Curate, connect, and discover
okay so all my native folks i have a dilemma and an existential crisis and im genuinely uncertain if im like, unintentionally trying to appropriate a culture i dont actually belong to, or if im trying to actively join my community.
so i am largely white, and i am translucent, and my moms side of my family is an amalgamation of french, abenaki, and i think some german. however, for the few years of my life where i was fully under my parents jurisdiction with little outside contact, i was sort of raised outside of culture. culture-adjacent. barely anything you could call heritage except for antique family photos, the occasional mention of a great grandparent, and addiction problems. no traditions. little community. barely any family stories. and when i finally started forming a personality around 7 or so, and meeting humans and talking to them i realized oh shit, everyone has like.... a place. a group.
my french canadian friends visit family in canada every summer, my british and irish friends visit the uk and shit, my portuguese friends eat portueguese food and do their hair different. the people born and raised in my middle of buttfuck nowhere massachusetts town are all the worst and going nowhere. my black friends have a group of friends that know what their life is like
and i was looking for my place as this lost 7 year old. i didnt fit with the hillbilly, learned to rode on a tractor family. i definitely didnt fit with the rich uptight texas family. i didnt fit with the town i was in. and i was going through my genealogy, and talking to my family members, and i learned about my abenaki family members. theyre kinda distant but i do feel liek i fit with them. am i doing a bad? is this internalized racism? im sleep deprived and struggling and i dont wanna hurt anyone or hurt anyone elses culture or insert myself where i dont belong please someone help