I recently signed up on BlogHer, which seems like a very interesting place to spend a lot a lot a lot of time. In the listing your blog section, I was given the option to put my blog under number of categories. There are a million different categories, and although I like to defy categorization, I finally settled on calling this a mommy blog and a race and ethnicity blog. The first category is obvious. For some, the second category may not be so clear. And that, my friends, is today's topic.
I think some might stumble onto this weblog and think maybe there's been a mistake. you see my photo on the front and maybe you don't think Indian. You read about my daily schtuff and you're just enamored by my glamorous life and miss the fact that it's an indian writing those words. A lot about what people think comes from what they see with their eyes. (I generalize.) But I'm the product of a mixed marriage. My parents met, my mom thought my dad was philipino, and they married and had two kids. My skin is yellow, not brown; my hair is brown and wierd, but not black and straight. I have high cheekbones, but not so much more than anyone else, and they're covered in my other beloved but largely unrecognized indian characteristic: chubby cheeks. I'm not dripping in beadwork or silver jewelry, I don't speak some stunted version of english. I'm in Connecticut, not New Mexico. My other car doesn't stop at all pow-wows. (but my car does proclaim that it is proud to be Apache...). In other words, I pass for white most of the time. Especially in New England, where there just aren't very many Indians to serve as a frame of reference. When I meet new people I don't tell them to look out for the Indian. I just describe myself.
So this leads me to think a lot about what makes up race and ethnicity. Clearly, skin color and hair traits are important. I definitely like summer a little more, because my largely tan-resistant skin does get a little darker and I look more like I belong in my family. I like being in the southwest because my hair doesn't get irritatingly frizzy with the humidity and it actually looks more straight and ethnically appropriate. There are times when I grow my hair out ceremonially, but it's usually pretty short because I don't like it hanging around my neck causing trouble. So the physical traits are obviously an important part of my ethnic identity, and I can honestly say I wish I looked more like my dad and less like my mom.
But ethnicity is about so much more than hair and skin. It's about who you are, and how you were raised, and where you belong. I belong in Santa Fe. I'm an urban indian. I belong in a place where there are lots of other people like me: normal, halfbreed, urban. We're well-educated. We're doing our thing, we're respectful of tradition, we like fry bread, but we don't eat it all the time because they don't make fancy boutique clothes in size 24.
As a kid, I went to a gradeschool where there were maybe five indian kids, twenty five white kids, and the rest were latino. I as forced to forge my ethnic identity early, partly because I got a lot of people asking me "what ARE you?"- kids and teachers alike. I had to defend our people in classes where it was normal to teach that columbus discovered america and that indians were savage murderers. I had to explain that I didn't have to wear feathers to be indian. I had to put up with people telling me I was atheist or that we were going to hell because we weren't Christian. We indian kids would see each other on the playground and we'd do the secret indian wave (I cannot reveal the secret indian wave here for fear the pow-wow mafia search me out and cover me in melted commodity cheese) and that was the only assurance that somewhere I fit in.
But we always fit in at home. At home my dad would tell me to ignore those kids. We weren't going to hell. We are Indian. We didn't need their religion, their traditions, their prejudices. We are Indian and what we have is better than what they have. We have our own traditions. We have our own spirituality. We don't need their approval. We have all we need here at home.
Now that I'm an adult and a little more mature, I don't feel the need to be so adversarial all the time. (Unlike my dad, who feeds off the stuff like a hungry pit bull.) But I'm writing, thinking and experiencing life as an Indian. Maybe my photo doesn't fit the standard stereotype. But that's okay- that's who I am. me.
(and the photo is of the lentil, when he was little, in his cradleboard.)