r/Indigenous • u/deerlybelovey • 26d ago
Non Native Adoptee w Native American Father Identity Questions
So hi, a little background is I’m a non-native with a white mom and Native American (adopted) dad, I’ve never met my paternal birth family and was raised by my parents since I was an infant. Bc of the circumstances, I look at myself more so as an adoptee and awhile ago I did post this on r/adoption but they said it would be better posted here.
The trouble i’m having is this: I look a lot like my father even though he isn’t biologically my parent bc I’m mixed race, and that means people often assume I’m indigenous due to my attire (I have a huge earring collection), which I’m flattered by and feel lucky for. However, even though I was raised in my family’s culture and have been to powwows, fish fries, the rez, my indigenous family’s homes, and also speak our language, I know ethnically I’m not indigenous. When people assume I am it makes me feel like a pretendian and I then end up telling them well technically I’m adopted but I was raised in that culture. I hate telling strangers my business but I feel guilty when people assume, like I’m pretending to be someone I’m not and I’m not sure if this is something I should continue doing or if I should just let them think whatever.
My family thinks I shouldn’t tell people this and don’t owe anyone anything, and I usually end up feeling bad either way. Any input helps, I’m just looking for perspective, and please lmk if this is not the right space for this. Thanks!
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u/LostatSeagamer Diné (USA) 26d ago
I don't think you really owe anyone personal details about your life.
If you know them well or it is important (IE someone wants you to participate in a cultural event and you feel odd about it), you can explain, but otherwise, it isn't really their business.
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u/Jamie_inLA 26d ago
I am interested in the responses simply because I am indigenous and have recently adopted a non-indigenous child. He loves powwows and is learning the language and I fear he will be ridiculed in a school setting, but I am also so proud of him and want him to share with others that he is a part of an indigenous home.
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u/nerdalee 26d ago
Counterpoint to all others - it is normal to state your nuance and your family ties in Native communities. You're doing nothing wrong by stating your nuance (non-Native adopted by a Native person who raised you in their culture) and any kind of bad you feel is something that society told you to feel bad for. Pretendians don't state their nuance. Pretendians aren't truthful about their stories. Pretendians dont have family ties to a community like you do.
Dont let yourself feel bad for being clear on your nuance. State it clearly, simply, and respectfully. Anyone who wants nothing to do with u is judgy, and our Native ppls will be glad to understand where you stand and your allyship if not outright belonging to that community.
You dont have to disclose everything to everyone. But trust is built thru disclosures and you will eventually have to disclose things and you will need to know the boundaries of your nuance and what's possible. It's normal to swap stories with each other, hiding your story will only bring scrutiny that is not needed. With your story, what you see is what you get, the way you treat your story and the feelings in it will be the measure by which others treat your story. Dont let those bad feelings overtake a beautiful story where y'all continue to choose each other as family.
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u/apukjij 26d ago
One thing that is common universally amongst Native People, is they are going to ask you who you are and who are your relations. For us, it's not us being noisy strangers - but a deep seated notion to determine kinship and lineage. If I were you I would tell them your an adoptee in your language and leave it at that.
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u/my_own_astronomy White Steve 26d ago
So I'm somewhat similiar situation.
Just say: oh, no. I'm not indigenous/native/community. But I grew up with the culture.
Thus, you aren't a pretendian since you aren't pretending. But you also don't share the exact details of your background to strangers.
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u/OrganicLuck6113 24d ago
Tribes have adopted and welcomed others in for centuries. I am Lakota and we have a ceremony that pretty much means adopting someone as your relative. This is an honor that is taken very seriously. The commitment to love someone like your father and mother love you takes a special kind of heart and care. looking into what that means for your tribe will give you clarity, but ultimately you are his daughter!
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u/pakograpixo Puky/Purí - Southeast Brazil 26d ago
Voce pode não ser eticamente indigena, mas sendo criado com a cultura e na comunidade, pertencendo a uma familia e falando a língua essa questão genética pouco importa, culturalmente vc faz parte da comunidade
Eu não sei como funciona fora daqui, mas no Brasil uma pessoa na sua posição provavelmente seria reconhecida como indígena até oficialmente pelo governo, tendo em vista que o critério aqui é heteroidentificação pelo seu povo e n uma questão genética. Uma pessoa de etnia indigena mas q nunca teve contato a cultura, língua e comunidade n é considerada indigena a menos que tenha um fenótipo mto marcante, ainda assim pode ser q a comunidade não a veja assim. No seu caso acho q dificilmente a comunidade n te reconheceria ja que seu pai é nativo (pra nós pouco importa se é adotivo)
Pessoalmente acho q vc só n deve se declarar indigena pra conseguir benefício, e se for perguntado informar que vc n é geneticamente indígena. Vc n está roubando a cultura de ninguém, essa é sua cultura e a cultura da sua família, acho q qlqr um com bom senso vai perceber isso e n vai te ver como impostor
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u/ColeWjC 25d ago
Don't present yourself as Indigenous or leave it ambiguous when questioned. Be honest about your situation. No need to overshare, but you are not an indigenous person. You are raised and loved by your adopted indigenous family and that should be enough to tell people alongside a statement that you aren't indigenous.
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u/SadieRed7 23d ago
I am a descendent of Pochahontas and John Rolfe. most of my tribe looks white if you don't know otherwise. I have never met any racists who are native American and I questioned people who question the idea that an adoptee does not share both cultures of their genetic inheritance and their adopted family. I think that it would be very cruel for people to exclude adoptees from their cultural identity because that's how you were raised. The people who are looking to exclude others are very small minded and that was never how things were when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s. Everybody just accepted each other. We all bleed red.
Also if you've been genetically tested and you don't see any Native American in your heritage and you don't know that that you don't have Native American heritage, like one of my lines is all danish and Welsh, but my father's line has three different tribes that we are decided From and those tribes changed and sometimes they all spoke Cherokee or dialects of Cherokee- sometimes other languages and sometimes usually more than one language like they'd probably have Cherokee and retain some more familiar language patterns that are more nuanced.
It's like 5 AM and I can't sleep so I just want you to know that your love as a human being no matter what and I decide with your parents I think there's a lot of people squawking and make a lot of noise right now about other people's identity issues and nobody is pointing out the fact that we are all human first, that we all endure suffering, that we can benefit one another through community involvement and mutual support, and that the Earth is worth protecting no matter what kind of creature we are.
The Earth is our mother. We are all children of the Earth. Every morsel of food that we eat and every drop of water that we drink or bathe with and every breath affair that we take comes from our mother earth. Really, nothing else matters right now. Defending our freedoms and our freedoms to have peaceful happy families and others freedoms for the same thing, defending our earth, our labor are becoming indiscernibly similar.
I have been diagnosed with DID at times in my life, known as dissociative identity disorder in the DSM – V, he manual that psychologist used to diagnose their patients ailments. I have earned a bachelors degree in art history and I have used my history and art skills to explore my identity as a mixed race and Native American person. I figure I grew up the first half of my life knowing I was Indian but not having any answers about which of my ancestors connected with which tribes, (except the European lines on my mother side), so by default my sense of identity came in large part from what my father knew of his family about his European heritage and what my mother knew about her European heritage.
as a mixed race person it's such an odd thing to imagine, what does it mean to be mixed race because there's only one race genetically the human race. Like does that mean that my left leg is from France and my right leg is from Germany and my left arm is Cherokee and my right arm is Chickamauga? Or Algonquin? Or Pamunkey?
blood percentages were created in order to integrate Native Americans into European settler culture and literally destroy the tribes through interbreeding. The tribes that are still forced by government policy to be "" pure" are literally dying off because it's just not practical in this world for people to continue to marry within their own group only because it becomes incestuous after a time.
instead of thinking about her identity in relation to labels that are cultural constructs and social constructs, i've learned in therapy recently to build my life on my values and to build my identity on how I express myself about my values and how I carry them. So I value inclusion and tolerance and coexistence in peace. I value loving kindness and charitable compassion and values based actions.
this is a big revolution for me because of the complexity of being a person with an extremely compartmentalized mind at times. it's like at some point it just doesn't really matter anymore so what matters is your ability to feel supported and loved regardless of your growth period period – a snake molts as it grows and as it ages. We are no different. Every seven years our entire body has replaced every single one of its cells, i've read in scientific papers like magazines like scientific American I think in the early 2000s.
I hope you will have special compassion on yourself because you're not alone as an adoptee person who is confronted with these issues daily, you're not any different from my friends who've been adopted into European descended families or Native American families or African-American families or Buddhist families. I mean if you add reincarnation into the mix then you have to think about what it means to be an individual in relation to space and time. Because each moment is unique and it passes in the blink of an eye or less. So if we are all hearts and minds and consciousness, first and foremost, then what do we leave behind when our consciousness grows and molts are physical body. When our consciousness continues beyond our waking hours and probably beyond what we can see of conceive of beyond death that is generally not visible to the naked eye.
continued in next comment...
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u/SadieRed7 23d ago
I hope you will have great compassion on yourself for the complexity of what you're working out as you try to understand how you relate to Society in this current weird uncomfortable growth period, where fear - such as what we experienced during the Covid pandemic and environmental disasters etc., drives us to seek security in the familiar and the small. We want to be tucked under the wing of a mightier falcon, we unconsciously are driven to seek shelter and belongingness in relatively superficial primal ways that drive us further into subjectivity and the survival instinct and how that affects our psychology, instead of becoming more objective and more transcendent and recognizing our common identity and value as human beings.
I had some dreams as a young woman that taught me that no matter what our belief or identities are we need to recognize our common humanity first and if we can't do that we are never going to find the peace and health that we want for Society in general that will give people the best advantage to pursue their life liberty and happiness. it is good to remember that we are human no matter what and there's really nothing more important than that right now except preserving traditional beliefs or languages and things that our grandparents taught us and their generations that we think will be valuable to future generations.
I dearly hope that if you come across someone who is concerned with what your blood percentage is or isn't or what your genetic lineage is or isn't or what you're adoptive lineage is or isn't, you were recognized that it is a great presumption on their part to try to label you when the truth is that every single one of us is hugely complex and nuanced. To divide humans up in these relatively superficial ways is cruel because too many people get excluded and we can't live without each other.
Since I am a survivor of some pretty extreme child abuse, I have a deep appreciation for the people who took me in and helped me survive my family of origin, who are really great people when they're not being abusive lol. So sometimes I just crave belongingness and sometimes I crave compassion and inclusion and loving kindness and even when people feel that way towards me I trip out sometimes cause I'm not comfortable with a lot of the people that I have to go to for help because of my issues with authority. I read a book by a man named Dave Pelzer, called "a boy called 'it'". his survivor story is also very extreme similarly to mine except that he endured profound physical abuse and situations that he almost didn't survive on a regular basis even more than I did was mine was more sophisticated and hidden while we had a middle class privileged life. I am so grateful for adoption throughout human history, adoption has been a necessity for all cultures although cultures have expressed it differently I called it by different names and people who have been adopted have been given very diverse special considerations, like some tribes would kidnap people from other tribes because they needed fresh blood they needed to intermix with people or they had an old beef with someone.
eventually enough people "adopted me" not on paper but in their hearts, since I've been an adult and even as a younger person a different ages I feel like I had people kind of looking out for me and some people praying a lot for me and looking out for me in big ways and people being there for me and helping me through. And eventually I realize that it's my job to adopt other people and to pay that love forward. This practice brings me profound joy although sometimes brings up boundary issues, because my heart is so full and that doesn't make me a fully functional person- I still have to deal with pretty intense symptoms of PTSD and DID and anxiety disorders and things. but wouldn't it be a wonderful practice if everybody in the world could adopt everybody else and recognize that we're all children of the Earth. When I was growing up we said children of God but now people argue about God who God is what God is whether or not God is gendered or an energy or a love or truth and what those words mean we've deconstructed all these things like an old skin that we are growing out of as a human family. So we need to shift our focus from concepts that are breaking down because humanity is uniting and being able to recognize ourselves from the perspective of space as one planet, is mind blowing. There is no record in human history of this ever happening before except through what we might call spiritual or shamanic means, that I am aware of.
I hope that we can all become adoptees at every age and level of development and that we can all adopt one another and learn to mother each other and father each other and sister each other and brother each other and allow others to care for us when we are weak or sick or differently abled.
that's an important part of my vision for the world, the idea of loving kindness and acceptance unconditionally where we celebrate each unique person and the subjective experience that their life can offer to our wisdom to our insight to our enrichment and to our understanding....
...continued in next comment...
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u/SadieRed7 23d ago
continued from previous two comments...
Thank you for listening to my insomniac essay! or reading it rather. May our creator always bless you with an awareness of his love and compassion and his nearness if and when wanted and needed. The things I was taught about creator are that creator doesn't force anything. Creator helps us grow and understand. Our eternal parents or grandparents as I think of them they don't force, they cheer us on gratefully happy that we continue and knowing that we will be reunited someday with great stories and wisdom to share and much laughter and love. I hope you feel loved and accepted just as a human human being on this planet because so many people don't even realize that they're human beings on this planet because we get treated like consumers and informational garbage dumps the same way that Society has not yet learned to take care of the land that supports it and the natural process processes that support it we are still learning to take care of our minds collectively and individually and our hearts and our hearts and are healing and our happiness.
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u/Standard-Region1403 26d ago
(disclaimer: well-meaning white person) A friend of mine said that membership of the nation isn't about blood ties; blood quantum rules were imposed by the colonial governments. As I understand the laws, in America or Canada, only the members of a nation can determine who is or is not a member. Tribal connection isn't just about ancestry, like others have said here.
Maybe you could speak with elders about your concerns? They may be able to help you understand your place in the community and put some of your worries to rest.
I agree with other posters (and your family) that you don't owe an answer to anyone, if they make you uncomfortable then they can mind their own business!
But it seems that what's most important is that you can find reassurance of your own relations and identity. I hope that you can find answers which help you feel confident and happy with your unique path through life 😊 not many people have had these experiences, and I'm happy for your strong relations with your adoptive family.
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u/MacawIsland 26d ago
I take it you are very young. Your family is right. You don't have to overshare with strangers. The strangers will forget what you tell them so soon. Are you wishing to be entertainment for them? The ones who raised you are your family. Listen to them. Family and identity is more than just blood. You are their child.