Sophia Stewart

My grandmother come off of the Indian reservations in Missouri.

My grandfather and great-grandmother, his mother, they were immigrants that came in from Portugal.

They were Portuguese, and they could only speak Spanish, and my grandmother speak in Cherokee, but they created a language where they could communicate, and they got married, my grandfather and my grandmother.

So my mom, being a native, she didn't know anything but having her babies at home.

So I never was born with a birth certificate.

I'm sovereigns.

My grandmother, she couldn't, you know, she couldn't write and stuff like that.

Read, actually, you know.

So I would write for her and you couldn't fool her.

She would ask you to read it back to her.

So this is how you know that I really could read it and write it, you know, three years old.

But she told me something that was really, it scared her, you know, because I remember a time when it was a blackout happening and I asked her, what did she feed me?

Because I had tasted something I had never ever tasted before.

So I said, what was that you gave me?

Because she gave it to me on a cloth for me to suck on it.

But it was just a weird taste.

And she looked at me all scary when I was asking her about it because I think I was like about around three years old, not in school yet.

And she said, it's impossible for you to know that.

And I said, why?

She said, because you were a little infant.