La Semana bridges cultures for adoptees
by Aaron Vehling
Thisweek Newspapers
What if you were the only person who looked like you?
Odd question, especially for those without twins. But think of it this way: What if you were the only person of your ethnicity in your community?
In the early 1980s, as more Minnesotans began adopting from abroad, many were confronted with this question. Their Minnesota-raised children were part of white families and mostly white communities, but looked decidedly different.
Jeaneen Wilhelmi, who adopted two Colombian children in the early 1980s, recognized the importance of the adoptees having some interaction and a relationship with other Latino kids. So Wilhelmi and some partners started La Semana, a cultural camp aimed at bridging the gap between cultures of origin and adopted cultures.
“We wanted kids to have companions who looked like them,” Wilhelmi told me over the phone last week. “We kept saying, ‘How do we keep these kids in connection with their heritage?’ ”
La Semana (which is Spanish for “the week”) is a weeklong recreational and educational program that has been held at different sites around the Twin Cities in its multiple decades of existence. It celebrates its 30th anniversary this week at All Saints Catholic Church and Lakeville South High School.
“The camp taught me as a very young person to not be ashamed of my adoption story and eclectic-looking family,” said Anna Wilhelmi Plachizaca, Jeaneen’s daughter. She got started with the camp when she was very young, but she remembers that idea running through her head.
The camp started out with 45 kids, all pre-K through seventh grade.
The bonds developed amid the classrooms, Latin musical performances, food tastings and cultural lessons held strong.
“The core families would go on vacations with each other,” Wilhelmi Plachizaca said. “We were even in each other’s weddings.”
The situation is a bit different now. There are nearly 400 kids in the program, adopted from a variety of Latin American countries. Also, there are more Latino immigrants in Minnesota in general, so it’s not so much a matter of the adoptees being one of a few among a sea of white. It’s more about adopted children with a semicommon background getting in touch with their roots.
“All adopted children have a sense of abandonment in their psyche,” Wilhelmi said. “Most kids yearn for something to connect them to who they are.”
Talking with the Wilhelmis made me think of some of my personal experiences. Growing up, I had a couple friends who were adopted from Korea by white families. One of them said she did not even think of herself as nonwhite until some kids at school made fun of her for “looking Chinese.”
Minnesota has the highest number of Korean adoptees per capita in the world, according to a 2010 MinnPost story on the topic. There are centers that provide cultural trips for adoptees who want to visit the city in Korea in which they were born, and sometimes even the orphanage from which they came.
I actually spent some time in Korea about five years ago. I was an English teacher in a city of about 2 million people. Here, that would be a big city. There, it was more like a Mankato-sized city in relation to Seoul, the capital.
While I would not dream to know what these adoptees in America feel like being a minority, my experience in Korea has heightened my empathy toward them.
I was one of a very small population of white people in a very homogenous area. The result was that everywhere I went people would do at least one of the following: stare, laugh, approach me and give me advice or just engage in friendly conversation.
But sometimes it was negative, especially when people would act as if I were part of some Barnumesque experiment in public relations.
The funny part is this would often happen in my neighborhood’s ubiquitous American chain establishments, so perhaps I was feeding into somewhat of a cliche. That said, I hadn’t had McDonald’s in six months, so I was interested in a taste of home.
I emerged from these incidents basically unscathed – again, I don’t want to give the impression that I’m offering an analogous experience here – but it allowed me the luxury of even a percentage of an experience walking in someone else’s shoes.
What becomes of those kids who go through La Semana? Wilhelmi Plachizaca said that the camp, and its sister organization Parents of Latin American Children, engage in a number of activities that “teach philanthropy at an early age.” For example, at Christmas the kids will send gifts to the orphanages they came from.
“I think that shaped a lot of us into who we are in our careers now,” she said. “Several of us are now in social services. I think it just gave us one more opportunity that most 7- and 8-year-olds don’t have: giving back to something larger than themselves.”
It is perhaps this that makes La Semana so inspiring: It takes the tough questions about race, adoption, the self and one’s heritage and answers them for kids by being honest with them. And that manifests as good, old-fashioned selfless behavior.
In an age in which Americans often genuflect before the idea of instant gratification for the benefit of the self, I find this comforting.
Aaron Vehling is the Lakeville Editor for Thisweek Newspapers. Columns reflect the opinion of the author.
