Good people outnumber the bad

Page 9

Not long ago I received a letter from a woman whom I shall call Linda. Unfortunately the envelope with her return address had been lost in transit. In this letter she struggled to share some of the anger and confusion she felt at being a person trapped between two cultures. She is the product of an Irish mother and a Mohawk father who had evidently separated when she was young and, as a result, had practically no contact with her Aboriginal roots during her adolescence.

She writes: "I still feel I have to somehow prove a connectedness with full-Natives in order for me to be accepted. . . I feel like I'm in a nowhere zone of cultural identity. . . I've had some very ignorant remarks made towards me by non-Natives, but what really hurts is being shunned by full-Natives and Native organizations."

One Elder even questioned the existence of her reserve, the Mohawk community of Tyendinaga in southern Ontario.

"Never heard of it" she said to Linda and turned away.

Anybody who is familiar with my work knows that I pride myself on being an "Occasian," somebody of Ojibway and Caucasian ancestry. I have written quite extensively on that particular subject, both examining the issue from a personal point of view, and sometimes savaging the concept. As an Elder once told me, "You either are something or you aren't. You can't be half. But it is possible to be two things, not just one."

Linda, where ever you may be, I went through the same thing you did. I have bluish eyes, fair complexion, but one of the few characteristics I do seem to share with my Native family is my troublesome belly that keeps wanting to show that Native fondness for high caloric food.

Most of my life I grew up with "you're not Native, are you? You don't look it" and a dozen other variations. Recently I was walking down the street and a Native panhandler accosted me for money. Because I was in a hurry for a meeting, I waved him off. As I hustled away, he saw the First Nations jacket I was wearing and screamed after me "First Nations! I don't think so!"

Another time I was entering a money machine alcove in a bank. There was a young Native woman standing there warming herself. She took one look at my jacket, sneered and said "What tribe, Wannabe?"

My advice to Linda? Get used to it. I don't mean that to sound harsh but for every one of those types of people out there, I have met a thousand who will welcome you. It just seems that sometimes in the great balance of life, the ratio of good to bad will get a little erratic and bunch up. Meaning sometimes it will seem like the "unbelievers" are the only kind of people you'll meet.

One final note to convey. What these people are failing to acknowledge is that it's pretty well accepted that after 500 years of occupation and inter-marriage, there are precious few individuals out there who can claim complete full-blooded ancestry. They're just seeing in you what they refuse to see in themselves.

Linda, I know of Tyendinaga. I hear all the best people come from there.

Editor's note - The staff at Windspeaker would like to congratulate Drew Hayden Taylor on two recent and impressive accomplishments. The first, is his winning of the University of Alaska at Anchorage's Native Playwrights Competition. The second, is the selling out of the first print run of his book, Funny, You Don't Look Like One.