Hello, my friends, and thank you for being here. Guess now is the time I get to write this, it is so difficult... I heard a wise man say that wounds need air. This is me attempting to model and form neuronal pathways in heretofore unchecked territory... and another opportunity to use my Cloak (reference The Traveler's Cloak post).
Many decades ago, when I was in the single digits, my aunts and uncles came across a family secret and blew it open. My Indiana farmer predecessors, farming there since the 1600's, had mixed with the Red People and kept it a secret. We were part Algonquin, which seemed to explain certain features and thick, black hair. My grandfather kept saying, "I ain't no prairie n---!" He probably just wanted to keep his family fitting in, after generations of genocide. I remember arguments, family going against family, in a gradient of feelings on mixed race, and what did it mean anyway? Some trying to teach Gramps how to adapt to diversity and inclusion, while to others it didn't matter, only what you did with your life regardless. That what makes you isn't who you are. If we got this far without knowing, ...
Many family members tried to hunt the few teeny tiny strands of history that could tell us who we were so we could belong. Mom just began embracing anything Indian. Well, anything she liked. I was told that I had a proud heritage and that I should acknowledge it; we are still here, and representing not unquietly. Great Uncle Arzie and Great Aunt Fern died before anyone could get anything out of them, if I remember. Grandma died soon after, then Grandpa died, going to the grave in denial. Parts of the family have died off not talking about it or acknowledging it. It was divisive, and I've always wanted to get to the bottom of it. Enter the pandemic, stimulus money, and Ancestry.com.
The results came back. Nope, no "Asian" blood detected, which is how they categorize indigenous peoples on this continent. I had to immediately talk to my ex-husband and current friend, since he was there at the time, experiencing all that with my family. He thought it was quite interesting, in his clinical physicist/computer genius way. My dad and brother weren't hung up on the idea and didn't express any sense of loss. But my moccs... ? Now would be considered appropriation. My artwork, my thin connection to a rhizome of time... wasn't true. The chorus of spirit winds I thought were my ancestors, now silent. Not now, mama, not quiet now! Were you ever there? Why was I feeling hollowed out? How could I end up statutorily canceled from a culture who didn't know me anyway, in which it turns out -- hey! I am not welcome
And OOPS, I. Never. was
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