It’s
weird to grow up “white” but be part-Native American. I always longed for a rich, fully involved
cultural heritage and known family lineage.
Some of my girlfriends went to frequent pow-wows, had grandmothers with
homemade frybread recipes, and who won Indian Princess contests with their
beads and homemade dresses year after year.
By contrast, my grandfather’s father, who was a full-blood Cherokee,
converted to become a Southern Baptist at some point in his young life. He was awarded a scholarship to study
seminary at Haskell College (now Haskell Indian Nations University), and
proceeded to convert Cherokees on the Reservation to become Baptist Christians,
too. He did not teach his children
anything of their native customs, heritage or language, but showed them how to
assimilate, as best they could, into small town, white Oklahoman culture. My grandfather was in the Army Reserve and
married a white woman (my grandmother).
What
is assimilation? Part of assimilating is
taking aspects of the culture around you and incorporating them into your own
existing way of being; part of it is changing, or confirming to the morays and
norms around you. Assimilation can also
imply that you become like a sheep who follows wherever she is lead, be it to
greener pastures or the slaughterhouse.
That may have worked for my grandfather, who was spit on and called a
“dirty Indian” in his youth, who was generally treated like a second-class
citizen, but that has never worked for me.
Although
a woman, I never felt like a member of a minority group. Growing up in the latter part of the 21st
century in the U.S.A., and raised by rebellious parents who were determined to
allow their children all the opinions to which they were never entitled to
express, I felt emboldened and certainly equal to my male counterparts. Taking my coloring from my mother’s
German-Scottish side of the family, I never experienced appearance-based
discrimination like my brown Native friends did. Serving in the U.S. Peace Corps in
post-apartheid South Africa, however, opened my eyes to a whole new world: that of the minority.
During
my two- year service, I lived alone, but within a family compound, in the
Southern Kalahari desert. South African
villages, by and large, are full of the elderly and primary school aged
children. There are few complete
families or women of child-bearing age.
Many of the men live in hostels near mines, or in large cities where
there is work and visit only a few times a month. My travel was 90% on public transportation,
using buses and taxi vans, and 10% hitchhiking in private cards. My reception by the community was positive,
and I felt fairly safe when I was in my village, but anytime I left I was on
high alert; there were a number of dangers awaiting me. Alcoholism was rampant, and it was quite
common to encounter belligerent drunks on the 7:30am Saturday morning public
bus to town.
While
living in South Africa as the only white person for miles around, it was
routine for me to be stared at, asked for my phone number or for money, and
given marriage offers. Over time, this
new heightened fear and state of distress I was living in, surrounded by new
norms and expectations, came to be unsettling to the point where I feared leaving
my home. Some days I wouldn’t.
In
the U.S.A., nobody asks me what race I am.
Nobody cares that I am a female.
I can live with anonymity as I wish, or be as involved in society as I
like. These things I previously took for
granted. However, my service in a country highly charged by race and clearly
defined gender roles made me realize what a tough time my grandfather must have
had, just trying to grow up and become himself in the midst of a society that
didn’t want him to exist in the first place, let alone appreciate his rich
culture heritage.
The
tribe of South Africans I lived with, the BaTswana people, have many
similarities to the Cherokee. Both
cultures have rich oral traditions and peaceably assimilating into their
captors’ societies. In my search for
meaning, I was disappointed to find that even in the remote villages in South
Africa, popular culture, even American culture, has made its way into the homes
of the lucky few with electricity, televisions and cell phones. Gone are the days of traditional ways.
So
it seems that, in this day and age of globalization, even in the remotest parts
of the world, our cultures are mixed.
This rampant mixing of cultures raises many questions for me. Is it reasonable to place a high premium, as
I had been unknowingly doing, on purity, or the ancient? Can we say that only these are wise or
worthy? Is our subconscious trying to
tell us something? Sherman Alexie does a
great job of exploring what it means to be a “half-breed” or to live “on the
Rez” but not belong there in his novel, Absolutely
True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. “I realized that, sure, I was a Spokane Indian.
I belonged to that tribe. But I also belonged to the tribe of American
immigrants. And to the tribe of basketball players. And to the tribe of
bookworms. And the tribe of cartoonists. And the tribe of chronic masturbators.
And the tribe of teenage boys. And the tribe of small-town kids. And the tribe
of Pacific Northwesterners. And the tribe of tortilla chips-and-salsa lovers.
And the tribe of poverty. And the tribe of funeral-goers. And the tribe of
beloved sons. And the tribe of boys who really missed their best friends. It
was a huge realization. And that's when I knew that I was going to be okay
(217).” Belonging becomes less about
race or tribe, and more about activities and interests we share with others.
We
can literally travel to the ends of the earth only to realize that we must make
our own homes, forge our own realities, and find the places to which we belong.
Rather
than assimilate, rather than cower in fear, I raise my head with pride for all
the cultural elements that make up the tribe of me. I seek others who will not spite me for being
a half-breed, or a woman, or for being born in a wealthy nation with no homogenous
culture. I walk tall in my thrift-store
clothing that I dried on my clothesline, chosen with care to be comfort and
flattering. I demand equal pay for equal
work. I am an example for other women by
utilizing my education and working to my fullest potential. I keep my native name and respect the Earth
as my Native ancestors did. I combine my
car trips and walk or ride my bicycle as much as possible to minimize my carbon
footprint. I count the many ways I have been
blessed, and never forget where I came from.
I am free to be me.
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