"Kinfolk" Bonus Content

My father, the storyteller…

My yoga instructor, a very dear friend, recently wanted to share some beautiful, evocative music—Native music, drumming—with me. Before she did, she asked if I minded. Would it be cultural appropriation for her to use the music to accompany our yoga session?

I was pleased to have the accompaniment of the music. It was restful, it was evocative, it promoted inner peace and I had no feeling that it was cultural appropriation. But the question—though thoughtful and respectful—later provoked unsettling thoughts and disturbing, hurt feelings in me. Not because of her question but because of MY QUESTION.

What culture? I ask myself the question a lot. And the bitter answer is: the culture I was denied. The culture that was taken from me and my father. What Daddy passed down to me about our Native culture, he did privately, between father and child. Not because he was ashamed of our heritage—he was proud of it—but because he’d been schooled. What he told me was always just between me and him. He told me things about our shared nativeness almost in code. Daddy answered me—sometimes—when I asked for more— “Lucinda, we’re a defeated people. We were told we had to use White ways, not Indian. If we were going to make it, we had to be White.”

I’ve recently had the tremendous fortune to reconnect with a long-lost cousin, Randy. We last saw each other when we were about 6. We swung on the swingset in my backyard, and we both remember it vividly. I mostly remember him as the prettiest boy I’d ever seen.

Randy’s grandfather was my grandmother’s brother, and they were Native—full-blood—half Choctaw, half Caddo. Randy has wrestled with the same complicated, sometimes even shameful, attempt to identify his—our—Native culture. His grandfather explained to him, “Randy, we were told we had to be White.”

There are other issues wrapped up in all this. “Blood quantum,” for instance. I mention this because I identified my grandmother and her brother as “full-blood.” It’s a reflex, almost, to state the amount of “Indian blood.” It’s humiliating, really. The Federal government used blood quantum as another way to erase us from existence. Historically, allotments of Indian land were made on the basis of blood quantum, and a huge amount of “Indian” land was lost to White settlers for homesteads because of the blood quantum rule. It’s wrong. And to this day, children of intermarriage, like me with my parents, still have our identities questioned. We are required to have a CDIB, Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood, to “prove” our heritage.

In my story Kinfolk and a Yellow Meat Watermelon, I tell the story of two cousins who are as different as people can possibly be. In real life, though, I’m remarkably similar to the cousin I recently reunited with.

In particular, Randy and I both yearn to reclaim our culture—the customs and language that were denied us by U.S. policies aimed at further extinction of our people through the children by assimilation. The Indian Boarding School System.

Assimilation is simply another form of genocide, the goal being to erase our identity and thereby our existence. And Randy and I were assimilated before we were even born. Only in intimate interactions we had with our Native father (in my case) and Native grandfather (in his) were we told that we were, in fact, INDIANS. Native people. But that we must turn our backs on our culture, our ancestors, our history, our identity.

And because we’re mixed-race, there have been instances where we’ve been ridiculed for identifying correctly, rightly, as Native. I ‘ve been questioned, humiliated and shamed for saying I’m Native. My skin is too white. My cousin has been, too. And because he lived in Oklahoma for most of his life and was around “our people,” Randy suffered the reverse, also—non-acceptance from other Natives. Sadly, our experience spans across many cultures. Too white, not white enough, too dark, not dark enough.

My cousin and I are clawing our way back to Identity and Culture…

Randy is tied to the earth in such amazing ways. He and his wife are organic growers. They produce herbs and products from the plants they grow that are in harmony with nature. Their business’ mission is to honor our planet, to protect our precious natural resource, Water, and to follow a path like the one our shared ancestors followed.

Randy’s wonderful Bloomin’ Desert herb mixes, with a portrait of our great-grandfather, Caddo chief Sho-ee-tat

I am storytelling in the oral tradition. Through my short stories, I’m gathering some of the lost parts of myself—reconciling and blending, in my way, some of my family history.

Pueblo Storytellers are clay figures depicting an elder covered in small children, telling them stories—a dear image to me.

And together, Randy and I are word-by-painstaking-word learning the Choctaw language. Every new word adds back a piece that’s missing in our true selves. We’re sharing family stories, some funny as hell, some heartbreaking. But all the memories we’re sharing are ultimately healing.

Watermelons are mostly green on the outside, but on the inside the colors vary. Some are a familiar red, some yellow, some pink. There’s even a white meat variety. It’s good to remember that judging the color of the inside isn’t always straightforward. The same applies for people. Our inner selves—the real meat of us—can’t easily be identified.

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