learn more about my native american heritage

My great grandparents were native american. My grandmother grew up on the reservation in Cherokee, North Carolina and moved across the mountain into east Tennessee when she was about 8 or 9 years old.

My father taught me some about our native american culture, but I wanted to learn more. I attend several powwows (still do) and read tons of books. One of my favorites is: History, Myths and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees by James Mooney. An EXCELLENT book! I highly recommend it to any one wanting to learn more about Cherokee history and culture.

In 1993, I moved to the rez. This was a wonderful experience for me. The Cherokee are amazing teachers and so willing to share their knowledge. I learned so much! Unforunately, I only got to live there about 8-9 months as my father’s bone cancer came out of remission and I had to return home and help take care of him.

However, I continue to feel a strong connection to the people and the land and go back to visit often.

I’ve come nowhere near where I’d like to be in my knowledge of my Native American culture, but I certainly know more now than I did when I adopted the goal. I’d love to continue working on this one in the future, but my relocation makes this knowledge hard to acquire just now.

While at the Grand Canyon there was a lot of information available about the native people who consider the Canyon sacred. On my last night in the park the ranger talk was given by a Hopi woman who simply explained some of the ways her tribe lives and allowed the audience to ask her questions. It was a fascinating evening. These Colorado Plateau tribes seem quite different than the tribes near my home in Southern California.

I attended the Native American Day festivities last night, and actually I was a little disappointed. There was music and performances, but it wasn’t quite a pow wow – or maybe it was a pow but it certainly lacked the wow. I got to have a fry bread taco, that was nice, but other than that I felt a little bored and out of place.

I just heard about next week’s Native American Day.

The surname that I use now is not the surname I was born with. I have not married – I legally changed my surname to my step-father’s when I was 8 years old. The last name I had before was clunky; difficult to pronounce, not the name of any of the people I lived with, and it belonged to a man with whom I had little to no relationship at the time. I was glad to shed it.

But now I am reconsidering. How silly would that be – to go through the process of changing it back!

The last name I was born with was Hryse. Anyone want to take a crack at pronouncing that one? Until I changed it, I was always “Herse” for the first week of school.

My family’s last name used to be Chrystacopolis … or something like that. Very Greek. A solid name. But when my great-grandfather and his cousin sailed over and became Americans, they were informed that theirs was not an American name, so it was butchered. My great-grandfather became Mr. Hryse. His cousin became Mr. Polis. My great-grandfather had one son; my grandfather had one son; my father had three daughters. So the Hryses will soon be extinct.

I was reminded of Hryse recently when I was reading about a native American man. I actually don’t remember his name, but it was something descriptively nature-based as native names sometimes are. Something like “Yellowbirdhead”. Beautiful. One of the thoughts that passed through my head when I read his name was a desire to have a name of a similar style. But then I remembered that I do. Well, that I did.

Ok, so now I’ll tell you now how we pronounce my former- and possibly future-name. Hryse. Her-eyes-see. That’s a name to be proud of.

I found a small newspaper entitled “First Nations” or something like that. News about native issues, aspiring native politicians, and Powwow events. An interesting read, but I did feel like an outsider as I read it.

After a conversation yesterday with Viejo I’ve become fascinated with the Anasazi Indians of the Colorado plateaus. I’d really like to finally embark on a long-desired road trip through the Southwest, including the Anasazi cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde. In preparation for such a trip, I’m doing a bit of research on these Indians. They’re not my tribe, but it feels really good to take a step in the direction of learning about the native people of America in general.

When I was growing up, I didn’t have an ethnic identity. All of the kids in my class were white, all of the people in my neighborhood were white, my skin wasn’t black … so I counted myself as white. I was raised by my mother (who has some color to her but pretends not to) and my step-father (who is burns-in-the-sun white), and alongside my step-brother and half brother. In family photos, I’m the dark one. But somehow I never realized it. I always figured I was white. I would often feel uncomfortable in the summertime when the girls’ skin would tan a more golden color than my reddish-olive complexion, or in the wintertime when my tan remained and everyone else became quite fair. My mother would often tell me that I was lucky to have such skin, that other girls would wish to have color year round like mine … but it did no good. I felt misplaced.

It wasn’t until recently that I’ve stopped thinking of myself as a white person. True, I have very white European blood in my line, but I also have Italian and Greek and Maltese blood (which, although these countries are accepted by the Europeans as one of them, are still people of color) and then of course there is my Native American heritage. It is only recently that I have felt a pride in this combination; that I’ve dared to mark something other than ‘Caucasion’ when filling in forms.

And yet, I am still misplaced. I suppose it’s not so important to me anymore to find a category to which I belong. I’m much more content to be simply myself – without a category because I belong to so many at once. But when it comes to those pesky forms asking me to choose a category for my race, I often don’t know what to put. “Native American”: I’m starting to do that, though I feel a little fraudelant in doing so. I know little to nothing about this aspect of my make-up. “Caucasion”: I’m tired of that; that’s not who I am. I am a person of color. “Hispanic”: though I could pass for it and though I love the culture, there is no Hispanic blood running through these veins as far as I know. “Mixed Race”: this option is rarely present. “Other”: well, yeah, I guess. Other. That makes me laugh.

My aunt once filled out such a form and claimed to be an Eskimo. She wanted a job and figured that she’d have a better chance of being accepted if her race matched one that they rarely hire as affirmative action was a key word at the time. Nobody questioned her. That’s part of what I love about my make-up: folks can rarely guess it. I’m difficult to place, difficult to categorize. Why aren’t there more interesting options on the forms, such as “Difficult to Place” or “Of the World” or “It’s Complicated, Really”, or “Wouldn’t You Like to Know?!”

I took a moment to look at the little ad links on the right side of the page, and out of curiosity I followed one of the links a little ways. I can get my blood tested and recieve a DNA analyzed report that tells me all about my native-americanis(orisn’t)ms. It costs $200. That’s a little steep for me. Especially because this gets me no closer to an understanding of WHAT a native american is; it just gives me some kind of official standing. No thanks … I think.

http://www.isogg.org/eochart.htm