https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/adopted-brit-woman-reunited-long-24605932?utm_source=mirror_newsletter&utm_campaign=daily_morning_newsletter2&utm_medium=emailAdopted Brit woman reunited with long-lost Native American family after 51 years apart
EXCLUSIVE: Paula Stillie, 51, had a happy upbringing in Scotland after parents Joyce and Jim adopted her as a baby. Her journey to being reunited with her Native American family will feature on ITV's Long Lost Family.
By Mark Jefferies Showbiz Editor
20:34, 23 JUL 2021Updated20:53, 23 JUL 2021
An adopted woman who put talcum powder on her face in a bid to try and lighten her skin has discovered she is Native American. Paula Stillie, 51, had a happy upbringing in Scotland after parents Joyce and Jim adopted her as a baby. She always wondered where she was from, but never suspected she was a descendent of the Comanche tribe in Oklahoma, US, and that her father had visited the UK with the US Navy. Paula said: “I’ve always felt different. My mum and dad were lovely and very supportive and open about me being adopted. Being adopted, you are different and mixed race makes you even more different. Why did I have a different skin colour to my mum and dad? I can remember an incident in the bathroom when I covered myself in talcum powder from head to toe. I must have been four or five, and I said, ‘I am the same colour as you now, Mum. I am white’. I think that broke her heart. I just wanted to be the same.”
Paula, who lives in the village of Cullen in Moray, Scotland, said she was “very aware of being different in a small town” and that made her even more determined to find out her background. She did some digging and eventually traced her birth mother in England but she did not want any contact with her. Paula said: “I don’t feel like I have an anchor in life. Where am I from? What are my roots? It is important to know where you come from. There is still that part of me missing. I could come from anywhere, I just don’t know.”
After her search hit a brick wall, Paula turned to ITV’s Long Lost Family, and researchers discovered her father was US sailor Larry Smith. However, they did not have enough information to track him down so turned to DNA testing. It brought up a distant match with someone who had their entire family tree online. It revealed Paula’s family are Native American and included a man called Lawrence known to his family as John who was Paula’s birth father. He died in 1982 but the team managed to trace Lawrence’s younger brother, Joe, who lives in Montana. The Smith family have since welcomed Paula with open arms. In the ITV show, Joe shows Paula a photo of her birth father in his youth and he is the spitting image of Paula’s son Kyle, 26. He also has photos of Paula’s grandfather, a Comanche tribe elder. Joe and his siblings, Mary Louise, Nancy and Richard, had no idea about Paula. But he says his brother “would have tried to make an effort to find her himself, if he was aware of her”.
Paula speaks to the family via a video call in the show and makes plans to visit them in the US. She says: “It’s life-changing, this. That means the world to me in my heart. I belong somewhere. It’s the start of a new chapter and it’s going to be incredible”.
