visiting my people

[liminal_space]

i think on our trip to minnesconsin, i'd like to go through oklahoma and visit the cherokee nation museum. the original copy of the dawes roll is there and supposedly you can go look at the entry directly relating to your family. kid needs to see that; i need to see that, too. 

i still can't look at a jeep cherokee without cringing a little; cultural appropriation is no joke, jim. 

that said, i'd have to drive through texas to do it and...ick. 

*

kid's been wanting stories about the indians in her family, and who am i to not tell her the tales? so we talk about stories my father and grandfather told me — sometimes those are sad and make me feel horrible for what they went through. other stories came from cousins, aunts, and uncles. THOSE are fun...especially the one where my grandfather rode a horse into a white church and shot out the stained glass windows. supposedly he did this because the church had gone up on land that was set aside for the reservation, but with that side of my family....it could have been because it was a tuesday. 

one of my favorite things growing up was going to oklahoma in the summer to visit our cousins who lived on a huge farm just outside of the reservation. it's hard to convey to the kid how magical those times were, because it wasn't any one thing that made it so; it was just the connection to people and places that my blood recognized even though my mind didn't. those cousins, with their pecan dark skin and obsidian eyes, looked nothing like me and my blonde haired, blue-eyed, pale-skinned self, but i was one of theirs and the joy of running through fields barefoot and wild to chase down their "indian ponies" has never left me. 

at nights there, all the family (close and extended) would gather in the back yard around a fire pit made from an old washing machine tub and the men would drink moonshine (legit...i guess some hill folk had made their way into the woodpile) and tell stories about growing up together. 

i wish i remembered more of them.