• I am tired of pretending I'm white. I am Algonquin/Mohawk French metis. I get my Indian-ness from my mother. This fact was hidden from me for most of my life. When I was a child my grandmother would try to stop me from going out in the sun. She said I would get too dark. I was born with blond curly hair which was kept uncut till I was three years old. After it was cut it grew back in straight and dark. What a disappointment I must have been to my blond, grey-eyed grandmother. She must have hated to see the racial traits that she had avoided surfacing in me. She never mentioned that her mother was native or that her husband was also metis. I remember how disapproving she was when my uncle made jokes about sending the little savage, meaning me, back to the reserve.  He would laugh and say: " But where would we send her, to Maniwaki or to Caugnawaga?" I never understood why he laughed or why she was offended, or what those names meant. Two weeks before she died, my mother told me of her native grandmothers. I wasn't really surprised. By then I had realized that many things had been kept from me as I was growing up. I did feel sadness at having been robbed of my natural heritage, a part of my culture, my very roots. I am happy to say that two of my children have even more native blood than I because of their Ojibwe father. They both have straight dark hair and almond shaped dark eyes. It has been bothering me a great deal lately. I think of it a lot. I tried speaking about my ancestry to a native woman once, but she dismissed me, as though she were saying that I should just accept being white because I could never really be anything else. I resent that. I don't feel white. I don't think white. My spirituality is not white. I feel a strong connection to this land and to the spirits of this land. I praise the sun and the moon and the wind and the rivers. I talk to the spirits of the forest. I have always done so. I have been given totem animals through dreams. There must be others like me, who would like to reclaim their heritage.

 I understand now why my grandparents acted the way they did. Life was very hard for Indians and it still is. The residential school system stole the children from their parents and destroyed their culture and their identity. They were made to think that they were inferior and their own culture wrong. They were subjected to humiliation and defeat and abject poverty that still have repercussions to this day. But things are changing. Indian pride is on the rise. The sacred fires are lit across the back of Turtle Island. There is a lot of work to do, but now there is hope and pride in who we are and what we can do together as a people. I see my own future as inextricably linked with this movement as more metis people are reclaiming their right to native culture. There is a positive attitude of forgiveness and reconciliation as lost history and culture are pieced back together with the support and knowledge of the elders. I am happy and proud to be a part of it.