Details

Storyteller: Millie
Tribe: White Earth Band of Ojibwe
Created: 2018
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Transcript: The Evolution Of My Native Pride

I'm currently on my 31st trip around the sun. I spent the first 24 living at Little Earth of United Tribes, a Native American preference housing complex in South Minneapolis.

Anyone who has lived in the community that I come from knows firsthand how influential of a place it can be. Little Earth is known to influence individuals and families both positively and negatively. For me, it did both, especially as it relates to my cultural identity. How I see myself, how I perceive my community, and how I identify with my ethnic background and culture has evolved significantly over my lifetime.

Childhood was a blur of sleepovers at the homes of neighbor kids; long hot days filled with an assortment of recreational activities; evenings of 2-3 hour games of 60; all of which came to an end when mom called our names out of the front screen door. Between time spent outside being a kid, playing organized athletics, singing in a choir, playing in band, and being one of the youngest in a large family, I didn’t pay much mind to my cultural or ethnic identity. Things like offering tobacco, smudging, putting out a spirit dish and fancy dancing at pow wows didn’t seem like anything special or significant at that time, especially considering that they were things that we did at neighbor kids’ homes, at after school programs at Little Earth, and even at school. Those were the spaces that defined my personal bubble through my elementary years.

As I progressed into middle school, my bubble expanded and my community grew. I gravitated towards people that looked like me, other students who coincidentally identified as Native and Hispanic, like me. Along with these new friends came new knowledge, language, dress, music preferences and so much more. I, along with most of my other siblings began to relate more with our Hispanic heritage. My given names of Emilia Hernandez took on new meaning. The language spoken by my dad became more understandable. That music that he listened to became my music. The Catholic church across the street, Holy Rosary, temporarily became my refuge. They serviced the Mexican and Latino population. Although this was a safe space, this was also the first space where my ethnic and cultural identities were questioned, and where I consistently found myself explaining my Native heritage, arguing against stereotypes, and justifying why a community like Little Earth was such a unique and important place. Interestingly enough, inside, in my heart, I wasn’t proud to be Native, especially one from the Little Earth community. As a matter fact, at that point in my life, I was ashamed to be Native and angry to have been brought into the community where I was raised. Much of those feelings stem from the new way I was interacting with my neighbors at the time. The days of swimming, playing 60, and rollerblading with neighborhood kids felt like they were far too many moons away. Then, myself, visiting friends, and siblings eventually started getting harassed by neighbors throughout middle school and into high school. Most often came from the neighbors right next door. They would joke about our Spanish music, the way we dressed, and called us names, like Spic and wetbacks. We were raised to mind our own and not partake in drama unless it was a matter of defending our physical safety, so the harassment continued for years.

As much as my identity was evolving at the time, so was the state of my family. We would all agree in saying that we were a dysfunctional family, and for many causes. The majority of us began struggling with mental health issues and addiction. Through these struggles, we lost touch with our Native practices and medicines.

I dropped out of school in 9th grade. I turned to drugs and alcohol. My mother began kicking me out on a regular basis. I found a family in a small Mexican gang. The constant harassment from the neighbors continued. Inevitably lots of troubles came my way and I seemed to find trouble around every corner, which eventually led me two centimeters from death and laid up in intensive care for a week. Witnessing the heartache of my family influenced my desire to walk down a new path. Along came YouthCARE and the opportunity to be a teen mentor to younger girls in the Little Earth community. There I was, a 14 year old tattooed, hickied up, alcoholic, drug addicted gangbanger, who still had a tiny bit of hope left… hope that I could make something better of myself, and make my family proud.

One may ask, why would you have a desire to work in the Little Earth community and make a dysfunctional family proud. To that I have said, I want to be of service to Little Earth, to honor my mother for all of the long days and nights that she spent away from her children to fight for the community at a local and federal level. I want to make amends for all the bad that I have done.

So, mentor, I did, for three years. YouthCARE and their Camp Sunrise became my new safe space. As a youth employee and participant, I learned more about myself, my community, and many cultures, including my Native culture. Through these experiences, I developed a newfound great sense of pride and appreciation for the Little Earth community and my Native heritage.

Then, one early morning, before I was to go to my mentoring job, I was sitting in the car visiting with my boyfriend. We were approached by three friends of the neighbors. They began trash talking my boyfriend about the Mexican flag that was draped over the hood of his uncle’s car. One spit in my boyfriend’s face, another pulled out a gun, and the behavior of the three began to escalate. The conflict ended with one of the three shooting my boyfriend in the head. That single interaction brought back all of that anger and shame. In those moments, I was angry at Natives. I was ashamed of the community. I was hurting for someone I loved. I was traumatized. I was in shock.

I turned to something I always turned to, my journal. I began writing and releasing those feelings. I suppressed them and continued living my life. I continued youth work and serving my community. I continued to journal, which is my medium for reflecting, creating meaning for everything in my life, identifying my values, and better understanding my belief system.

Journaling, youth work, and service to my community, have been a major piece of my healing. More importantly, they have all served as a means to discovering what my cultural identity means to me. I’m Native. I’m proud. I’m forgiving. I’m evolving. I’ll live the rest of my years being a servant to others outside of myself...my family, my community, and the unknown. To me, that’s what it means to be Native.