Like many Native people born between 1960 and 1980, I grew up in a blizzard of whiteness, surrounded and loved by my maternal German Ukrainian family but without any connection to my paternal Ojibwe family. I had photographs of my father and my Ojibwe kin but no relationship and no idea how to even begin. It wasn’t until I was in my midtwenties that I found my father and began taking tentative steps toward the larger Indigenous community, which turned out to have been there all along. After decades in colonial darkness, I am ready to step into the light.
