Me, My family and whats important to us

Aanii, this is the word “Hello”, used by the Anishinabe, the indigenous people of the Great Lakes. The tribes I am speaking of, are the Ojibe’, Odawa, Potawatomie, Cree, Montagnais and the Naskapi. I myself am not Anishinabe. I am Armenian, Polish, German, French, and Welsh. My Native American blood is that of the Cherokee and Saponi tribes.

Within the last five hundred years, the Cherokee and the Saponi people residing in the Carolinas and Virginias. They are part of what is known as the Woodland tribes. Although my indigenous blood quantum is very little compared to my Middle Eastern and European blood; it is the blood, in which I identify myself. My Indian family indentifies me, through our heavenly Creator and my ancestors, it is this path that I was shown how to live.

The ancestors of my indigenous blood, my Grandfathers and Grandmothers, at the time of the Indian removal to the reservation lands, had already intermarried with white Europeans. The white Europeans I speak of are the blood line of President James Garfield. In the eighteen hundreds, the area in which the Garfield family lived, was the northern and central areas of Ohio, this territory was also shared by many tribes including the Wyandot, in order for my family to avoid removal, they chose to stay with their families, because of this, their culture, language and identity was lost, they began changing their names, and racial identification on census documentation in order to survive.

My husband is also of indigenous blood, he is from the Mexica, pronounced, (Meh-shee-kah), is the name that Mexico was derived. The Mexica, also known as the Aztecs, had a great empire. Their people had vast knowledge and working technology, such as irrigation and drainage systems that ran throughout their great city known as Tenochtitlan, and this was buried, under what we now know as, Mexico City. The Mexica had libraries of their written language, infinite knowledge, destroyed by the Spanish and lost to their genocide fires, almost everything was destroyed. The Mexica people still survive throughout the Americas. At this present time, our U.S. borders meet the Mexico border at the states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. In the days of our ancestors, there were no borders, the Mexica people and other natives migrated up into what is known as Utah. This was their home lands, this continent.

My husband and I now live in the Anishinabe territory; we accept, honor and participate in their way of life. We sing with a Native American drum, based out of Ann Arbor, called Tree Town. The members of Tree Town are from many different tribes, Ojibe’, Oneida, Lakota, Odawa, Tahino and Mexica. Tree Town was started because the knowledge keepers, our elders, in northern Michigan, saw that the Indian communities in Lower Michigan needed that drum, for unity and spiritual strength.

It is an ancient story, of how it is, that the drum came to our people. Long ago our men were fighting amongst each other, the Creator saw this, and sent to the men the drum. The drum sound was that of a heartbeat, so that it would be used to unify the men. The women were the outer ring of this circle, so that we may support our men, this has been done for thousands of years. It would be unfair of me, not to talk about our celebrations when talking about the drum, it is the drum that is at all of our celebrations, such as our feasts, but our biggest celebrations are called Pow Wow’s. Pow Wow’s are celebrations when all tribes can come together in a gathering area of a circle. It is in this circle that our drummers sing, our people dance in several styles and wear colorful regalia, accompanied by those Eagle feathers. Those feathers are the symbol in which we look to our brother, that carries our prayer to the Creator. Our Pow Wow always starts with two things, Honoring our Veterans and Prayer. I highly recommend that if you ever hear of a Pow Wow going on, that you should jump in the car and go; this experience is an incredible example of our living culture today.

In Two Thousand and Four the indigenous people of the Americas are still fighting for their rights to survive. Most people think that, treaties are a thing of hundreds of years past, but those treaties are still being negotiated and signed today. Although Reservations are supposed to be sovereignties, our United States Government still feels, they can enter any country, they want to, and take what ever it is that they see fit. The government has mined Uranium, polluted our ground, with toxic waste dumps, and limited our fishing rights that were given to us via treaties. It is not just the rights of our people on reservations that have been violated, but also those who have chosen to live off the reservation, so that they might have a better chance of living a good life.

The greatest misconceptions that I see of native people, is that all Indians have a casino, that they have money on the reservations, from casinos. Most of our reservations are without casinos; our people are living in the worst poverty stricken areas, some without proper resources for survival. Those who live on reservations with casinos, and are allotted funds, are blessed but by no means is this any type of retribution for the hundreds of years of crimes committed against them. As for the jokes we all have heard, about Indians and their ‘Fire Water”, it is that drug, that was introduced, so that our people could be controlled, to us it was just another weapon of war fare. Because of Indian genetics there is no way to break down alcohol properly, so it became our greatest disease, substance abuse, and we are still fighting it today.

The most current and sensitive topic, is the Indian mascot, used by many sports teams, such as the Cleveland Indians, The Florida State Seminoles, and the Washington Redskins just to name a few. The is NO HONOR to our indigenous people, it is a defamation of character. There is no dignity of an Indian cartoon face, associated with the old Indian cartoons running around yelling “Fire Water”, we can thank Hollywood for that. This crime against a cultures dignity is the equivalent of saying the Atlanta Blacks, The Washington Whites, and the Los Angeles Asians.

In the last two hundred years, a head of an Indian such as we see now on our city buildings, would have been on a poster hanging in a saloon offering bounty for the head of any Indian. This symbol of our countries most macabre actions, has now been taken and adopted as something non-Indian people see as romanticized and nostalgic, with no understanding, what the Indian head profile picture truly means. In this modern age of racial and cultural understanding, we cannot forget the first people of the Americas, they are not gone, their culture is still alive, and it is to all, that I ask “Once you learn the truth can you continue to turn a blind eye”?