It has been said that Indians want to be left alone, but never actually be alone. Growing up and being the only Indian in your school, in your town, in the eastern half of your state, at a place where you open a history textbook and see pictures of “real” Indians doing “real” Indian things, like bathing in rivers next to a teepee, and your classmates ask you, “do you do that, too?” and I ask myself—should I?—and where your high school mascot is the Indians and that makes you feel like the only real Indian in the world, like the place you were from never existed.
But you know it exists because that is where your family lives—and every Christmas you talk to them on the phone and they tell you stories about home—and you ask
mother,
where is the Indian in me?
From mother by m.s.RedCherries (Penguin Books, 2024). Copyright © 2024 by m.s.RedCherries. Reprinted with the permission of the poet and publisher.