Exactly twenty years ago next month I moved to Oregon to teach at Chemawa Indian School.  Among the many forms this federally-funded BIA school required of me was one called “Indian Preference  for Hiring.”

Look at me:

Could anyone be whiter?  And just look at what one of my students so sweetly referred to as “like shit white-girl hair.”

Yet, the BIA and my students treated me as though I was as native as my beloved ancestor.

Every morning when I went to work at Chemawa, at that time such a dysfunctional place, I reminded myself that I was doing it to honor him.  He would be so proud to know that my “drop of Indian blood” helped put me there, to work with and help those precious, mostly-troubled high-schoolers.

We descendants sometimes sport this tee shirt:

You can call me Pocahontas if you want to.  That just says something about you.  Not about me.