Randy Freese | Looking to His Past Helped Him See His Future

Stories in Our Roots  00:03

Welcome to the stories in Our Roots podcast. I'm your host Heather Murphy. In this podcast, we dive deep into how knowing the stories of our ancestors can make a difference in our lives today. Discovering our family history is more than a hobby. It is a way to connect deeply with ourselves, those we love, and the world around us.

Heather Murphy  00:25

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Stories in Our Roots. I am Heather Murphy. Today's guests is Randy Freese. Randy reached out to me after hearing another episode that spoke to him. And he wanted to have the opportunity to share his story and I was glad to have him on. I would love to hear other stories as well of you that people have been listening to this and I'd like you to consider sharing your own is really easy process. It's just a great conversation about why family history is important to you. If you're interested, please go to storiesinourroots.com and click on the Apply to be a guest button. I look forward to hearing from you soon. Randy's experience is one that I am really honored to share. And one of the beautiful things that it does is it shows how events in country or area history affect the lives of families and individuals. His family was part of the First Nations in Alberta, Canada, because of situations and the way the government handled different things his family was affected. My grandparents in Alberta at the time were foster parents and many of their children were First Nations. Now I don't know all the details of those children's lives. I have memories of when I was young, they still had foster children. But now I wonder what are the stories of those children who were in my grandparents homes. Now and especially after hearing Randy's experiences, I wonder more of how my grandparents fit into something that was going on on a national even international level at that point in time. So I'm really excited for you to hear Randy's experiences and his story. And I'm so thankful that he was willing to step out and have a conversation with me to share with you. Here is the interview with Randy Freese. Hi, Randy, thank you for joining me today. I'm looking forward to learning about your experience as you learned about yourself and your family history. Could you start by introducing yourself?

Randy Freese  02:39

Sure. Thanks for having me. This wall. My name is Randy. I come from Canada. I grew up in the Toronto area, not just drawn but cities surrounding it. I was born in Edmonton, Alberta, in the western part of Canada spent a lot of time moving around.

Heather Murphy  02:59

You were adopted? Is that correct?

Randy Freese  03:01

I was Yeah.

Heather Murphy  03:02

What was it? like growing up? Did you know? How was that experience for you?

Randy Freese  03:08

It got weird, or I guess you could say because I guess I was probably give or take five years old when my adopted parents, my parents that raised me sat me down and explained to me what being adopted was and that I was adopted. And I'm not sure what brought that on at that point in their life if they just thought it was necessary or a good idea what I never really got a handle on it till much later. But from that point on, it was okay, so now what do I do kind of thing, right? And it wasn't until probably probably later in high school, I guess where I really, really started to dwell on things. And you know, when you go to the doctor or something, they're always asking you about family history, like health wise and things like that. Always just kind of, I was always hesitant to answer questions. Like, oh, what about your parents? Like, well, I don't I don't really know how that relates to me because they're not really my biological parents. So while these health implications current standard, you get the thoughts in your head, like what do I don't know kind of thing. So yet there's that aspect of it. That really got me thinking, probably towards High School and growing up, it was kind of like, I was the adopted kid everywhere I went, every once in a while you'd get not nice people, kids, whatever, like Oh, they find out and they kind of use it against you in some way or another. It didn't happen a lot. It happened a few times, usually when, like me and a friend or my brother even got in a fight or something like that. Who would come to the surface or something like that. But nothing too too crazy or anything. But yeah, it was probably towards the end of high school or actually started to try to figure out where I came from.

Heather Murphy  05:00

Did your parents know anything? Were they able to tell you? Or like, Did you just know you're adopted?

Randy Freese  05:06

Well, I knew I was adopted. I guess the the other side of the story is I gotten a lot of trouble when I was younger, too. It wasn't until I landed myself in jail when I was about 16 years old. And my parents kind of thought maybe it had something to do with me to being adopted. And I don't know, if they were looking for a reason, or they felt guilty. I'm not really exactly sure as to their whole process of thinking at that time, my mom went searching for some records. And I'm not sure how she went about it, I think she went approached the Alberta Child Services or something like that towards the hospital, she showed up one day for a visit, this is between glass through a phone type of thing in jail basically showed me some paperwork. At that point, we had a boat, a paragraph written for my birth mother, a little bit of an explanation as to why and a name. So we had my birth name. And I believe there was a family name too, at that point. So we had the birth name, and the family name of myself, like my name was changed as well. So it was kind of a shock. They're finding out I was born in a different name, and all that stuff. From that point on, it was kind of like in the back of my head all the time, wondering thinking, what if, what if, what if, finally, a few years later, when I was released in off probation, and all that kind of stuff, and finally getting towards the end of high school, I started really digging into things and doing searches as late 90s. So I was learning how to use the internet not. So I was using the internet to search names and phone numbers and things like that. And I found myself with a list of names. First, I found a list in Ontario, where I was living, then I found a list of people, people's name, BC, all with the same family name as my birth family. At that point, I really didn't know what to do. Because Oh, now I have to call these people like what do I do? Right? Oh, man. So it's just got pushed aside for a bit. I sat on it for about a year. And then it just clicked to me one day saying, oh, maybe I could write letters, because I did have the address, too. So I started writing these letters, handwritten letters, very detailed, very personalized, all to these individual names and stuff on these lists, a couple months goes by, and then I get like a couple anonymous responses in the mail as well. And one of them was a list of names in Alberta. And so I got another list started over again, start writing all these names on this list. Another little period of time goes by, I'm sitting one day watching a movie with my dad, and the phone starts ringing pretty late. And I guess they're they're calling from Alberta. So the time difference, and all that get one call is a birth uncle. And then they get another call, it's an aunt never got another call. It's like an unrelated person with the same last name. So we have a little talk. And then bone an hour after the third call, I get the final call. And it's my mother, my birth mother. All of a sudden, I think I was about 20 years old. At that point, meeting my mother for the first time over the phone. I'm just kind of shocked. But at the same time, it's just this weird connection, just immediately, we kind of instantly know that, you know, we have a lot of similarities in the way we speak and all that that you know the little things, right? So I was trying to have this conversation with my birth mother over the phone, very overwhelmed again, at the same time, I'm watching this movie, then getting distracted. I'm just like, oh, man, I gotta go to a different room or something. Like focus, right? This is pretty important stuff. This is I would say it was about march of the year 2000. I finished high school and everything a few months before. And I'm just kind of don't know where I'm going in life at that point. So by the end of the phone call, I have plans made to head out west to meet my mother. It didn't happen till about July The same year, July 4 2000. I left Toronto for the first time since I moved there basically when we were six years old. And I left on a bus on Greyhound and went across the country for two months traveling meeting the family that that time my birth mother lived in Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory. So I just tried it. Yeah. So it actually required a layover in Edmonton for a day or something like that. And then headed up on the bus but yeah, is quite the trip now. And me just being I graduated high school quite late for most of my friends and stuff. But I was at that point I was about 20 years old and more or less never really been too far away from home. Just to I'm done bus left, I got a bag on my back in a suitcase. And that was about it. I was gone. During that summer on the bus, though, we had a gathering down around red deer. And it was probably a dozen or so of us that could make it a couple of uncles, a couple aunts, a few cousins, their kids, I met my grandmother, I met my great grandmother. Like there's a whole bunch of them. Keeping track of that was a challenge in itself. It was really overwhelming experience to be meeting all these people for the first time. It was kind of like instant family almost It was really strange. But it was quite an experience.

Heather Murphy  10:41

So what are you feeling through all of this? Did it start just as a curiosity to find out who your birth mother was? Was there something behind it? Like as you're meeting these relatives, what's going on with you emotionally and mentally as you're finding out all this information?

Randy Freese  10:59

Well, I think it was mostly shock. I don't even know if I could explain how I was feeling is just kind of everything a blur is surprising to me. Like, like there's all these also parallels because my mother and her siblings were all taken away from their mother. And so was their mother taken away from hers. So we were had all been separated and disconnected over generations. At that point.

Heather Murphy  11:25

Would you be willing to talk more about why everything was split up like that? Yeah, I think it's important for people to understand, like the history and the culture and what's going on that affected our lives and our ancestors lives. And I think that's a really big thing.

Randy Freese  11:42

That the point of our story. Yeah, sure. Like, I don't have any official, whatever you want to call it. As far as I know, because we don't we it doesn't really get discussed. It's a very hard topic. My mother grew up in foster care. So did her siblings, I guess they had some access to the mother. But they got taken away at a younger age, as opposed to me where I was adopted, basically, as a baby. my adoptive parents were never told anything about my birth family. They weren't even told that I had a name. My mother gave me a name. And then I guess, under some coercion, or something that was forced to give me up because she was already award. And that's my understanding of it. Anyway, there's there's a lot that hasn't been talked about among the family. But in terms of generational things like that, we kind of fit into the group known as the 60. Scoop, the year timeline and all that kind of stuff.

Heather Murphy  12:40

So would you explain that for people who don't know what that is?

Randy Freese  12:44

Well, the 60 scoop is a time period, basically. So I would say starting late 50s, early 60s, and I went all the way down to I think the tail end of it was the late 70s, early 80s. And basically an entire generation of children that were taken away and put into foster care or put into adoptions or adopted homes, or just basically shuffled around into different situations from their own. There's a lot of really different stories. Like I've talked to a lot of people and there were some people that were basically almost in some sense sold to white people in different countries.

Heather Murphy  13:25

This is because your ancestors were First Nations. Is that correct? Yeah, that's right. Yeah,

Randy Freese  13:29

yeah. Yeah. And I thought I'd mentioned that, but maybe not. Yeah, we were first nations, on my mother's side where we're Cree. And going back a little further. I believe it's my grandfather is also matey. So we got a lot of meaty stuff going on in there too. But it's all really interesting when we get into the family trees as well. And what I found Up to now, but the initial shock of just meeting everybody and finding all this stuff out just kind of like, you know, completely mind blowing, actually, yeah. Because thinking I'm I'm adopted, I grew up adopted my big deal, you know, but then you find out all this other stuff. Well, my mother, all her siblings, and her mother and all that stuff, too, is just kind of it can be tough. And it's kind of understandable when you think about it, because I've met a lot of Native people where the adoption stuff didn't happen and they they stay in the families and then the neglect comes into play because they don't know how to care for their family like especially when it comes to the residential school stuff. That trauma is just I don't know how anybody could ever get through any of that stuff. It's kind of really something else when you hear some stories, our family I think, in my I always say I'm one of the lucky ones because I did have a decent family. I never got abused or anything but the the lack of knowledge and all that stuff, the total disconnect from college. Sure things like that has been a real learning curve. For me. Coming back to it, you know, the amount of stuff I have learned is pretty phenomenal. Like I've done pretty much all my learning about this topic out of school, this stuff isn't taught in school at all.

Heather Murphy  15:16

So what are some of the things that you've learned about your family that has been meaningful to you as you've had a chance to meet people and learn about your heritage?

Randy Freese  15:26

Well, because we're so far apart, I don't get to see them very often. But with the the advent of social media and stuff, it makes it a lot easier these days. It used to be I was in Vancouver for a couple years, and I'd have like a weekly phone call with one of my ads, we talk just check in and see how we're doing. Being able to connect not only with family, but with culture, and people that know things and people have similar experiences has been quite an eye opener, really, when it comes down to learning the real history of this country. Both countries actually US and Canada. it sheds a lot of light on a lot of things. And then I've been able to go locally to teachings and things like that to learn some cultural stuff, which has been really cool. A good aspect in my life, I think it's been a little touch of traditional things have kind of gave me a place almost like like a sense of belonging that I never had growing up. Like I never fit in anywhere when I was a kid. Like it wasn't white enough for the way kids I wasn't dark enough for the dark isn't it wasn't you know, and I went to a really mixed schools and everything like it was, that wasn't an issue. And then racism was always a problem. But it wasn't really a huge, huge problem being that it was a very mixed city that I lived in anyway. But I never really had a place of my own to fit into a community, right. And I'm still working on that myself. Because I'm, I found friends. And I talked to elders, and I've kind of grown into this community here. One thing I've learned very quickly here in Southern Ontario is a lot of people are going through the same type of thing, where there's not a lot of resources, but the few that there is they're very welcoming. So there's a lot of people coming in to the city from way out. Like I'm talking like way Northern Ontario, Eastern Ontario, they all have to come to Toronto just to do something together, right? So you have all these different cultures mixing in terms of native cultures. So you have all kinds of different people coming together, learning about different things. And it's really, really interesting to make those connections and learn.

Heather Murphy  17:39

So how has it changed your outlook on life, as you come to understand where your blood comes from?

Randy Freese  17:46

Whoa, my my, I guess, you could say, getting in all the trouble I did when I was a kid and then meeting my birth family and then do it all these steps to where I am now I'm probably in a really good place, and improving. And it's really cool to be able to learn, I guess, at my own pace, but also, it's really brought me to a place in my life where I can have a future, I can see myself doing something or being somebody, I had no direction at all. When I was a kid like all the way up to like adulthood, I had no idea what I was doing in my life. Being able to find my family first was probably a good point to start. And then from there, I think I was able to move forward with my life. I went to school, I went back to like, went to college and all that kind of stuff. And for all the messed up decisions. I made him in my life as a person. I think I'm on the right track now. You know, it's been a really interesting journey.

Heather Murphy  18:48

One of the things that you wrote to me is that you're able to teach your son about his family and his ancestors, what kind of things are you teaching him?

Randy Freese  19:01

Well, for starters, just who we are and where we come from, because that's something I never knew when I was growing up. As much as I'm interested in IO P is as well and keeps the journey lon You know, when he grows up. He's still pretty young. He's only eight years old, but he understand some of it, you know, we've taken him to a couple powwows and he's been to we do these, like soulstice feast and stuff and the friendship center and things like that, like where they do all these teachings and things. He enjoys it. He gets to interact with other kids that have similar families, I guess you could say, what I really hope is, the more I can teach him, the less he'll end up doing the things I did to get myself in trouble.

Heather Murphy  19:44

Yeah, from what you explained, it kind of seems like once you learn your family's past that gave you an anchor and that's what you're trying to give your son is something to anchor to.

Randy Freese  19:54

Yeah, like a sense of belonging. an anchor is a good way to put it. Yeah, some to come back to life. lose your way. I think I got lost very early on. Just trying to figure out who I was and not knowing where to start. When I finally found that place, it was, it was Yeah, very centering. It was like an anchor, it was a good place to be, or a good place to start a new chapter in my life.

Heather Murphy  20:20

I'm not familiar with what records they have up there. Have you been able to research your family history beyond just like those people that you met and get to know stories about people? Or is it more so just learning the culture?

Randy Freese  20:35

I go, I get something here. I can just quickly show you a little bit. When I went to school, initially, I was able to go through the matey nation and get a grant. But in order to do that, I had to prove it. Okay, well, they have their own, like, extensive database of, it's actually really good. And this is, I don't know if you can see that. Yeah, I can. But that's, that's my name, and my birth name. And because it's documents. Wow, it's a family tree of the matey aspect of things. And it even includes, I don't know if you've ever heard of heard the word script before script documents in here as well. It's actually really interesting to go through it all.

Heather Murphy  21:18

And so how did you get all those documents? Did you do the research yourself? Do you have someone go, when

Randy Freese  21:23

I went, when I went to the matey nation, they basically took my information down, it was kind of like an application, I guess you could say, they go through, they find you and then they, they just dig, you know, and they come back to me a couple months later with this thing, like wow. And it goes back quite a ways. It does all the branches and stuff. But the disappointing part of it is once you hit an Indian kind of hits a dead end. So it follows back a lot of the European stuff. And that's the further back stuff. I'm not sure how much you're aware, but matey is usually associated with French. But there's also like a branch of matey, where it goes in a Scottish direction. And there's all these different branches. And I'm learning a lot about that too. But it's really kind of cool. When I go back, I found some stories, just because I was able to add all these names to the ancestry database as well. ancestry.com or whatever, did the family tree so I got a big big family tree on there. Now, hopefully, it's correct or accurate enough to, you know, because it's pretty tricky to write, I need to date the DNA thing just to kind of see, the DNA thing just kind of blew my mind because it comes back with a list of relatives, right distant cousins and things like that. And initially, when I did that, the DNA came back. And it gave me a database of 50,000 people that were related to me. So that just kind of opened up. I found one story relating to the matey, the pemmican. Trade and for trade stuff. I found this one story online where it was basically one branch of my family tree on the matey site worked for the Northwest company. And then another branch worked for the Hudson Bay Company. These two companies have actual wars with each other over the pemmican trade, right. And I found one story where I believe it was a brother of one of my grandmother's or something like he led a battle against the other company and captured this guy that also is in my family tree on the other side. Basically, my, my great uncle captures a grandfather, really strange story. And I found these two stories in two different places. Just kind of interesting. And then I find them and I'm like, wait, this name is over here. This guy captured this guy's when you hear about it like that you really kind of shocks because you hear about Canadian history in this friendly type of way where nothing bad ever happens. And you get these two companies that basically are fighting over the land that they don't own as the Buffalo and things are getting killed off. This is just crazy. And I found another story where one of my grandfather's he had the meeting in his house for the Northwest rebellion or they fought for Saskatchewan basic matey nation rebellion. In 1885. They had this meeting with Louie Riel and all them came together in his basement or something. How's that possible? Really, there's kind of blew my mind. I see all these names in this document. I'm just like, wow, that's my great grandfather. And that's his wife over here. And I was like, why? And then you you read about this too is apparently there was this transition from all the Scottish mateys to the French made these kind of I don't know if it's a power thing, but it became more I guess, a dominant bloodline or something like that is a really interesting aspect to the whole thing. The matey nation has pretty extensive dock. means they got a website and research and things like that you can go on there and just search a family name and find all these stories it's really cool goes back quite a ways to like the further and further you go back you find all these documents from Neil Red River nation and things like that or settlement I guess it's been very interesting and continues to be the more I find out. And just so you know, like this is all on my mother's side. As for my my birth father, I don't know much. I found this conversation on Facebook the other day, they were talking about family histories is an indigenous group talking about being adopted or something like that, too. So there was this one woman that kept getting repeated Her name is an Algonquin woman from way way back, the further you go back, it's really interesting, I find because I'm born in Alberta, the family history seems to go, you go back, matey. And then you go back, and we're just all different kinds of Indians. But the further back you go, and the fur trade kind of moved from east to west. So the further back you go, the more to the east that goes and the less it becomes Canada and the less it becomes. It's all just native nations, right? So I have found so many different names in there, like nation names and stuff like that. And it's unbelievable. I found like Algonquin names, there's like not a names, you got to go really far back. But it's really interesting to see how everything just mixes and moves and all the migrations and things like that as well. It's very, very interesting. That's just putting it mildly, really. The proper words to describe it, I don't think

Heather Murphy  26:45

Yeah, I that it's hard to kind of put it into words. But and this might my next question might be kind of hard to put into words to your response. But how has your sense of identity changed from this 20 year old who all you knew or you're adopted? And you just had this little bit of information? To now you know, some of your roots very deep, you have stories, you have names, you have people that are you're connected to? How has that affected how you see yourself?

Randy Freese  27:17

Oh, it's, it's a big deal. For me, it really is, like, as I sit here and think back on it, I don't think I really had much of a sense of identity at all, when I was younger, like even when I was a kid, I had no idea but growing up through school and high school, and it's just like finding yourself in the past in order to be able to move forward in the future, right? It's allowed me to do that it really has just looking back, I find a lot of people, they kind of say, Oh, don't worry about that. It's all in the past. If I didn't know the past, like, I'd still be stuck in that 20 year old or that 15 year old mindset where I'm going wild and don't know where I'm going in life. And now I have like a sense of direction and a place to be in a community to reach out to me so much to me, because just growing up and not having any of that. Like even with my parents, like they were supportive and stuff. And they did everything they could to keep us happy and fed and everything else, I would never say they didn't because it's it wouldn't be true, obviously. But when I got in trouble, they were still kind of in my corner as much as they could be. Being able to get through that surviving all that and then being able to find this and move forward in my life and actually have some accomplishments and people to reach out to if I need to understand something. It's allowed me to focus on things that are more important than dwelling on negativity in the past that is, has haunted me for a long time, move forward and do some important things for myself in life.

Heather Murphy  28:53

So, you know, in retrospect, if you could go back and give your say your 18 year old self some advice, knowing now everything that you've learned about your family, what would you tell yourself?

Randy Freese  29:08

Well, it's such a big question, just because it's funny that you asked me that because I started writing a story in almost that same context were kind of writing stories. I approached this in a mental health standpoint, where it was like, how would I talk to myself now through me to my younger self, and I wrote a letter to my younger self basically, telling him, you know, it's not the end of the world. It does get better and work on it. You're gonna go through a lot, but there's light at the end of the tunnel type of thing. Yes, yes, a huge question.

Heather Murphy  29:45

Well, thank you so much for taking your time to share your story and your experiences. I've enjoyed listening to it.

Randy Freese  29:53

Thank you so much for having me.

Stories in Our Roots  29:55

Thank you for joining me today for Stories in Our Roots. Please help this podcast grow by subscribing, leaving a review and sharing it with your friends. If you have feedback or would like to recommend someone to share their story, head to storiesinourroots.com and fill out the form. Thanks again for listening, and I look forward to being with you again next week.