Uncle Substitute got me wondering last week just why it is that certain people who need to be a little Native American always claim Cherokee-ness/hood/ship on Gramma's side.

Apparently, the tradition of using the Native tradition(s) as some kind of National Park salutary hot spring to go take a lucky dip is in itself a tradition
"







"Native Americans make up one half of 1 percent of the U.S. population. Most Americans will go their whole lives without meeting one of us. The result: What non-Indians know about Indians does not come from the kinds of daily interactions that typically shape their understandings of people different from them. We Native Americans are dwarfed by the ideas that abound about us, and this imbalance lends itself to invention. After all, who are you to say someone is or is not a thing they say they are if you've never had any experience of that thing?"

"Why Do Writers Pretend to Be Indians?" - David Truer, Slate


(the middle portion of his article demonstrates the self-mocking fatalism and strong sense of the ridiculous that seems to be among the few common definitive traits of a real full-blood, in my limited experience.)


I'm getting to feel what it's like to be not the thing someone imagined me to be, ie, a submissive, si senor low-profile female employee. Not that I ever fronted like that, I just didn't take place in the public conversational trough that obtained in the main room with all those "Strong Personalities" taking turns reciting monologues.

I am, officially, a Whistleblower.

I am fair game.

It started yesterday. The thudding approach of repercussions. The smoke signals over the hills from corporate. Grandma Myra understood the implicit power of a quiet older woman with a deadeye aim, and so do I. But in the meantime - no internet. Nothing I can write about here.

(Yesterday I wore my Bleeding Sword fake tatt aimed towards my spine under a filmy
nylon tank into my 'hearing'. "Think you over-prepared ?" the union rep asked with a fuck-you smile at the suits in the room. He's a Hoopa from Foster City. Sense of the ridiculous - we haz it.)


P.S. - This one goes out to half the assholes on Oprah's Book Club Author list, and the nice kids at Stuff White People Like

To All Those Who Were Indian In A Former Life


See you around. Watch for my smoke. : )