glitches

Pass

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.)

proud to be Apache

Usually sweets drives the camry because the carseat fits better in that car, and he is the one who drives the boy back and forth to the crusher's house every other day for shared childcare.  So I haven't been driving it much.  But now that we're on spring break, I've been getting out more in the camry, which is nice.  It has a better stereo, and, well, it's just a sweet ride.  We've kept it in pretty good condition, so even though it was bought by my grandmother way back in 1996, it still looks good and runs great.  I like that car a lot.  Before the baby, it was really my car, because sweets used my old truck to go back and forth to the forest for his research.  When I drove it daily, I did a few things to really make it mine.  One of the things I did was put a bumper sticker on the rear right bumper that reads "proud to be Apache."

Being that we're in Connecticut, I get very few responses connected to my sticker.  I always assumed that people were a little confused about why I would ever want to be a helicopter, but whatever.  This is the only bumper sticker on my car, and we have generic Connecticut plates, and nothing else out of the ordinary on or in the car.  In sum: a camry, with car seat, toys, blankets, and a bumper sticker on the right rear bumper.

So imagine my suprise the other day when I was putting something in the trunk and noticed a new addition to the right rear side of my car.  There is a series of small dents, probably five or six in total, that are sprinkled on the right rear, above the bumper.  Not on the bumper, but above.  If it were just one or two, I would think that we were just subject to some unlucky gravel flung our way by some other care.  Especially because it's now winter and there is a lot of that stuff floating around on the city's streets and highways.  But it's not just one or two, it's five or six at least, and they look a lot like someone shot at the car with a gun.  Seriously- whatever hit my car hit it hard, and repeatedly.

Let me just say that I'm somewhat qualified to identify bullet marks in metal, because I have this artist in my family who went through a period where he shot up his artwork.  And because I'm no stranger myself to guns, being both Apache and from New Mexico.

Let me also say that I'm not really getting swept up in this, because I just don't think it's worth worrying about.  We were probably hit by some spray of gravel, right?  And it's just coincidence that it's on the same side as the bumper sticker.

But given that I am a mom and my baby rides around in that same car, I am considering taking off the bumper sticker.  I can't decide if that's really the rational conclusion to this whole mess.  I wouldn't want something as silly as pride put my family in danger.  But then again, I am proud to be Apache.  It's as important to me as any other credential or marker of who I am.  I would trade in my college degrees, my life experiences, who knows what else, but I wouldn't trade in the fact that I'm Indian.  ever.  So should I take off the bumper sticker, just because there's this slight, very slight chance that someone in Connecticut thinks that the only good Indian is a shameful Indian?

This is a strange conundrum.  We're trying to just ignore the whole thing.  Sometime in the near future we'll take the car to the auto body shop and have them patch in the chipped paint where the objects struck the car and replace the taillight cover where the objects cracked up the plastic.  Maybe we'll ask the professionals what they think might have struck the car.  We'll never really know, so we're just not getting worked up over it.  But I can't help but wonder what it was that hit us, and whether it could happen again.