The Indian Thing---Native In a Strange Land--Looking For Meaning in The Moments

So I've been going through a lot, the last 43 years or so, since my incarnation.  I move around a lot.  I feel many things.  I talk to the spirits and hear the songs of the world in the wind and water and human hum of freeway and grocery store & internet buzz.

I was a poet when I was young, and when I was nineteen and a baby left my lifeline, words stopped doing justice to the heartbreak, and reaching forward into the dark bright infinity of the future with hands and crayons became the thing that made the most sense.

I went and found my mom dead in her bed a fews years ago, and carried her spirit outside and released it to the sky.  She had told me that "we are forest Indians.  Before the Trail of Tears, we hunted game and sang songs to Creator in the forests of the Southern Mountains" of Turtle Island.

I look white, blues eyes, blond hair, vaguely ethnic features, but, my mom?  You could see she was Indian- off-the-bat.

White people in this country, we are all part Indian.  American is Indian. Part of the myth of this country is that 'they' all died.  But they didn't.  We are still here. They fought hard and loved hard, and so much of what this culture is, especially non-urban "white" people's culture, Rednecks, the free peasantry-"country" people, if you will, is almost equal part indigenous Turtle Islander, European, and Southern Turtle Islander (Mexican)--the violent ball games, the feeling for the land and its cycles and rhythms, the dramatic rituals of life being tied to the seasons, the primacy of kin relations, the simultaneous aversion to and absolute fealty to debt systems, tobacco, fermented drinks, adventure & exploration...above all the myth and structure of "wildness", in art, in recreation, in attitude...

There is a strange thing about culture--when you are deeply embedded in one, it disappears.  The things that become visible are deviations from what your culture/worldview is.  Notably, Others. One of the mixed blessings of being multi-ethnic and multi-cultural is that, through moving between worlds, every stage is imbued with strangeness and wonder of "Other"--Exotica--

My life is a kaleidoscopic wonderland...

"Being an Indian Is..."

by Jordana Nicholas

Being an Indian is never giving up the struggle for survuval.

Being an Indian if feeding anyone and everyone that comes to your door with what ever you have.

Being an Indian is watching John Wayne whip 50 of your kind, with a single shot pistol and a rusty pocket knife.

Being and Indian is fighting with the U.S. Army to save your country from Communism--and against the U.S. Army on you reservation to keep the Corps of Engineers from stealing your land.

Being an Indian is feeling that Grey Wolf, thunder Chief, and Snake Walker are more beautiful names than Smith, Jones or Brown.

Being an Indian is having your child ask you about 'the strange beliefs' of Indians her or his teacher told them in school today.

Being an Indian is sad.

Being and Indian is tough.

Being an Indian is to cry.

Being an Indian is to laugh.

Being an Indian is Great.

Being an Indian is beautiful.

Being an Indian is forever.