now, i don't know anything about her heritage or how close she is to it. but, i can kind of relate to the idea of knowing you're indigenous but not really knowing exactly what that means, because you end up with a good deal of the social consequences of racial exclusion, but without any of the benefits of cultural inclusion. for myself, i know that my father's father was a visibly identifiable member of the cree nation, but i don't know a thing at all about cree culture because it just wasn't passed down. my grandfather died when i was too young to really understand, so i never had those discussions or was even really cognizant of the fact that he was different. i barely remember him, really. but, i've seen pictures and....he looked like the fucking chicago blackhawks logo, you know? you couldn't miss it if you wanted to. but i had no concept, at the time, for the few years i knew him.
my paternal grandmother is jewish/italian, and that's the identity that my father grew up with - mostly italian. when he was young, he looked like pacino; as he aged, he started to look like leonard cohen and he eventually aged into looking like an elder chomsky, with a bit of weight. those glasses. so, i grew up eating pasta and being smothered by exorbitant levels of unnecessary oregano. and basil. you could smell me down the street. no joke. i regress.
oddly, all my dad was ever able to give me is really the same story - that he had no idea, really, until he hit his late teens and, even then, he was never really cognizant of it, or took the time to learn about it. he grew up in a kind of urban reserve outside of ottawa called the ritchie street project. it's become one of those areas that successive waves of immigrants move through, and was largely populated by somalis last time i checked - although that may become syrians over the next few years. rough area. gang violence. in his day, it was all natives. so, when he played hockey out on the streets, they'd combine by tribe. the kids knew he was indigenous, so they'd ask him what tribe he was - and the only answer he ever had was 'italian'.
looking back to when i was a kid, i can point to events that occurred that had to do with other people perceiving me as indigenous, without having the slightest understanding of what was happening at the time - because i had no self-awareness of it. so, i was just left confused. i just didn't understand - so i became an anti-social misanthrope, convinced the world is full of assholes. i perhaps was not wrong, but a little bit of understanding of my own heritage and the perceptions of others regarding it may have assisted me in reacting to what was going on around me.
is this really unusual? i don't know. how many jewish kids go through that? how many finns? how many italians? as far as i could tell, i looked like everybody else - but the people around me didn't seem to see it that way. again, i was just confused by it.
so, i do have a history of racialized exclusion. but, i can't tell you anything about the basis of that exclusion, which is frustrating. i'm not 1/64th cree - it's, i believe, a full eighth, but perhaps a sixteenth.
would i fill out the form? i would now, and i'd feel ok with it. i wouldn't have for most of my life, because i just didn't know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRbxvu0SEOQ