The Kids Are Alright—A Reflection On My Indigeneity As I Age
After decades of community outreach, educational programs, speeches, lectures, essays, Op-Eds and lesson plans, this Indigenous woman has to wonder if it was worth it.
As a child, I knew my paternal Oglala Lakota Uŋčí Sally (Grandmother Sally in her languge, Lakȟótiyapi) was terrified of White people.
Born on Pine Ridge Reservation in 1912, she grew up and lived most of her life in an extremely racist part of South Dakota.
Near Tomi Lahren's hometown.
Go figure.
Huŋkáke (her Parents) had a farm off the reservation. But Sally was still a mandatory "Indian boarding school" student as were her Parents.
She lied about her 4-year-old and 6-year-old sons'—my Atas (Fathers)—ages so the government would take them to the still mandatory boarding school together in the mid 1940s. Her parents did the same with her and a maternal Čhuwé (Sister).
A Quick Guide to Lakota Kinship
How do I have two Fathers? In Oglala Lakota kinship, your Father's Brother is also your Father and his children are your siblings, not your cousins. Your Mother’s Sister is also your Mother and her children are your siblings.
Your Father's Sister is your Tȟuŋwíŋ (Auntie) and your Mother's Brother is your Lekší (Uncle). Everyone you're related to—including by marriage—who isn't a Grandparent or one of the people above is your Tȟaŋháŋši/Šič'éši or Haŋkáši/Ščépȟaŋši (all of those words mean Cousin… seriously).
Lessons from Uŋčí Sally
Sally and Huŋkáke (her parents) knew if the children went to boarding school together they were more likely to survive. Sally did the same when the government took my Aunties Alberta and Tino to the same school.
Sally saw friends beaten, raped and killed at boarding school in the 1910s and 20s. She knew her children saw the same things decades later.
She lived off the reservation as an adult, working in factories in predominantly White cities until a degenerative eye disease stole most of her sight. She told me as a young mother she had to carry my Auntie Bert's birth certificate and multiple forms of proof with her at all times because the bit of European genes in our pool all seemed to concentrate in that 1 of her 4 children.
Sally was often referred to as Auntie Bert's nanny or confronted and accused of stealing a White child by angry White men every time they were in public together.
Having Bert taken to boarding school was almost a blessing, escaping one constant trauma for another.
As children, Uŋčí Sally gave us girls—my two Sisters and I—dire warnings about being kidnapped, raped and murdered. No one would look for us if someone did. No one would go to jail.
We needed to always be careful and never be alone in public. White men knew we were easy targets. White men knew they could kill us and no one would care.
The police were more likely to participate than help a Native woman—especially if our attackers were in the military.
All of Sally's Brothers served in the military during WWII. Both of her sons also served, but White military men still terrified her.
As kids we didn't believe her warnings.
As children in a Navy family living all over the United States, we chalked her warnings up to her own early life experience or her Parents’ and Grandparents’ experiences at the end of the “Indian Wars.”
But in 1970s USA and Canada—my maternal homelands—things weren't like that anymore, right?
Sure, people said racist things to us or our parents all the time, but it was just joking or ignorance, not hate or violence. Sure my 1st grade teacher in Arkansas never spoke to me again when she found out I wasn't White, but that was Arkansas.
We lived with this delusion for almost 2 decades.
Waking Up
A senior in high school at age 16—now living in the tiny northern Maine town my Ka'nisténhsera (Mother in my maternal language of Kanien’kéha) grew up in after her adoption—a nice White boy I went to high school with got drunk and high then drove his car.
He drove up onto the sidewalk on the bridge crossing the Aroostook River and hit a Native boy—a member of the Passamaquoddy tribe Indigenous to Maine—walking on the bridge.
I call them boys because that's how I remember them, but both were barely over 18 at the time. He hit the young Native so hard it knocked him out of his shoes, almost tore him in half and knocked him over the railing into the river below.
The driver didn't have his headlights on and never stopped. When news broke of what happened, people in town and kids in school were outraged and horrified.
I heard people I'd known for years and trusted and considered friends say:
"What the Hell was that stupid Indian doing on the bridge at night?”
“What was going to happen to [White boy's] future?”
“That *insert racial slur* just ruined [White boy's] life."
The White boy did pay for his crime and I hold no malice towards him. He made bad choices and paid for it.
But the racists his mistake unveiled? I'll never think of them the same way again.
This was in the mid 1980s.
When I was in my 20's, my friend—a member of the Mi'kmaq tribe Indigenous to Maine and Atlantic Canada—went missing. Her White husband was arrested earlier on the night of her disappearance along with his brother for beating her in public.
She went to the hospital but left AMA because she needed to "get home to her children" according to the hospital. Meanwhile the police had let her assailants go.
She never made it home.
Her 5 surviving children—she gave birth to 7 but a house fire her abusive husband was suspected of setting killed 2 before her disappearance—never saw her again.
But the police didn't alert the media because "those people go missing all the time." They assured her family she'd be home when she "slept it off."
It took days for police to finally decide to look for her despite her family begging for help. When media was notified it was barely a blip on the radar.
Her body has never been recovered. She's just another #MMIWG2S statistic.
For us it isn't a matter of if we know a missing or murdered Indigenous woman, girl or two-spirit—it's how many we know and who they are.
When was the last time a White woman with a newborn and 4 more children at home went missing and it didn't make headlines?
Virginia had been abandoned by everyone—teachers, police, media—we as a society expected to keep her safe.
This was the mid 1990s.
Tired
Some days I'm tired.
I'm exhausted.
Microaggressions are an all day, every day experience with some blatant racism or online threats thrown in, but even in discussions of institutional racial bias, inequality and police violence organizers for change forget we—Indigenous people—even exist.
A friend posted a congratulatory message about an organization he belongs to and a new coalition of organizations created to combat hate crimes, racial bias and inequality faced by LGBTQ+ people. It was a diverse organization with every major racial, ethnic and religious group in the United States represented.
Well, except Indigenous peoples.
We're not invited to the table when discussions of reform happen. We're disenfranchised in our own homelands.
The racial or ethnic group most likely to die in interactions with law enforcement has been Native people—men, women, two-spirits—for decades. A majority die not while committing or even accused of a crime, but during "wellness checks."
We're disposable and that message is pounded into us constantly.
When do people remember we exist?
When we ask them not to use us as mascots or not to use our sacred symbols and regalia as costumes. When we ask them to stop glorifying the rapists and genocidal leaders who slaughtered our ancestors.
Then we're the enemy, taking away their sports logos or school spirit or erasing history by taking down a statue or telling the truth.
I'm tired.
Then we're remembered on Columbus Day or Thanksgiving and they demand we speak to them, teach them, tell them how they can trace their nameless Indian Princess ancestor so they can get all that Indian money and free education we DON'T GET and not pay taxes that we DO pay.
So How Do We Respond?
My Unçi's generation tried to be inconspicuous so they could just survive.
My Ata's & Ka'nisténhsera's generation tried to turn their backs on reservations/reserves and be a new improved kind of urban NDN that brought all the misogyny, racism, homophobia, toxic masculinity, transphobia, greed and in-fighting assimilation taught them.
My generation tried to return to our authentic, often matrilineal and matriarchal roots to gently reconcile with and carefully educate our White allies—because if you bruise their egos or hurt their feelings, those allies turn on you—and decolonize our own people.
So we were—all of us—polite.
We asked permission to exist. We kept a watchful, protective eye on our White allies, making sure not to offend or alienate them with the truth of our shared histories.
The generations after me?
When Indigenous People Stop Being Polite and Start Getting Real
They're angry.
They're tired and they're DONE.
They know what they need and they're going for it.
They're not interested in playing the same games they watched us play trying to survive or to forget inconvenient truths or delicately spread education to get a drop of or an empty promise of reconciliation.
Move or get out of their way.
They have no time for another 500 years of fake promises and platitudes from well-meaning "allies" who "just love our culture." They'll refuse the requests to do all the work of education and then they'll lecture the asker about emotional labor not being free.
When people from European roots call them exotic—as they have called me many times—they'll school them.
“You're exotic. We're domestic. Look it up.”
Weaponized White tears will earn the moniker colonizer or settler for the entitled wašiču that expects them to dim their light when it hurts delicate white lies.
Good for them!
They'll be labeled the “angry Native American” by supposed allies. They'll be chastised as too aggressive, too loud, too confrontational.
They'll be met by weaponized White women's tears.
Indigenous elders and social activists of my generation will also call them too aggressive. Will try to tone police them. Will tell them they're doing things wrong.
They'll be fed platitudes about flies and honey.
They.
Won't.
Care.
That attitude began in the 90s in BIPOC activists. It has since spread until it is rare to see Gen Z activism taking the same polite, passive, apologetic tone of myself and those who came before me.
I envy them, after my own 53 ½ rotations around the sun.
When my carefully, politely, delicately educated allies, after hours, days, weeks, months, years of my emotional labor, say ignorant isht like…
"I don't see color.”
“We all bleed red.”
"There's only one race, the human race.”
…and think they just solved racism…
…but don't understand why that breaks me…
…don't understand they've just negated millennia of my history they never learned in school…
…don't understand they perpetuated the melting pot myth that really demands everyone who isn't like them abandon their identities to mimic the White, Christian majority so we can all just get along…
I get so tired.
In these moments, of which there are many, I think the younger Indigenous generations have the right answer.
I think get out of my way. I think my not-at-all an ally is just another person asking me to be their Hollywood NDN, their Indigenous mascot, their Halloween costume, their Princess Tiger Lily, their Pocahontas.
My identity is just a hobby I should shrug off when it becomes inconvenient for them. I should act like a “normal American” at their command.
But conquerors, colonizers, settlers, clergy and Congressmen tried to force our assimilation at the point of a sword or a gun.
It didn't take.
We're not all the same inside even if our blood looks the same.
My life is not yours. I do not ask you to abandon who you are and imitate me to make me comfortable with your existence.
My history, heritage, language, religion, customs, culture, cuisine, dances, songs, spirit and perspective are not just like yours.
And I don't need to melt away for us to live in harmony.
But I can't hold your hand and sing Kumbaya until you help pry this White nationalist boot off my neck.
If you won't, then kindly get out of my way.
Colonizer-Euro-descendants and all “Americans” need to recognize historical and contemporary TRUTH – as inconvenient as many think it is. Your essay is a clear and important segment of the education that I believe can sweep this land. And I hope this does happen!
It hasn't been worth it. It is so much effort to care about the losing side. I have decided to just serve them. To ask them to positively disintegrate with me.
We can't change the system from within. We must pool our resources and leave it behind. It is breaking down. It does not serve it smartest, most sensitive or most compassionate people. Why do we stay in it?
I love deeply. I care deeply. I would rather spend my efforts putting into those who are like me than those who will cheat me and abuse me for wanting fairness, kindness and a compassionate way of being.