Alissa asked me ...well OK not me but she posed a question in her 360 blog.
"Do you feel society is pressuring you to forget your culture and become more American?"
I don't know if that is word for word, but that is the general idea. She wanted help with this question because she feels she can't answer this.
I am wondering if you can't answer this question Alissa because maybe you have many different backgrounds.
I am not sure, but I do know that as a melting pot many of us are a mix of so many things. My primary being Native American, which I HATE that term. As long as we were born here we are all native to here...everyone is a native somewhere. So I will say I was born and raised Lakota Sioux. There are so many terms, some of my people don't like the term Sioux because the French named us that...oh well. I am also part Filipino on my dad's side and French and somewhere I believe on my mom's dad's side there is a little Irish Cream in there to lighten the coffee that I am.
All these politically correct terms....I think maybe some of the pressure to make us forget our culture...such as when we go to fill out a form or something and they ask THE QUESTION. Please Check One:
Which Nationality are you?
White?
Native American or Alaskan Native or Hawaiian Native?
African American?
Pacific Islander?
Asian?
Or do you consider yourself Latino or Hispanic?
First of all screw that question...screw all the politically correctness...just leave a blank space and let us tell you the form makers how my great great grandfather came over from France and married a young Sioux lady. How they had a son and he married another Sioux lady and how she had 13 children and my grandmother being their youngest girl and how she met and married a boxer part Irish and part Indian from the city and turned out to be his biggest challenge yet...and maybe the only time he threw in the towel for a technical knockout. Then I will write of how they had a daughter and divorced soon after. This girl met a boy in high school who looked so different from the rest of the kids because he was half Filipino but he was fluent in the Lakota language. They married and had me. i never married but I had my boys from my high school sweetheart who was half black and half Indian. He grew up hating his dark skin and was called the N word on his own reservation. This is who I am, I won't check a box! Leave me a blank space.
i will not forget who I am. I am not a check mark...think about that the next time you go to check white, Alissa. Because you are so much more than that.
9 comments:
That's damn hot!
We, (white people, or maybe just my family, I'm not sure which) suck as a culture. You have all that information because it's apart of your culture to know where you came from. I've got nothing because it's apart of my culture to not give a shit.
That was an awesome post. Thank you so much.
Maybe it just got too easy to label...and forget where we one came from whcih proves my point...we can NEVER forget where we came from. No matter who tells us to shut the hell up...dammit I wish I could blog this on 360 because I know the nitwit still reads it. He left me a comment the other night under a fake name calling me a stupid bitch and he also attacked everyone else he attacked in the past. Then sent an email out the next day to all of us saying it wasn't him. Anyway, this is why we need to know where we came from.
oh and Thanks...I am looking at it, wanting to edit it...sensing another blog coming on. I just was fired up and inspired...thanks for bringing me back...the real me.
This is the real you and don't you DARE edit this! It's perfect and it's real. You shouldn't care who reads it because it's so real, and the truth, and a real conversation between you and me. To hell with the rest of them!
I meant edit in the sense that there is so much more I want to say but I fear I will sound like a preacher or something. It does have a number of blogs spinning in me though.
and Sioux means what in French?
The enemy, the opposing force somthing like that anyway
Without an opposite things just won't work
"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction"
Don't change this post to much Dana, you are what you are don't worry to much about the likes of "him" because unless he can prove that his ancestors arrived on the Mayflower even then he's a mixture same as everyone else in the world is, we are all related somehow somewhere, good, bad or extremly ugly we are all related
mitakuye oyasin...in my language that means we are all related or all my realtive...we say it at the end of every prayer, or in the place of a prayer. Naddewasioux is what the Ojibwe called us meaning Little snakes because we were quick and sneaky in battle. The Frensh then shirtened it to Sioux, I don't mind it, it means we were warriors at one time fighting for our people.
god my typing sucks!
Interesting reading. This is one thing I've noticed since I came to North America...how much more important genealogy seems to be here compared to back home (Sweden). Which is only natural as most people have their roots somewhere else.
The other day I got a pile documents emailed to me with genealogy that my uncle had done. They went back to 1762 and not very exciting. All farmers in little Swedish villages... It's fairly easy to do genealogy there, I'm told. They have registers that go back to 1600-something.
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