I am indigenous.
I am Shawnee.

I am white assumed, and thus I have a lot of privilege.

With that privilege comes erasure.

I’ve been wanting to write about this for a while, but it’s not easy to put it into words. And I think in some ways I wasn’t sure that I wanted to put it into words. Not because it was too hard, but because it’s a beautiful thing and I don’t want anyone to spoil it.

I grew up both indoctrinated in Christianity, and also being made aware of my indigenous identity. I am grateful that no matter what I experienced, I was allowed to know where I came from and have some sort of connection to my tribe.

As a young kid, I was aware of my light skin. I knew that people didn’t assume I was Native American due to my light skin, but the older I got the more people just assumed I was white. As an adult, unless I state otherwise, people make the assumption that I am white.

And, yes, that does give me privilege. I acknowledge that.

I came out in my early 20’s, realizing that I wasn’t straight.

I had always felt like I didn’t fit the mold of a boy or a girl, but I didn’t really know how to explain that, so I put that aside. Coming out as pansexual felt like a big enough step at the time. And it was.

I moved to the Midwest and I remember being in my late 20’s and having this feeling of being so distant from my Indigenous Identity. Feeling not just far away from it, but kept away from it by something.

That something was me. I looked at myself and I knew that people saw a white woman, and I felt like that meant I wasn’t allowed to say that I was anything else. I didn’t feel like a woman, I wasn’t white, but I didn’t want to come off like all those people who told me their great, great, great grandma was an Indian Princess.

I felt like a faker. A pretendian.

I didn’t want to be another white person appropriating Indigenous culture and claiming things as my own that didn’t belong to me. I felt ashamed of claiming an identity that I felt so far away from, like I had no right to claim what was in my blood because it wasn’t visible to the outside world.

The difference is, I’m not pretending. I’m not taking something that doesn’t belong to me.

However, my culture isn’t something to be picked up and put down. To be Shawnee means that I am always Shawnee, whether you recognize that or not, it doesn’t take away from my tribe, my culture, my heritage, my generational trauma, my lived experience, and my desire and need to reconnect and decolonize.

Coming out as trans last year was a big deal, but giving myself a label has not felt great. Not to say I don’t want a label, or that I don’t want to be able to say “i am [this]”, but language can be lacking when it comes to gender and sexuality.

But this is where my culture and my gender intersect.

Colonization took away so much from me and stripped me of my culture slowly but surely from generation to generation until I was so far away from my tribe that I cannot speak my own language. Working towards decolonization isn’t just about learning the ways of my tribe, it’s also about unlearning, but more than that allowing myself the journey of not holding myself to the standards of a white supremacist culture that has never been home to me and has never welcomed the parts of me that do not align with a colonial mindset.

Unlearning means giving myself permission to not fit in. Giving myself permission to explore my gender. Giving myself permission to use the language that is meant for me.

hato.
I am Z.
I am Shawnee.
I am two spirit.

I am two spirit.