Copyright © 2001 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

Murder is a simplified solution for the deranged and those incapable of coping rationally with their own inadequacies to adjust to stress. Suicide is a selfish act of desperation in response to a fantasy that somebody will suffer immeasurably by one's death. Neither of these acts seem to be appropriately descriptive, (in regard to two explanations of past experiences with cultural rejection). Whether a person is killed by another person or one-self, when you are dead you feel no pain! It is obvious from the messages both people are still experiencing pain, and it sounds by the tone of both of the messages the pain is deeply felt. If I were asked to offer a better term, I would call it "Socio-cultural mutilation"!

The wounds may heal from the outside inward, but the scars remain on the psyche, if not on the body. If it is any consolation to others who feel the same personal anguish regarding their efforts to connect with their Cherokee roots, provable or not, I want to assure them that they are one of legions. This old Cherokee faced the same kind of, excuse the anglo saxon, CRAP at various times in my formative years of cultural identity and thirst for knowledge about my tribal historical past.

It was not pleasant at times. Had it not been for my father, a minor roll enrollee/mother less at birth/abducted and sent to BIA boarding school and humiliated in endless ways/land-less and homeless/honest and hard working Cherokee, I might have succumbed to my primal instincts to "flight" instead of "fight". How one does the latter is one's own weapon of choice; fortunately there are options and alternatives beyond fist and weapons. The best advice he gave me in my entire life was: "Don't let those Indian run you off!" And he was referring to our own People -- Cherokees. I took that advice to heart and I have never been sorry. With his encouragement, I have come to the conclusion that being a traditionalist Cherokee (full-blood and fluent from birth Cherokee speaker) and 75 cents will get you a coke out of a machine in most places. I can get a coke for the same price, too. And, as an enrolled Cherokee I get the same number of ballots as they do -- ONE.

My advice is to get over the trauma of discovering the hows, whys and wherefores of becoming an identifiable Cherokee: you can't please everyone and you certainly cannot please a Cherokee who doesn't want to be pleased.

Investigation of other cultures can not make you less of a Cherokee; it is not suicidal in either the physical or spiritual sense. What it will do is make you a more well-rounded, more knowledgeable, more discerning and just plain smarter than those who close the doors to the outside and refuse to investigate alternative possibilities of life. Or look at the similarities rather than dwell on the differences.

The story of the white folks at a Pow-Wow, who were told to say they were Cherokee, reminds me of a personal incident years ago with a young Navajo man who chastised me severely for being a Cherokee and not being "Indian".

I asked him to give me an example of what an Indian looked like. "Like me", he said. And there he stood in Levis, cowboy boots, a silver-plated western rodeo belt buckle and a western cut shirt and wearing an obviously expensive Stetson hat. I at the time was wearing my best polyesters pants and oxford cloth dress shirt from Sears.

Oh, I said. If I started wearing denim pants designed and made by a Jewish man named Strauss, wore shoes that were modified by white cattle wranglers in Texas, adorned myself with a phony Rodeo trophy belt, that I hadn't won in an event and that was created by white cattle ranchers as an athletic social event, wore shirts with scalloped yokes and made of flowered cotton-polyester fabric with palsied snap fasteners, and wore a hat created by a immigrant hatter in New York City then I would be a real Indian. Hmmmmm. Thank you but No Thank You. I would just as soon be a Cherokee dressed the way I am than be an Indian and dress the way you do.

Sad to say, I believe the irony was lost on him completely. I'm sure he is still walking the pavement of Phoenix somewhere in his high heel cowboy boots completely sure that he is the very epitome of all things Indian. That wasn't the first of such incidents, but it was the beginning of a humorous healthy attitude about who and what I am in relationship to my Cherokee family, my tribe and my self.

If it is felt it is vital to your identity to seek the mysteries of ancient Cherokee practices, I wish you well and hope that you find that which you seek. For myself, I have found the answers. They are within my self as a human being who can exercise choices to live where I wish, believe what I comprehend and speak what I believe to be true. Other than that, there is nothing else except to associate with friends I trust to do me no harm.