Tonight is the first installment of PBS’s latest American Experience piece—We Shall Remain. I caught a few advertisements for this a couple of weeks ago in between whatever was showing on Masterpiece Theater and my Sunday night Britcoms. I’ll admit that I’m addicted to those, but that’s not what this post is about. I’m very excited to be watching this miniseries. Kevin and I are both fans of historical pieces (Bachelor’s and a Minor in History, respectively) so we’ll be sitting down to watch this tonight while we finish up the last of our invitations.

Native history was not always of great interest to me. I had no connection, not even a small tendon of culture tethering me to the history of my ancestors. That’s right. I’m Native. On both sides and not a small portion. One side we know very little about; a large family of mixed Scotch-Irish and Choctaw blood. The other side is traceable all the way back to somewhere around the year 400 (probably further, but that’s the lowest number I remember seeing), but the Native line ends much more recently. We’re either Cherokee on that side or some smaller tribe that the Cherokees absorbed in Tennessee or Arkansas. From what I can tell, the last full-blooded Cherokee in my family was a woman named Mahala who was born in Tennessee and moved to Arkansas with her husband—an Irishman by the last name of Rawls.

This particular side of my family has been on the good and bad sides of Native peoples. My 10th-great-grandfather was Colonel John West, a man who apparently went down in history less for his military success and more because he left my grandmother to care for 5 children on her own while he shacked up with Cockacoeske, Queen of the Pamunkey tribe and cousin of Pocahontas.

As a child I remember being aware of the fact that we weren’t just plain “white.” I also knew that since we didn’t have any official documentation that we could never claim on any documents that we were Native. Completely absorbed in the culture surrounding me though, it never meant anything. Chances are if you live in Oklahoma and your family has been here more than 3 or 4 generations, you’ve got some Native blood flowing through you. That or you are racist and in denial. I’ll let you figure that one out for yourself. I could never escape the knowledge of what my ancestors were though. Being the oldest of over 25 great-grandchildren, I was one of the few of us to know our great-grandfather or “Pappy” as we all called him—Frank Walters. He was a pillar of his community, owning a portion of the oil wells peppering the pastures surrounding Pernell and one of the stores sitting alongside Highway 76 in southern Oklahoma. The way I remember him most was seeing him sitting in his chair, holding his cane near the front of the store, speaking to people as they came in, and letting me and my younger brother get something off the shelves for ourselves whenever our mom would walk us across the street to visit.

Here’s the thing though — you couldn’t look at him and deny that he was an indian. Of course back then that’s what they called it and belonging to a family who doesn’t let political correctness influence their vocabulary, that’s still the way they say it around my neck of the woods. Everyone knew and everyone accepted that we were Cherokee. Pappy knew that’s what his mama was and you couldn’t look at a man with skin as dark as his and eyes as sparkling and light and think otherwise.

It took coming to college to grasp the importance of my heritage. For me it was something that had always been there, yet never acknowledged by anyone else. Until I was in a writing class and along with two other classmates, I was considered by the professor to be a “woman of color.” Those words stopped me in my tracks. Not in a bad way, I wasn’t offended. But I was shell-shocked to be face-to-face with someone who accepted that I wasn’t just “white” even though I couldn’t prove anything. The funny thing is, this woman and I come from the same people group, only her other side is something quite different — something that makes her experience as an American the polar opposite of mine. I credit her with opening my eyes and setting me on a path to know and accept who my people were.

The road has been a long one to get us where we are now. And the interesting thing is that we aren’t much closer to knowing exactly who we came from than we were 20 years ago. We still have no papers, no cards, no name on a register in any of the towns that matter in eastern Oklahoma. We’ve never even been out to get benefits from discovering our heritage. The reason our name doesn’t reside on any of these lists is because our ancestors refused to take anything from the government. I can’t say that I blame them, considering what happened to all the people that came before them.

I’ve spoken with people who assume that I’m Native by the color of my skin in late August, only to be snubbed when they find out that I can’t claim official status with any tribe. Not that I would ever consider it close to the racism that minorities still receive today, but I’ve experienced more racist responses from Native people who will not accept or respect that I, too, hail from a people who lived here for centuries before Europeans touched the coast, than I ever imagined would happen. I understand, in a way. The desire to protect your heritage and culture when it is so deeply rooted in your day-to-day life, to cloister yourself and your people away in hopes of retaining something of what you were and making your own decisions about what you will be. I understand wanting to keep that away from someone who is “white” like me. I know very, very little about who I come from. My ignorance and interest in learning has got to be something like what Sylvia Plath described as an animal returning to the herd after having been touched by human hands. I’m the animal that was not only touched, but raised and nurtured by something foreign. And not only me, but my entire family for generations. I understand the perceived threat and would never want to offend or step on anyone’s toes.

I only wonder how much damage would come from letting me learn.