I think a lot about how I'm Ojibwe, but a mix who looks little like the rest of my Native family. My eyes are blue, my skin is pale, and my natural hair is ashen blonde. I have my mother's high cheekbones and wide forehead and long limbs and feet meant for climbing mountainsides.
Yet when I go to pow wows, members of my extended family look at me sideways and wonder who the pale faced stranger is. I feel as if I'm considered an intruder among my own people. I share the same blood, but not the same appearance. My blood is but a drop of red in clear waters.
I am a pale Native American. Am I a ghost here? What of those whose blood sings with this earth, as well as that of unknown foreign lands? Do we belong nowhere? Do we belong here? I'm only a mix, among a nation filled with millions of mixed. We are the lost and invisible Natives.
The Americas are my homeland and the land of my mother’s ancestors. I don’t have much family history to speak of elsewise. What I know is little. I want to know more of my ancestral culture, the beliefs, the language, the history, but I feel undeserving to go to my elders to ask.
I feel that I am only a remnant, as if I am just a small salamander who descended from dragons and leviathans, but inherited only one scale upon my cheek. I feel tiny, not brave. I know I am Native. This is my blood and part of my identity. Yet I don't feel as if I have heritage.
