Columbus Who.......

 I know this may seem a bit off topic but really this "holiday" and who we really are really does fall into my healing process. So here I go today I choose to honor my mother who is such a huge part of who I am today even when I do not like to admit it to myself. Every choice she made with me or for me has shaped who I am.

From my earliest memory I have known who I am. I was almost slapped in the face with it. My mother graduated in 1969, she was right in the middle of the hippie movement in the white world but in the Indian world it was time of being fed up, drum beats of knowledge and resistance. Because of this she never sugarcoated anything about my race, my sex, and my place in this world. Now don't get me wrong as a child it was a lot of eye rolls and "I KNOWS". But now that I am an adult I find myself giving the same gusto she did when I speak on who I am and more importantly why I am.

As a female Native I was born with 2 strikes against me in a 3 strike world. "you are a woman, so automatically in the western world you are not equal to don't you ever forget that, and as a native woman no one cares in the western world you are even less than." I have molded my life around that fact. In the news today it is even more blaringly apparent. The western world will move mountains to find any girl unless she is native. I could go deeper into this mindset but for the purpose of this blog I think we will skate past this one. 

From about the age of 5 I can remember learning about wounded knee AIM, the fight of all native people, why did the tribes in California take back Alcatraz? And why the Fuck should I care? Let's start with my people.

Before it was widely accepted I learned about the Blackfoot Confederacy as a whole. I have never seen our Confederacy as 4 separated tribes but one people divided because we could not be conquered as a whole. "The Blackfoot are warriors Liz." 

Eye Roll

I learned of the battles we fought, but also the systematic genocide that we have been subjected to since that Spaniard got lost at sea and thought he found India. There are things that are in history books and then there are things that we learn because our elders and their elders spoke of them. We have a complete history of our people in the words and actions that is embedded in our DNA. 

I heard of Starvation Winter. something that to this day is not in any history book. The truth of it, the torture that was inflicted on our people, all in an attempt to starve us, poison us, eliminate the Indian problem. 

Since 1491 we have been assisting the lost tourists. Because at our core no matter the tribe, we are a people who help each other help those around us. More locally the border towns namely here on Blood Reserve, have lost sight on all the assistance the Blackfoot and more so the Kainai people have given them. That too is rewritten. 

Every event where we as a race helped another it has been met with the other party wanting more taking more and then shunning us.

and yet we survive and yet we prosper, we are still here in spite of the continued onslaught of hate and distrust. 

So today when Canada celebrates not going hungry because of our people and America celebrates a tourist getting lost, I celebrate the resilience of my people and the knowledge my mother handed down.

and yet still I rise

now eat your turkey or find your sales and keep on keeping on being brown