Fire Exit

by Morgan Talty

But one thing is for certain, I thought: you are who you are, even if you don’t know it.

anyone who wasn’t Native at all had no right to live on the reservation. And since Fredrick was my stepfather, I wasn’t Native, and so I couldn’t remain on the reservation when I came of age. My mother, a non-Native, could stay, of course, since she had married in.

To think that the reservation is what makes an Indian an Indian is to massacre all over again the Natives who do not populate it.

was Fredrick’s love that made me feel Native. He loved me so much that I was, and still am, convinced that I was from him, part of him, part of what he was part of.