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Hattie Kauffman made history as the first Native American journalist
to file a report on a national evening news broadcast
as an Emmy award-winning correspondent she always told
she always told other people's stories but her own remained untold
until now. Hattie is one of seven children who grew up in the projects to
to alcoholic parents
sometimes there wasn't food at home so she she went hungry
the bills weren't paid so the heat was turned off then the electricity
and then the water but she'd left all that behind her
she was in her fifties successful at work a grandmother
then her world crashed Hattie's Kaufman's memoir
is called Falling into Place and she joins me in the studio
Hattie welcome. Thank you it's nice to be here. Your book opens with your husband
of many years
telling you he wants a divorce. Yes with words that
any woman would cringe at 'I just settled for you'
and I you know even just saying that today it still makes me cave
cave in in the middle even though logically you can argue who settles
for seventeen years etc whatever those words just go right
uh to your heart. You had no idea that he was unhappy or that this was coming
No that was part of the mystification for me and part of also why it felt so
suddenly as if you were in a big earthquake and the ground shaking
underneath your feet
it doesn't make sense um I couldn't even understand I kept saying what
what did you say what? Your reaction was
shock sadness but no anger initially
no uh and in fact I talk about that in my book where's my anger where am i it was
almost as if I had disappeared and I and i think in retrospect that's just shock
Um on the other hand as you'll see if if you read Falling Into Place that
the the idea of the ground
being unstable under my feet suddenly made me remember my childhood
you know in which most of the time the ground was unstable most the time
as a kid in alcoholic home you're wondering what's going to happen next
and I think that was what this triggered in
in me this sudden divorce news is what's gonna happen next
because I really felt like my reaction emotionally was
beyond the pale it was over, if if there was a monitor and you're you're peaking in the
red I was peaking in the red
why people get divorced all the time mid-life divorces happen all the
time but for some reason this
really threw me and I know why it's because it brought back the childhood
you never even thought that there could be another woman and you found out later
that he had been having an affair
but that but never even crossed your mind. I think maybe
I was in denial or I wasn't I wasn't believing that it could happen I
I don't know I and II thought this was who I was gonna get old with
and uh you know we had plans we had plans for retirement
we had we had you know we're planning that place in Hawaii you know that you
know
whatever it might be. we we we had a future
we married 17 years i mean he was grandpa to the
to the kids little kids um step dad
for seventeen years i I didn't expect it no. Your friends were very supportive
they told you to do all kinds of different things and some were helpful some not so
helpful
yeah I am but not so helpful is run out have an affair before you reconcile
I mean a friend actually said that hurry now is your chance
I didn't follow her advice. So one of
your friends told you Hattie
read Isaiah 54 yeah and I wasn't even sure what she was talking about and she said do
you do have a Bible and I said I could find one
and so I searched around I found one and I looked up Isaiah 54 and with in it
there is a line that says to the forsaken women
let God be your husband and that was just it it it
hit me those words. But what does that mean? Let god be your husband? I wasn't quite sure but
I wasn't quite sure because I didn't have a real concept of God I wasn't
really raised in a Christian home I had had a
a grandmother who taught me the 23rd psalm
um I didn't and I say christian home I'm I don't mean
as if only a Christian home would know what God is, I know that there are Jewish
homes as well who would
of course know about God but I I didn't know what that meant
um and I didn't know what to grab onto um but I knew there was something there and
just as I was puzzling over what does that mean
I heard the garage door opening and he was you know back in the house because
the odd thing about this
I want a divorce I just settled for you the next line was and I'm not moving
out
so you had to stay there and live with him in this awkward stage
of what do you do how do you say hello or
you know hey buddy are we roommates I mean it was it was a very weird
environment for a little while that reading of that
chapter really opened things up for you what
what was your relationship with God at that time I guess probably non-existent
but I had after reading that chapter let God be your husband I remembered this
aunt who are taught me the 23rd psalm and I tried to remember when was the last time
I prayed
and it just so happened that in the midst of this divorce you mention the
women who are giving me advice one of them gave me a journal and said here
journal your experience and I thought oh I'm not gonna sit there and write you know
woe is me each night
but suddenly after reading that I decided to write
dear God and I didn't know what to say after that
just please help you know so I began to write these tentative little tiny prayers
that were
I don't know what I'm doing you know and so each day it might be a little bit
more
I don't know how to to react to this man who used to be my husband
so each day the prayer grew
Hattie Kaufman is in the studio with me she's the author
of the memoir called Falling into Place she's an
Emmy award-winning news correspondent
tell me about the hand touch you felt Well this happened several months after
I began
reading Isaiah 54 and I began writing those prayers
it was Oscar weekend I network news correspondent I'm
usually cover assigned to cover the Oscar parties
you're living in Los Angeles? I was living in Los Angeles the uh executive producer had to
rent a suite in this hotel above the Kodak Theatre
uh for the whole weekend even though they really only needed it Sunday night so the
anchors could watch the Oscars so they're a couple nights when it was gonna be
empty and this
exec this producer knew that I was sleeping on friends couches volunteering
for any assignment anywhere just to get out of that cohabitation thing and she
said
Hattie would you like to a stay in the hotel Friday and Saturday cuz it'll be
open and I was so excited
i practically leapt on to her lap and said yes um
so I checked into the hotel, I slept and it was such a
a relief to be able to sleep in I had been sneaking outta my house before dawn
just to avoid
running into my estranged spouse and so just to be able to sleep in and i got up
I took a walk got some food came back sat on the
the little love seat in the suite and I closed my eyes and took deep breaths and just
got to relax and just kinda let go of this tension that I had been living with for
you know months and at
one point in that deep relaxation of sitting there I felt the sensation of a
hand touching the top of my head
on the right hand side right above the temple the way a parent might touch
a child in tender love and I it felt so good that I didn't jump or anything I just
enjoyed it and I thought wait
there's a hand on my head so I open my eyes and as I did it lifted
I was mystified and I just uh you know
I I didn't freak out I just felt kinda good but something happened I didn't
know what
the next day I woke up and I decided I want to have that happen again so I
tried to do
everything I had done the day before I took the same walk got the same food sat
at the same
love seat same time closed my eyes let's see what did i do yesterday I
relaxed so I was trying to do all these things
closed my eyes rest take deep breaths
nothing happened and just as I was giving up and opening my eyes I heard
church bells ringing so I run over to the window I look down nine stories and
there is a church there at Highland um
just just off of Hollywood and Highland and I saw people parking and going in and
I decided to run over and get clothes and go down there
you know I hadn't been to church for ages and I just decided to go
i sat in the back nothing really happened I don't even remember a word that
was spoken during the sermon
and it was over too quickly and people were walking I was mystified because I
had felt
compelled to be there and yet everyone's leaving and I and
why am I here I saw a group going against the stream walking up the center
aisle so I followed them
they got part way up and they all stopped and I'm not too tall I can't see
over them so I can scoot around to the edge to see what's going on
and right when I get there I see it's the pastor handing out the
the bread and the wine and I don't know whether I could do that or not but I
decide
to do it and again there was no lightening are angels singing or anything
and I'm still
I'm a little confused because I've felt compelled to be here and I keep
expecting something and nothing's happened and
now they break up and most of them leave but a few continue to the front
I follow again they they kneel down at the altar so I kneel down I copy
everything they're doing they put their elbows on a rail they you know they put
their head there
clasped their hands and they close their eyes like they're in prayer so I do
everything
that they're doing and I kinda peak and I see the uh pastors coming along and
he's praying at each one
and when he gets in front of me he does this the
say mumbled prayer I can't hear what he saying but he sets his hand on top of my
head
in the exact same spot the exact same warmth
pressure the sensation of 24 hours earlier was
confirmed right there and I open my eyes and I knew
there is there is God and that God cares about me
you go down this road of
prayer and uh reading the Bible and believing in God
and then you think this to yourself you said quote
people will think I'm crazy if they ever find out I'm doing this
can Indians be willing christians after all the missionaries were forced on us
on top of that your'e a news reporter are news correspondents allowed to believe in God
okay so there's two things there yes two reasons why I should reject this
had been your experience that um people in the news business don't believe in God
yes well and particularly Christianity seems to get mocked in the
news business that if you are Christian you must be
ultra-right or that you are some kinda of
there are people uh there actually i i I felt general hostility to toward anytime
somebody a Christian was on television or
But why is that? Well for one you're a news reporter you wanna go out and your interviewing
somebody say their house has been
demolished in a tornado and you want someone to cry
and instead they're saying the Lord will provide you know so that doesn't make
for good TV and you're out there trying to get good TV
Uh, I think that's part of it also I'm in Los Angeles and it's very
very um uh atheist part of the world or
or new age perhaps i mean cause people are doing you know the kind of
I'll manifest this or I'll put good feelings out to the universe or
something like that there there's plenty of that
um I did have one senior producer who was um
Jewish who was Orthodox Jewish and so there was respect for her and the fact that we
don't call her on Saturdays so there was there there was one person I knew who
had a sense a
religiosity or religiousness that was respected but that was one person I did
not know a single Christian
in in the in the television uh bureau
So how do you reconcile your Christianity with
um the fact that Christianity was forced on Native Americans in the past
that I thought would be really difficult and I thought I would be
shunned when I you know kind of came out as a Christian
um by Native Americans and thankfully that hasn't happened
I I have not been attacked as I thought it might be
and I think part of that has to do with a Native American peoples have
largely believed in a creator in
in a god it might have a different name you might call that
person great spirit or you might call that person grandfather
or you might simply say creator but I think that there is um
a sense of that we are created
and we're not the creators. The book were discussing is called
Falling Into Place, A Memoir of Overcoming
Hattie Kauffman is in the studio with me she's an author and
Emmy award-winning news correspondent let's talk about your childhood
it was very rough as you alluded to before what are some of your earliest
memories?
Listening to my parents fight and being afraid that somebody
was gonna get killed that's my earliest memory and I was maybe three or four
and there wasn't a whole lotta food in the house no uh
they they were disappear and I realize that
you know in retrospect they were uh probably binge drinkers
and so what if somebody went out they didn't come back for days or whenever
they would come back
they were also their marriage was falling apart and I didn't know that you
know again why did the divorce hit so hard it was because
you know everything falls apart when you're when your marriage falls apart when your
whole life falls apart and that was what was happening with them
um so if one was gone or the other I mean they actually divorced and we didn't know
that as kids
and then they remarried we didn't know that either but they would be gone and
or else show up with strangers strangers that they met at the bar strangers that
I I had no idea so people would come and go but in an alcoholic home things
just don't make sense
a light bulb burns out and nobody replaces the light bulb
and so from then on that room is dark
I mean simple things a battery you don't replace the battery there just like
bills don't get paid and so for instance the utilities would get shut off nobody
would go shopping
uh we would go to school when we thought it was time to go to school
I tell a story in my book about a cuckoo clock that's broken and it cuckoos
randomly maybe two times maybe
forty times and you know and nobody takes down the cuckoo clock and throws
it away and it was such such a metaphor for how cuckoo it is I mean we were living in
chaos
But how did you I mean there were seven of you and
it seems from from reading the memoir that you guys really
closed ranks around each other and really took care of each other. We did
and I have to credit my oldest
siblings my brother John and my sister Lily who became
surrogate parents and took care of us
and we also really loved each other um
and so there are stories in in my book of our adventures that
that I think your uplifting and show some tenacity and some
you know *** in these kids and and so I don't wanna
present it as a tale of woe I also don't want to condemn my parents because I
realize that they
were you having a hard time as might be putting it lightly
but they they were not bad people but they were going through it
terribly bad time at a formative time
at least in my life it was a very formative time for me
and you were it was so such a environment of insecurity for you
yeah and and the people that were supposed to be caring for you were not
they weren't available yeah I think I was sort of a nervous wreck as a kid
I had a lot of anxiety and fear again uh, I I
I pointed back to that divorce of what it triggered all of that what's going to
happen next
and that that was instilled in me in a very young age and also I think it's no
surprise I became a reporter
you know because reporters want the facts what's gonna happen you know just tell me and I
from a little from the age of uh five or six my nickname was 'how come'
because I was always asking how come you know how come how come
uh and I became a reporter who asks why what where
tell me about your Aunt Teddy she was the one light
in our life or in my life as a child she
I had almost every adult that I knew was either
drunk or about to be or hungover or
or gone and yet I had this aunt who would come
around and and check on us. This is your father's sister. My father's sister
and she'd she did not well she wasn't a constant present
presence she would she would be there but again she would be gone she actually
became a missionary and went to Guatemala and went to Mexico
I think we might have been her first mission field but I
wish she had stayed somebody pointed out like even she betrayed you or not betrayed
you. What's it called
abandoned because she was she was this
this somebody that I wanted to hold onto and yet she went away too
however when she was there she was the personification
of kindness love light goodness
and she talked to you about a belief in Christianity
and you told her very strongly as a young girl. I was 15 when I rejected her
you said this is a white man's religion and I have nothing to do with yes
that was when I became
uh a teenager and I was uh you have to remember the times too
I mean this would have been early seventies the American Indian
Movement
was sort of on the heels at the Black Power movement the Native Americans had
taken over Alcatraz and they were gonna
you know soon would take over Fort Lawton which is right there in the city of Seattle
They took over the BIA building here in
um Washington DC and down the road would be taking over Wounded Knee hand so
this was right at the start of that I was a high school girl
and I was wearing an eagle feather tied to my hair and
a buckskin jacket to to to school everyday and I was walking with a tough
Indian power kinda stance and so I the thought that I could be taken in by my
aunt just
angered me and I rejected her meanly and rejected
by rejecting her religion I was rejecting her it was her whole life
and and its it's a very sad thing that I never got to see again after that
also in those teen years you started drinking. I did
Yes. Cause that's what adults do. They drink. Well
it's also what children of alcoholics do You swear you'll never be like that
and then you're like that or
you marry somebody like that or both. And in your case you did both. It was both
yeah so unconsciously I was repeating the
the uh path my parents had set. Did you actually become an alcoholic?
I uh joined AA so I'd have to say yes
Hattie Kaufman is in the studio with me she's an author and Emmy award-winning
news correspondent
her memoir is called Falling Into Place
you know it's interesting that the title is Falling Into Place when
the beginning of the book you're really falling apart (laughter)
yeah and then it continues falling apart
um I think that the title refers to not only my life finally falling into place
but if you read this book you realize that
there a couple different storylines going on wait how does this all fall
into place and finally it does I mean the thread that holds the two story
lines together the childhood and the divorce
the thread is God God's pursuit of me my rejection of God God's rescue of me
and and that is the golden thread that holds it all together
given a childhood of hunger and in security and alcohol and all that
how do you overcome all that continue going to school
not only graduate high school go to college become a professional
yeah and all that before finding the lord
I think part of it was we were fueled by the hunger
i mean sometimes when you come out of something like this it makes you work
extra hard to make sure it never happens
even though at the same time I was sabotaging myself which I give examples
of that
I credit the love of my older brother and sister
that that kind of nourishment and despite the fact that my
my mom and dad were gone all the time when they were around my mom would
didn't want any of us to drop out
I mean she was she was a big believer in education
um I probably didn't give them enough credit in this book because...Was she educated
herself?
no she was not well she she made it through high school and she always felt
bad and
and uh but she had a saying don't belittle me
She would also say 'its my prerogative' you know she had these little
things that she would say that
uh they were like little powerful things she was she was a tiny lady but she had
some some fire to her so I really don't know how to explain how
I managed to survive and thrive
even in school and get scholarships and become a network news correspondent in a
highly competitive
field. And your siblings did well as well I mean I think
your younger sister is a state senator? She was elected first American Indian
women elected to the Washington State Senate and
uh in my book you'll see she's baby she's the little one that we
we carry around when we are kids on our own
um yeah everyone of them every one of them
reached something and it could be because of um
having to learn how to survive at an early age
how to take care of yourself. It seems that though that can go the other way because we
hear so many stories of these kids
in the projects you know either alcoholic or drug-addicted parents
who never go to school never finish
end up repeating that cycle. We were never on
a public assistance and I um we
had to make it on our own we didn't have something to fall back on
I tell this story and it seems like a really terrible story and yet I realize
that it it could have been worse we could have been split up and put into
foster homes we could have
been killed or you know run away and never seen this sibling again or
I I was once uh doing an interview not not so different than this where
I said that we could have been split up and then afterward I had a book signing
and this old American Indian man came to him
came to it and he said it was worse he heard me on the air and he had sought out
this book signing cause he wanted to tell me that for himself he
it was worse he was one of you know so many American Indian kids in a house like
this and they were split up
Um so I know that I know that I have been cared for
through this process. As you started getting closer to God in this
you know post divorce period, what did you learn about yourself
through that journey? Well it's still an ongoing journey
and I'm learning all the time uh one to let go of my pride
cause I have had a lot of 'I can do it'
and along with that 'I can do it' is 'look I did it' and
and you really have to kind of strip away some some of the pride and
realize God's been doing things for you all along
and God will do things for me I don't have to be such a control freak
that's another thing I'm learning and trying let go of
The book we're discussing is called Falling Into Place: A Memoir of
Overcoming. Hattie Kauffman is the author and she's in the studio with me
You're no longer journalist. Why did you leave journalism?
well uh two things one I
I got old I I'm not that old but over 50 on television is really old
okay so no Christians no women over 50 and no
and and then um I begin to think what do I want to do
and I have always wanted to write this book since the time I was in my twenties
i I realized we
are not the same as everybody else around us, we Kaufmans and I thought
there's a story to tell just about the kids but I never had time to write it
because I was traveling everywhere as network news correspondent you never
know where you gonna
go to sleep that night you wake up in the morning you could be sent anywhere
and uh so now I've had time to do this
and so that's that's why I am in separate place and what are you doing
now
in addition to writing my book I talk to native american youth
um and reservations I'm a supporter of the American Indian college fund
so those are two things I'm doing. Native Americans are
one of the most disadvantaged minorities
in the country why is that and what needs to be done?
Yea, there's sort of a misinterpretation people think that they're just the casino rich
but that's but really a tiny tiny minority of the
Native American tribes part of the reason for the poverty is that the
reservations
are remote you know Pine Ridge Reservation in uh
South Dakota one of the poorest counties in all of America
there's no economic development out there and two there has been this cycle
of the alcoholism and. Why why so much alcohol in
the Native American community? Well part of it is that it's kind of self
generating in terms of
as I just said kids grow up and do what their parents do so it it becomes self
generating I think
uh I think part of it started with the total lifestyle change that came with
in one generation you don't hunt you don't ride your horses,you're gonna
live
in this little plot in one generation to be defeated
so absolutely and and of course people's
in wars all over the world have been defeated
but in one generation to go from that
to this dependence on um
government
uh commodity foods of you know like flour and lard
I mean this is this is all you have to go from a warrior society to this
uh and I think and the introduction alcoholism
which has been self-perpetuating. So what needs to be done?
Reaching out again I think it starts with the youth I think that that
talking to the kids I i mean it's not just talking to them but a but the idea that
kids can change that you now have choice
and and finally I think accepting that this
is the world we live in we can't go back
when I was 15 and when I wanted to quit school and yo say that's white
man's religion
I wanted to go ride a horse and where my buckskin and
you know I wanted to go back as if it were the eighteen hundreds and and we
can't
Hattie you said you have wanted to write this memoir for a long time since you were in
your twenties
now that it's written how do you feel and what's the reaction been?
Boy the night before release date I was awake in the middle at night thinking oh
my gosh what have I done
because to think of all those personal things coming out it was like
imagine if you had a session with your therapist
and it was recorded and it was about to be broadcast through loudspeakers and you
couldn't turn it off and you knew that was gonna happen tomorrow that was the
feeling I had
um but that was just a feeling and the actual
experience has been a good one and not a bad one
I was a little worried about what the response would be from my siblings
because I'm pulling back the curtain
on my childhood but I'm not an only child so that means pulling back the
curtain on
all of theirs and maybe they don't want the curtain pulled back
so um I was very worried about what
my sisters would say my brother is no longer alive
um but it didn't take long and I got flowers
from the youngest sister and then I got a text you know from
Joanne, my, the next older. Uh there a couple
I haven't heard from still however
uh we've seen each other and we've
there there have been hugs and their been you know we just the book just didn't come up
and that's okay with me. Hattie Kaufman she's an author and award-winning
news correspondent the book is Falling Into Place
A Memoir of Overcoming it's published by Baker books
Hattie, thanks so much for being on the program. Thank you for having me.