Today I had a little time to myself while hummingbird was on a conference call. I was supposed to be looking for chemotherapy care plans, so I was hunting through all her books. Hidden away in the stacks of cancer books and pain books was a thin paperback describing how different cultures grieve. I stopped the futile search for chemo care plans and dove into this book. Of course, I filled immediately to the Native American section.

What a surprise. Hidden in this little bookcase in this thin book was the hidden language of my family. The descriptions of how natives deal with death were all written as if my family had been the test case. Family One, we could be called- The Sample Family for Native American Grief. In this one book were all this little cultural cues we use- little things that I had never seen written down before. It felt as though I was being watched, notes were being taken and analyzed, and this is what came out.

It was very strange.

My first instinct was to copy the chapter and mail it to all my friends. See, I would say on a little sticky-note attached to the first page, see- this is what we are like at home. This is why I don�t like the huggy huggy kissy kissy of New Yorkers. This is why I don�t talk to you much when I first meet you. I�m not a snob, I�m just Indian.

All this makes being me just a little more difficult. Here I am, apparently culturally Indian yet to some my appearance doesn�t fit the stereotype. What does this make me? Who am I and why does it matter to me so much? I have been stuck in this strange cultural vortex where my education and my white mother separate me from who I most belong to, and my brown-ness will always set me apart in some ways from the people I spend the most time with. I don�t really want to move to Oklahoma and become another malcontent on the reservation. I also don�t want to ignore who I am and what my father always told me to be: Indian. It just doesn�t make any sense to me today why this is all so important.