#war bonnets

Notes on this letter-

I was called a racist today because of my post on warbonnets. This is not ok. Not because I can't handle being called a racist but because I can't handle BEING one. So needless to say, I took a moment to reflect and self-check. I try to be a decent person and I can honestly say that I would never intentionally hurt someone or make them feel less or "other" simply because of their culture and/or race, but apparently I stumbled. To anyone I offended, I'm sorry. I should be talking WITH you and not about you, that way even if we disagree we are both equals in the conversation. That is what equality is all about.

A letter to the Indigenous People's of this land...

I am sorry that you feel like white people are the enemy and that all we want from your culture is to steal things that look cool and cheapen them. I honestly don't believe that that's the case, but I have never walked in your shoes so I don't know. I do know that that isn't the case with the people I hold dear or with me. It isn't that simple or that crass but I can understand how you would feel it is. 

I accept that I don't get it. I don't get what it's like to not have people of my color represented accurately in mainstream culture. I don't get what it's like to know that my fathers father's grand-father was tricked into giving away my inheritance. That would be frustrating to say the least. 

I do understand what it's like to see a version of myself as a cultural trope though, and although white-fat-girl isn't really enough to claim "discrimination" if you add in pastors-daughter, homeschooled, raised in Alaska until dropped in dixie where I stuck out like a sore-liberal-thumb... Well the stereotyping goes significantly beyond just "wild-child" "barefoot hick" and "good speller." We all have our wounds. Mine may not run as deep as yours but they are mine. I have never (until recently) found anyone in mainstream culture who looks like me, thinks like me, or lives like me. But...

I do realize though that I have never felt the burden of mass cultural oppression on the scale and magnitude that you were raised under. I have never carried the weight of generations of shattered hope, yearning for place, and indelible scars.

You see, I have no culture. That is what draws me to yours. I know, I know...That isn't enough. Being fascinated by our interwoven pasts isn't the same as belonging. And belonging is something my ancestors ripped away from yours. Somewhere along the line though they got along, because Mary happened. And without my half-native great-granny-Mary I wouldn't be here. So you see, I feel deeply rooted to your land. It's my land as much as I have ever known. I am not saying that out of possessive selfishness. I am saying that out of communal gratitude. The same sun that shone on your chiefs and elders shone on mine. The same plains that birthed your culture, also saw my grandfathers grandfathers blood split for a better way than what he had been given. You and I in our here and now, we are both here and now aren't we? It is, at the end all very complicated isn't it?

I'm sorry that we couldn't know each other in a simpler relationship. I wish we had never betrayed one another throughout the battles and lands and years...My people were merciless and there is no excuse. But know this, the shame you felt for years for what was stolen from your fathers we feel for what ours took.

I had ancestors walk the trail of tears, forced out of their lands. I also had ancestors holding the cold steel and gun-powder to their backs. I say that not to patronize, but to express how incredibly deep the influence of Native cultures have been in my very own life and how many of us "white" people have a complicated relationship with the indigenous peoples of this land.

Then Guilt, that most useless emotion. Guilt binds us to our past in a sick and never fulfilling union. Always wanting more. Always demanding.

No. Enough is enough.

I will not feel guilt for thinking your culture is beautiful and for wishing and trying however clumsily and naively to share in that beauty. I am sorry that you feel it needs such protection from people like me. I am sorry that our common histories have not brought us together but have instead caused a rift. I am sorry too that we are letting iconography and sacred art take on a nasty hew. Please understand that we are ALL in navigation between holding on to what makes us unique while embracing what makes us one. 

You are my equal, you don't deserve performance or penance. You deserve the truth. I feel bound to you. The same blood is in our veins. It is only the alignment of stars that ensured you would know the intricate beauty of your culture and I would be on the outside looking in on it, wondering where I come from.

I will also not feel guilt for for the sins of the past. Firstly, it would never be enough, nothing I could offer would ever be and secondly, it is in the past. We can not run from our tangled past, we can only embrace our tangled future and hope we tumble in the same direction this time. 

So, here I am. Waiting for the conversation. Hopefully an honest one, a vulnerable one with both parties in the light.