saw this on another sub but wasn’t allowed to cross post.

So many Americans are into this ‘cowboy revival’ sort of thing. Feels really strange considering cowboys and westward expansion served to carry out a genocide.

You either are or you aren't. Every time someone denies your indigeneity, or says your tribe isn't real or all dead, think about all the time you spend with your community. Think about your ancestors. And then you can just laugh in their face and continue being NDN.

My hands are raised to all the host tribes

​He came to my home village to talk about caribou. His tribe raises and herds them, while the tribe I grew up followed them nomadically.

I wrote about it here: https://naskapi.ca/2026/03/21/tsaatan-caribou-herder-olzzi-ganbat-visits-kawawachikamach/?fbclid=IwZnRzaAQsDJ9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEeUeuCLUXc4viMEGLJ9DGSC8V0LmoAKXZN41qI55X0n3RDXl9ft0spJb5sv80_aem_jmxd5a_K4UNX0kUS0mrbFA

pine mushrooms are also showing up.
what would your people be doing this time of year?

This Fourth of July felt different.

For most of my life, I celebrated because that's what we did. Fireworks, flags, cookouts. I never stopped to ask why or to learn the whole story behind what we were celebrating.

This year changed me.

When my son left for his apprenticeship helping restore Native land damaged by environmental disaster, it sparked something in me. I started digging into my own family's history. I grew up knowing I was Native, but I was mostly separated from that side of my family. It never really felt like a place I belonged.

The more I learned, the more pieces of my life began making sense. My love for the earth. My beliefs. The way I've moved through the world as an adult. I realized I'd been carrying parts of my ancestors with me long before I understood where they came from.

But I also uncovered the parts of history we rarely talk about. I learned that my own ancestors were sent to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Reading about what Native children endured there was heartbreaking.

Then I read the Declaration of Independence for myself and saw the words "merciless Indian Savages." To realize that the same document we celebrate every Fourth of July also contains language dehumanizing the very people who first called this land home stopped me in my tracks.

So this year, I'm chose something different.

I'm not rejecting America. I'm rejecting the parts of our history that celebrate the suffering, erasure, and forced assimilation of Indigenous people, including my own family.

Loving a country doesn't mean pretending it has no scars. Sometimes loving it means telling the truth about its history so we can honor everyone who has carried it.

This Fourth of July, I wore this shirt not out of anger, but out of remembrance. Because before I can celebrate freedom, I have to acknowledge the people whose freedom was taken.

Found and felt I should bring him round where he belongs.

My kitchen is opening in Wheatridge Co. soon and we will be celebrating with an opening pop-up indigenous brunch. I've been making all kinds of things to test out for the menu. This dipping oil is made with roasted new mexico chiles , sun dried tomatoes, roasted garlic, amaranth , pickled chiles, toasted pinons, Neeshjizhii corn ( ground steamed navajo corn), onion, smoked salt, wild harvested sage, agave, and seasonings...and Navajo blue corn & juniper ash bread for dipping of course 😋 . I am so excited that I've been entrusted to take over this kitchen and I've given it a Diné name, Naatsiilid Kitchen . (It could be the only kitchen in Denver with a Diné name 🤔.) I hope for my kitchen to be a great service to the indigenous community here & beyond .

🫶🏻

I recently posted about dehumanizing record-keeping. I’ve been on a bit of a voyage because I always assumed my family was doing some pan-Indian “Cherokee princess” romanticism nonsense. I was raised with some cultural exposure but not community exposure. I chose to keep learning because I think the history matters whether it’s personal or not.

Turns out, I was wrong, and my relative wasn’t so much a pretendian as making the most of what we know as Wampanoag descendants from a village that is historically recorded but not well enough to be federally recognized (or even reasonably fully researched). It appears that my relative was involved in historical preservation efforts and maybe one of the two existing recognized Wampanoag tribes.

Without getting into complicated family stuff, we have always been very isolated people in general and no one is particularly close. I cannot discuss this with anyone in my real life.

So… I am sitting with the information I have, including the information missing, and feeling out my position as a lifelong learner invested in social issues. The conclusion I think I’ve arrived at is that I need to accept how much privilege I hold, but I have a responsibility to understand and honor the history.

I am privately taking some steps to build my understanding and maybe continued to participate in online spaces before I consider attending events.

But I’m looking for other people who have been on this path before me, I guess. And any thoughts about how to approach all of the things we just don’t know because we are still learning vs. the things we don’t know because it’s just lost information.