IWNHM/IWNHO: Native
I’m leapfrogging over the next two sections of the book, whizzing past thoughts of identity and of isolation, mostly because regular readers have seen these on multiple occasions while I worked through a bit of the process (and there’s got to be some reason to look at the book version). That brings us to…
Native American, or now indigenous, and when I was a little, just indian; growing up, it was just something that I was, like brown-eyed, or a girl and not particularly interesting. I had to grow into owning that as something, if not special, then important. With the passage of all the family elders and an emotional distance between those of us who are left, that identity is being erased faster than I can learn about it and soon enough, it will all be gone. I have gone exploring in the old family homesteads, but all that remains are stone husks of homes and orphaned headstones. I have attended the stomp dances and felt their holiness, their medicine. I have listened to the stories being told around the fire. But my skin is too pale and I am an object apart. My mother somewhat shielded me from that. She was my calling card and gave me legitimacy at the gatherings. Now that she is gone I am cut off, pulled too far from my origins. I have had to invent my own cosmology. My religion is my own. I own what is holy. The ritual is mine.
Much mena ‘addo [mʌʧ mɛn ə dəʊ] means, “here comes the devil” in Shawnee. Uncle Ben would say it when he saw Aunt Julia coming this way. Although he was really my mother’s uncle and so very old by the time I came along. He scared me a little then and I am sorry I didn’t have a chance to get to know him. It’s the only piece of the language that was passed down to me. It makes me think about the women in our family. We were taught explicitly or implied, not to cry. Or get too excited. Or be too proud. Or let on how smart we are. Or express too much affection. Never let others know they’ve touched you.
I can’t live like that. I still have a problem crying around others. It still feels like a weakness in front of the enemy. Was everyone else the enemy?