My mother made a choice to raise me among settlers and apart from my Ojibwe relatives. Her decision wasn’t malicious, but the harm was real, and I have to sit with that. I can’t pretend it didn’t happen or that it didn’t insulate me from some things even as it failed to insulate me from others. Because of the way that others saw me—as the brown child in a white family—I had identity without relationships. That combination—identity with no community—impoverished me. That impoverishment was a constant hum in the background of my life. My face told a story that the rest of me couldn’t articulate
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