Noelle Ji Sun Miller doesn’t know anything about her Korean birth parents except that they were unmarried and unidentified when they gave her up for adoption the day she was born. After living in at least one foster family, she was adopted by Caucasian parents when she was six months old, and grew up in Lake Oswego with them.
Since fall term, Miller has coordinated the Asian-Pacific American Student Union’s Big Brother/
Big Sister program for non-Caucasian adopted children and their Caucasian parents in Eugene.
Last year’s APASU co-director Sugie Hong began the program in spring 2001.
About 50 active and inactive APASU members meet with 20 children, from 1 year to 16 years old, and their parents about once a month. The meetings provide a network for parents of adopted children and offer a diverse atmosphere where the children can connect with each other and the big brothers and sisters.
The big brothers and sisters held a Halloween party in October and a holiday party in December.
On Saturday, they met to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year and to learn the Hukilau — a Hawaiian fishing dance.
Big Brother Jeff Boyce is Filipino American. He said he grew up in a “white world” and didn’t learn to respect his culture until last summer when he traveled to Hawaii and became close to the families of his Hawaiian friends. He hopes the program will help children be proud of their cultures at a younger age.
“I want them to be aware of their culture so they can respect it and love it for their whole lives,” he said.
At Saturday’s event, the children were initially shy and clung to their mothers’ legs. But soon they were attempting to dance to Hukilau with Boyce, Miller and the other big brothers and sisters.
Jane Williams and her 4-year-old Chinese daughter, Maya, attend the Big Brother/Big Sister events and are part of other support groups such as Families with Children from China and a moms and girls group for girls who’ve been adopted.
“(My husband) and I were interested in any opportunity to expose Maya to her culture and to other kids who’ve been adopted,” Williams said.
She hopes the contact will help Maya deal with identity issues when she’s older.
Williams and her husband wanted to adopt a baby girl from China because of the Chinese government’s policy that a family can only have one child. She knew Chinese preferred to have boys, and there were a lot of little girls in orphanages. The couple adopted Maya when she was just over a year old. Now Maya is four and occasionally has questions about her background.
“When she was about two-and-a-half, she started noticing pregnant women’s tummies. At about three, she said, ‘I came out of your tummy, right?’ I thought, ‘Oh, I wish I’d been prepared for that,’” Williams said. “I think there are different levels of understanding. She knows about her birth mother and that her birth mother couldn’t take care of her.”
Miller doesn’t remember a serious talk about her adoption with her parents.
She said she doesn’t think of her family as different from anyone else’s, even though she has an Indian sister, a Korean brother and Caucasian parents. She said she remembers reading books as a child describing “white” and “black” people, and she always pictured the skin colors literally.
“I said to my mom, ‘I want to see a white person.’ My mom said she was considered ‘white’ and that confused me,” she said.
Miller said her mom asked her what color she wanted to be identified as.
“I guess I’m beige,” she answered.
People often ask Miller where she’s from. “I’ll say, ‘Lake Oswego,’” Miller said. “Then they’ll ask, ‘Well, where are your parents from?’ ‘Montana.’ ‘Well, your grandparents, then?’ ‘Germany.’ Then they’d get really confused.”
She said Americans have a fascination with asking Asians about their ethnicity.
“I don’t know why it matters so much,” she said.
Since coming to the University, Miller began reconnecting with her Korean identity. Her high school had only 20 Asian students and she didn’t have many Asian friends, she said. She said her parents were somewhat baffled when she went to the APASU open house and began replacing her middle name “Marie” with her Korean name, “Ji Sun.” Although her adoption agency, Holt International Children’s Services, gave her the name for “identification purposes,” to Miller, using her Korean name is “a way of going back to the identity I first had,” she said.
In APASU, she’s found a group of Asian students she can relate to — whether it’s just hanging out or sharing similar instances of racism and discrimination, she said. But she still finds herself somewhat detached from her Korean identity, she said.
“In this country I don’t have much in common with students from Korea — with the language, culture and traditions.”
The Big Brother/Big Sister program is an outlet for younger versions of Miller to deal with the same kinds of identity issues she has faced.
It’s also a place for the children to learn about each other’s traditions and cultures with older role models in an “environment where they’re not a minority,” Miller said.