TW/ mention of rape (nongraphic by a priest) and the Native Genocide
In Honor of Indigenous Awareness Month here's a quick overview what my life has looked like being Indigenous
My parents didn't raise me Native, bc they were told that being white was better. So I didn't have much other than just the dreamcatchers on the walls and some stories my Grandma told me.
It wasn't until I had a dream about some ones funeral the night they passed in their sleep that Grandma told me it was bc of me being Native.
I didn't know what that was supposed to mean. I didn't know what that meant to me.
Flash forward a few years, I've had a couple dreams here and there but more-so I've been hungry. I'd been searching the internet, searching books, asking my grandma questions. Information, correct information at that, was hard to come by. But when I found the right sources, oh boy was there so much. Everything was so vibrant, everything felt familiar. It was more interesting than learning about the Greeks in class, any history lesson, any religion less, it was full and enticing and beautiful, but we never learned about it. Because the U.S. would rather let something this beautiful be swept under the rug rather than admitting to a genocide.
I'm more into my culture now. My family is more into my culture now. I'm learning my language. I've connected with new relatives.
I will never forget the day that my Grandma told me she was proud of me for making her and the family better.
I've been having more dreams. My spirit guide (a black indigenous man who when i first met offered my a drink at a bar) always warns me when something bad is about to happen, or I'm making the right choice about a big decision.
But I've been laughed at for my name. Nobody can say it right.
I cannot register for enrollment in the tribe, despite my Grandma being full blood. It just so happened that my Grandma's parents were from two separate tribes, and the Blood Quantum only takes one. Thats why I don't count, even tho I have that blood from my mother's side, and some extra from my Father, who is mostly yaqui but was adopted.
My relative said "you know what horses, dogs, and Indians all have in common"
The government requires them to have a pedigree
No white person ever knows what a blood quantum is. I have to explain it. It's current and active genocide.
Nobody knows about ICWA. I wrote my final paper on it. My professor gave me a personalized note saying that he thinks that I'm going to go places, and that was one of the best essays he got. He could feel my passion through the page. My people are dying.
When I said a Native prayer because I was showing off how much I had learned, a acquaintance started making nonsense noise at me, making fun of the way I sounded.
When I smudged at a Halloween Party because some people wanted me to help protect them for evil, some people started laughing that I was doing witch craft.
The first tag that pulls up when I search Native is "#Native Women"
I'm three times as likely to get sexually assaulted. Not by other Native people. By White people.
People don't say I look Native. But if you look for more than one second, that's wrong. I get pale in the winter but really dark in the summer, like a lot of Natives. My face is Native. I have my mother's cheekbones. I wear my weight like a every Native I've ever seen about my size. My hair is dark. My eyes squint when I smile. I was always told to take photos again and again bc I was blinking. I didn't know that was a Native thing. My Grandma said people don't think I'm Native because they're so stupid they'd only realize if I wore a beaded headband and a ribbon skirt.
I have to explain and ask teachers all the time if they know something they are showing in class is racists. Sometimes its a yes, and we'll talk about that, or a no, but can you talk about that. My brother who is 13 was never taught about what happened to the native people, and only knew because I told him. I've always have had to know, because nobody else does.
I left the church after the curtain was pulled back. My Grandma who is 70 was forced into a Catholic School when she was young. The priest raped the girls
I was told never to go to the reservation. My mom remembers it as poverty, going to the salvation army and picking up clothes. My grandma remembers it as the place where she was an alcoholic, and she's fought to stay sober for more than half her life now but that only started when she left. My Aunt remembers it as the place her mama got beat by her good for nothing White Ex Husband.
I have no representation. All the old shit is always racist. I'm used as a figure head at sports and as decorations, I'm not human to them.
Nobody admits the Genocide is currently happening.
My sister was pulled in without her permission to the front office with no warning to talk for morning announcements how's she just like the rest of the white kids despite being Native. They gave her a script. Then afterwords they had the audacity to ask for a photo of her in her childhood doing 'native things'. Mom laughed and said she should've told her she didn't have any photos because she was "just like them".
I realized school was never for me, because I was always learn better the Indian way.
Whenever I see a Native person in the wild, and they notice me, there is already a bond there. If I asked them for anything, to talk, for a ride, they would give it to me. If they did so, so would I. My native friends i met in college I adored like they were my cousins.
I've learned that despite me being raised white, I was actually raised Native. My parents give and give and give. They give to the community, their lives are dedicated to help people. That's the Native way. We bleed compassion, and if someone in my community needs my last 5 bucks, they'll get it because I know someone else in my community will help me to not starve, and when they are starving I'll help them too.
Please listen to Native people. Here's to Indigenous Awareness Month.
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As a mixed Indigenous person who's had CPS on their ass their entire childhood just because of my white grandparents I cannot stress enough that ICWA is one of the most vital pieces of Indigenous Rights legislation we have.
And thank everything that it's safe, for now. Always for now. But it won't always be if we're not out here fighting tooth and nail to keep our children any time a white couple wants to "show them a good life". The goal is extermination of our cultures in favor of the gas guzzling suburban hellscape that the colonizers brought with them, it always has been.
It's a victory absolutely worthy of celebration, but as with every victory in the fight for rights, it is not permanent unless we keep showing up and showing out and we need to be ready for the inevitable next white couple that wants their own personal Pocahontas fantasy.
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