look like an indian

"Funny. You don’t look like an Indian,"She said to me and touched my brown hair and
squinted at my bright, blue eyes.

She turned me over in her hands looking for evidence that I am an Indian.

Like I might have warpaint and feathers hidden somewhere.

I mean she knows what an Indian is supposed to look like:
Long black hair
In braids
With some animal skin and body parts tied to her.

Because Indians do not shop at JC penny.

Indians do not wear Estee Lauder products or dance to hip hop and club mixes.

She asks me will I show her a fancy dance and I tell her, "No, Every time I dance it rains."

And she believes that, the only thing she will give me credit for.

What she cannot see, because it will not show in a sports mascot or white-boys-dancing-with wolves-mockumentaries, because I will not paint it on my body so some drunk ass redneck can copy my religion for some redskin football team...

What I will not show her is my scar.

My own totem and my bit of Indian magic sitting across my shoulder like a holy ridge,
like a silhouette against the sky that marks my tribe cause I know if she sees it...

She will just rename it and something holy will become something ridiculous and sinister
like:
The Devil’s Colon.
Or her own name.

After all she discovered it .

Funny. I don’t look Indian to her and she asked my great granny, the one who lost her momma and her daddy on a long walk from Georgia, the one who was raised by the Sioux

And who ran away at 15 to pimp herself to the white boys at the pulp wood camps because it was a little bit freer than the fucking reservation

Why she didn’t look Indian, why she had blue eyes and brown hair.

And my great granny told her, "What do you think happened to all those dumb ass, lost white people?"

Which shut her up quick.
And I took her home.
Said I wasn’t coming back.
And she said "Fine. You don’t look indian to me."

And i said, "Funny."

"They said the same damn thing about
Crazy horse."