At the end of last year, I began learning Abenaki. A language of my heritage I never really gave much thought to until a conversation with an Italian friend of mine where I said that if my ancestors had a language other than English, I’d want to know it.

Growing up, my family was unquestionably white. Why would we want to question what the generations who came before had assumed? This veil of pale, of indiscriminate European origin.

Real Americans.

My great great grandmothers were ment...