traced through the woman.”
Bauer’s years of dedicated study have drawn accolades. Jason Silverman, her advisor from Winthrop University, has watched her climb the collegiate ladder for 16 years.
“I have no doubt at all that Brooke will be a success in the academic world as a professor and scholar,” Silverman said.
“As far as I am concerned, she already is, and USCL is so lucky to have her.”
Chris Judge, assistant director at the Native American Studies Center, appreciates what Bauer offers.
“Dr. Bauer brings the historian’s approach to Native American Studies that we have lacked since our inception 12 years ago,” he said.
“As a potter and a woman, she has a unique understanding of the cultural traditions of the Catawba tribe.”
Roots on the river
Bauer made frequent visits home during the seven years she studied for her doctorate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“Coming home helped to reinvigorate me,” Bauer said.
“The history of my family grounds me.”
Last Wednesday, with her mother, JoAnn Bauer, by her side, Dr. Bauer shared her journey.
They sat at the kitchen table, with a sewing machine on one end and a handmade straw basket filled with clay owls on the other. Her mother is getting ready for the tribe’s arts and crafts festival in November.
“Home will always be right here,” Bauer said.
It’s a house on a little hill on Yesebehena Circle in the heart of the Catawba Nation. In Catawba, “yesebehena” means elders. Her mom is 78.
This place is on the banks of the Catawba River, the tribal homeland for the past 6,000 years, located just off S.C. 5 on the York County side of the river.
Mom and daughter enjoyed a laugh about Bauer’s childhood nickname, “Babbling Brooke.”
Then, after a pause, the talk turned sentimental.
“You look like Granny,” Bauer said to her mom.
Family pictures of six generations hang on the wall. Bauer said her mother and grandmother had the most influence on her life.
Both offered their support as she earned one degree after another. Bauer earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history at Winthrop while working various jobs on the reservation.
One frame on the wall had three openings, each filled with a woman of great importance to this family. Mothers and daughters one generation apart. In each black-and-white photo, the woman is holding the same piece of pottery.
The frame contains a photo of Bauer’s mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. The one in the middle is Evelyn, her Granny, whose yard would fill with women working the clay during the summers.
Late start to college
The two Bauer women continued talking about how Brooke’s journey twisted and turned until she finally began college in her 30s. The year was 2000.
With her children grown, Bauer was free to devote herself to her studies. She earned her BA in 2005.
While working on her master’s degree, she was the director of elder care at the reservation and saw Granny Evelyn every day.
Before Bauer headed off to classes in Rock Hill, her grandmother would hug her, point a strong finger up at her, look her in the eyes and demand, “You go and get your school done. You get it done.”
Her grandmother’s schooling ended with the elementary education provided by Mormon missionaries who lived on the reservation.
Bauer received her master’s degree in December 2007. Her grandmother died earlier that month and did not see her graduate.
Within a few weeks, Bauer landed a job in York at the Historical Center as a research archivist. She was a bit burned out, but happy. She had raised two children and earned two degrees over two decades.
While at the center, she came across the name of Sally New River, a smart and savvy Catawba Indian. In 2008, Bauer presented a lecture on her at USCL during Native American Studies Week. Theda Perdue, a UNC historian, took notice and encouraged her to further her studies.
Bauer, in her 40s, began her doctoral work at Chapel Hill in 2009.
Emphasis on school
Bauer’s mom worked long days as a hair dresser to make sure Brooke and her younger brother had everything they needed. She raised them alone and would not allow her kids to work while they were in high school so they could focus on their grades.
“My mom made sure we had everything that we ever needed,” Bauer said.
She shared stories of wearing jeans with functional, not fashionable, patches on the knees.
She continued joining the circle of women in the summers at Granny’s house, learning pottery and the lessons of her people. Clay was abundant and cheap. Catawba women turned it into art and dishes and sold it to the white people.They took their ceramic pieces to market and bartered for what the family needed.
Catawbas make pottery completely by hand, just as they have for the past 6,000 years. They do not use a potter’s wheel.
Bauer’s mom said the women would gather clay from the family’s own clay hole near the banks of the river, digging down about 5 feet to hit a clean, pure clay vein.
They removed small twigs and trash, washed the clay, soaked it and allowed it to set up to the right working consistency. Then they shaped the clay into dishes, vases and decorative art pieces. They etched designs on the pottery with kitchen knives and sticks.
“I used to sell my pottery years ago at Winthrop College for 10 cents, 15 cents and 25 cents for each piece,” JoAnn Bauer said.
Her pottery now brings up to $75 at craft fairs.
Mother and daughter ran their fingers over the clay pieces on the table as they talked. Their hands are small, but strong and graceful. Their touch is soft.
They treat the pottery with reverence. Every time the professor handled a finished piece, she removed her rings and cradled the pottery in her hands like a tiny baby bird.
The Native American Studies Center has more than 1,300 pieces of Catawba pottery donated by local historian Lindsay Pettus. It’s the largest collection of Catawba pottery in the world.
Bauer’s history classes are filled with cultural sensitivity.
With gentle authority, she speaks about the injustices her people have suffered.
She discourages people from dressing as Native Americans for Halloween as if they are fictional characters. She finds the costume “Poca Hottie” especially distasteful. The name of the Washington Redskins offends her.
Bauer prefers the term Catawba Nation rather than reservation, which to her has connotations of being confined, or colonized.
In a brief history lesson, she explains that the Catawbas leased their lands to the whites beginning in the late 1700s, creating a paper trail proving ownership during later land battles with whites.
Sally New River was named on many of those leases, and the documents revealed she was given coffee, sugar, and money in rental payments for her land. Bauer’s lectures bring Catawba women to life through the example of Sally New River.
Humble gratitude
Bauer humbly expressed gratitude for the many who supported her through the years.
“I realize the degree is not only for me,” she said. “It is a way of pushing back against colonialism and oppression to give back to my people.”
Bauer will present a lesson on Catawba Indians and land leasing Nov. 18 during the Lunch and Learn Series at noon at the Native American Studies Center. She will also be selling her pottery at the Catawba Arts and Crafts festival Nov. 19.
She will be speaking in Nashville at the Ethnohistory Conference later in November.
Bauer’s work and life is the product of hard-working Catawba women. Her thesis showed how the women provided continuity for the Catawba tribe culturally through their pottery and physically with creative land-leasing. Their pottery became an integral part of the Catawba economy from the late 1700s through the 20th century.
The threat of losing their land and access to the clay pits inspired the women to lead the campaign to reclaim their property, which led to a 1993 settlement with the federal government. With that came federal recognition as a tribe and a $50 million payment, which provided educational opportunities to the Catawbas. Today the tribe numbers fewer than 3,000.
Dr. Brooke Bauer lived that history, and now she teaches it.
10/10/16
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