Greentext

Try being an actual full blooded native person.

I'm 100% Ojibway, my parents on both sides were born raised and lived in the wilderness. I'm the first generation born in a modern hospital. My first language is ojibway, I spoke it exclusively for the first 15 years of my life. We learned English in school but we all spoke ojibway at home. I learned to hunt, trap, fish and live on the land from my parents and I love spending time outdoors. It's all natural to me.

Now I live close to the city in a non native world. My wife is white and we spend most of our time to ourselves.

My family doesn't think I'm native enough. White people don't believe I'm native because I live like a city person. Most people don't believe I'm native because I don't have red weathered skin, a crooked nose and long braided hair. Many people have confused me as Chinese, Korean, or an overweight Thai, Cambodian or Lao. Or even Peruvian, Ecuador or Mexican.

I meet city Indians who have ancestry but have never lived on the land or know their communities or even speak the language yet they wear native stuff, necklaces and everything and get more recognition than me for being native.

I intimidate other natives when I speak my language because it reminds them that they can't speak other than to know a few words or phrases. So now I seldom speak and as I grow older, the people I could speak to are now either dead, dying or too old.

I get funding as a native person but I get very little. I don't live in reserve so I'm the last to get funding. I don't get off reserve funding because I have full status with my community where I could live if I chose to. I get tax off on some things but not everything because I don't live on reserve and doing my taxes every year is a nightmare, so in the end, I pay just about the same amount of taxes as everyone else and save just a little.

I've watched dozens of half breed, quarter breed, 1/8 breed, 1/16 breed natives with scholarships and paid education while I tried to fight for mine and never got it. I got high school but never got more than that.

I even know a couple of blue eyed, blonde Indians who got adopted into a native family and have full status and more help than I ever did.

People keep telling me I'm lucky to be native but I've experienced far too much racism and stupidity to be happy about who I am.

I'm neither treated as full native and I'm also not treated as non native either. It's like I exist in some kind of native twilight zone.