Raised By Children

Catrin Welz-Stein

July 19, 2016

Prose from another lost dimension.

And all of a sudden, I’m Indian, I’m Native American, I’m American Indian, I’m Indigenous, I’m Aboriginal, I’m First Nations, and all of a sudden, I have rights to everything spiritual, I have rights to all land, and I have the rights to claim my heritage and make it up as I go along…

And all of a sudden, I have the right to play any kind of instrument, like the drum or the flute, and wear headdresses and feathers and beads and… and the right to paint my face and appear on television and suntan to look like a… … an Indian. I can claim ‘my blood’, my ‘DNA’ and wear buckskin and dance in shawls and rationalize why and what I do so that others know I’m … … Indian.

All of a sudden, I can wear caps and t-shirts with Native kinda, new age logo and sell them!!! I have a right to do that. I am an Indian, and now I can walk through walls and halls of boarding school history and talk of the West and their destruction as if it wasn’t my people, as if it wasn’t me. Because now I’m somebody.

Now I can, all of a sudden, write books and ask questions and become a shaman and claim it’s my right to become one.

All of a sudden. I don’t have to feel responsible… anymore.