Let us now praise
the Cherokee grandmothers
who apparently worked overtime breeding
so that white people I meet
can claim just enough kinship with me
to feel less guilty.

(Or not. Maybe they don’t
feel guilty. Maybe it just makes it
easier to say something to an Indian.)

I am certain
that most of them
believe it’s true; the fact that it’s always
a grandmother and always Cherokee
makes me certain that it almost
never is.

Somewhere out there
in the red backlog of time
somebody started telling their children
and their neighbors and the townsfolk
that the Cherokee princess fell in love
with a stalwart pioneer and crossed
their tribes’ taboos to marry and bear
them, the true fruit of the new continent,
the darlings who capture the Natives’ plight
and hold it up for everyone to see, that touch of dusk
in the skin, that not-so-white
cast in the eyes.

I will not disabuse them of the notion,
they seem to need it.

But over their shoulders
I can see a black woman hiding
from a shadow in the doorway,
and I wonder what these eager people
would have to say to her
if they ever came face to face.

And while we’re on the subject:

When we take a drink, it’s just like you
taking a drink.  Most of our tobacco use
is like your own,

but the sweat lodge? That’s still ours.
You enter as naked tourists,
and leave the same way.

And when you
place a bet…
you know, we really wanna thank you for that…

Long hair and leather look lovely
on some people,
childish on others.

Everyone comes to their own place
eventually, it’s true;
but owning a dreamcatcher

doesn’t mean
you’re entitled
to our dreams.

~~~ Repost of an old piece, in response to Jessica Simpson revealing that she is 1/16 Indian after being called out on using the phrase “Indian Giver”