Mom always said we were part Indian.

 A Poem by Tina Winterlik aka Zipolita 

Mom always said we were part Indian.

That's the word we used back then.

She said they couldn't write it on the census, or maybe they wouldn't.

Years later I found a scratched-out line, a different word written over top.

Maybe it meant something. Maybe it meant everything.

My grandmother was born in 1902.

My mother came in 1930.

The old stories were closer than people think.

Not history in a book, but voices in a kitchen, photographs in a drawer, memories carried home and passed along.

Dad called us his little blonde babes.

I remember that story.

And when someone pointed at my brother's photo and laughed, "Who's the little Indian?"

I heard Dad didn't like it.

Maybe he knew things I didn't.

Maybe he was trying to protect us from a world that measured people before it knew them.

I spent years looking for pieces.

A grandmother's story.

A carving class.

A census record.

A name.

A feeling.

A map with half the roads missing.

Some people said prove it.

Some people said no.

Some people closed the gate before I reached it.

Others denied what happened to our people.

Both sides wanting certainty.

While I stood in the middle holding questions.

This year I wrote stories for my ancestors.

My grandparents.

The people rooted here and who crossed oceans.

The people who knew these shores before maps.

For the first time in a long while, I felt closer to them.

Not because someone accepted me.

Not because a form approved me.

Not because a Facebook group let me in.

Because love traveled farther than paperwork.

Today I am tired.

Tired of explaining.

Tired of defending.

Tired of knocking on closed doors.

So I will do what my ancestors taught me.

I will wake up.

I will thank Creator for another day.

I will be grateful for the good and the bad.

I will try to be kind.

I will try not to hurt Mother Earth.

And I will paint eagles on old logs under a beautiful June sky.

The cedar does not ask for proof.

The ocean does not ask my blood quantum.

The wind does not ask for papers.

The ancestors know my name.

That is enough.

PS 🤪🤗🩷might dig out my carving knife, feel like carving something into that log

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