The “respectable young woman” you’re letting watch your children is actually a queer puppy drinking the rest of her salad dressing like it’s a shot because she’s bored while she thinks of what colors her ribbon skirt is gonna be and debates buying a collar
I love (fucking hate) being transgender because yes I am trans. Yes queer. Tis I the tranny. I use she they pronouns yet I am still 100% no gender. I’m not boy not girl not anything I simply am. I’m the bit. I am the devil incarnate. I’m a dog and I’m messy running eyeliner in a bar bathroom with coke still on the counter. My gender is explained in aestheticized images of the idealized version of myself and my trauma. I wanna call myself two spirit but I’m not native enough for that. So I’m just lost :(
There are some VERY interesting dynamics in mixed whitewashed Native culture and I’m here to be pissy about them.
To start, I’m a mixed Sicilian/Tsalagi person. “Oh but what or who is a Tsalagi” great question! Cherokee folks.
With that in mind, let’s continue!
I think it very interesting how society treats native folks. My grandpops moved from the Rez when he was like two. He never knew his culture, because his parents didn’t want him to. They wanted him to be a tan white guy. Because that assimilation into the white culture of the 50’s and 60’s was a good choice in their eyes. So he didn’t get stories, he didn’t get tattoos, he didn’t get to go to powwows or hang around with the cousins and their dogs. He was in rural Oklahoma. So how does that relate to me?
I didn’t know I’m Native American. I didn’t know I was anything until one day my grandpops told me that his parents didn’t move him off the reservation so I could go around acting a damn fool. I didn’t know that there was people to connect with, stories to tell. I didn’t even know what Tsalagi meant. I didn’t know what the nut porridge we ate in winter was called. I’ve learned more from my school experience than my home experience on what it means to be native. I’ve learned more from the perspective of trying to be a “white” ally than anything else.
So give people grace. If grandma was a Cherokee princess, whatever. Yeah, don’t gotta listen to them. But if grandma was adopted out to a white family, leave them alone. So what if they call themselves Cherokee? So fucking what if they have no clue what the language is or what the stories are or what the food is or the culture or what the fuck a ribbon skirt is. Leave them alone. Better yet, educate them. (Not you white people, I’m talking about actual native people here) Tell them your stories! Tell them the traditions! Show them the food and the regalia and everything else they missed in their family’s choice to assimilate. Show them our culture.
There will be a part two to this about Sicilian culture and how it translates to being American where you aren’t dirty or “colored” (direct translated quote) you’re just fucking white and get over yourself (that’s the view on Sicilians not the view I hold as a Sicilian)