Scrolling through Tik Tok, I came across a friend’s minute long post about how one should know their heritage, especially if they claim some sort of motherland. My friend is from Africa, I have several actually, from different countries and they can trace their heritage back to a specific region, tribe, or clan. As an indigenous person myself, I found it exciting and also as a reinforcement of my own positions regarding those who claim Aztec, Maya, or Native American heritage. I’m 69% Native American blood according to my DNA, but I can trace my paternal roots back to the clan and community where we maintain most of our culture.
When I was a child, my father was fascinated with the southwest and the tribes there because our ancestors traded with one another. I would spend summer vacations with my family going to places like Acoma, Monument Valley, and Window Rock. One family even took us in for the night when rain washed out the road back to our hotel. My parents decorated their home and themselves with native artifacts intermixed with their Spanish style. I also have adopted this look wearing native hair ties, earrings, and bracelets almost daily. There are cultural reasons why natives wear or dress the way they do, but for outsiders they look nice and very different. Touring the reservation, hearing stories from my grandfather, and visiting my maternal grandmother’s farm in Mexico, I understood and saw the plight of empoverished people for myself. I think that was my father’s intent because we saw for ourselves first and third world poverty as very young children.
Today, my social media feed is full of patriotic people of all backgrounds, cultures, religions, and yes combinations of them exist. My personal favorite are African Immigrants, and Indigenous Military. These two groups fully understand the importance of knowing your roots and are the strongest warriors for patriotism against an ever encroaching Anti-American enemy. Americans who are ashamed to stand for the flag hate people like my friends because they ask questions like “What is your tribe?” “What country in Africa are you from?”. The people claiming African-ism or Indigenous-ness find the thought of defending their claimed heritage insulting, we should all accept their claimed status as fact without evidence. These social justice warriors find a wall that they cannot break in me and my friends, and for that, we’re censored.
Our tribes communicated long before social media existed, and we will communicate long after the phase of social media and even modern communication are long gone. Archeologists are finding proof of our interconnected peoples every single day. It’s just nice to be able to scroll through my feed and see other tribes celebrating their heritage and fighting the same battles I am. Today I saw a Marine in formals, adorn it with a bone necklace, pick up eagle feathers then flawlessly join the pow wow ceremonial dance; I smiled as a tear of joy welled up in my eye.
We are all one race, human. We have many cultures and when they’re interconnected our world becomes a beautiful place enriched by our traditions.
