Indigenous Today

This one’s about two interesting interactions i had with two very nice dudes i met, one near LA in California and one in rural Virginia. 


The first acquaintance of mine was telling me about himself when he casually and coolly said he is first generation american”. That was my first time hearing the term, so i asked what it meant. He said his parents were born and raised in Russia, and that they moved to America for his birth, making him the first one in all his family’s lineage to be born outside of Russia. 


Flash forward 5 years to Virginia. I’m chatting with an acquaintance of mine. He asked me, “So…what are you?” when wanting to hear about my heritage. Like, those ancestry tests that define your lineage going back centuries. And I’m from this general region (New Jersey) so he assumed I’d say some part of Western Europe, maybe irish or italian or english which is the answer I’d always been trained to say. 


But i kinda think like, I don’t really identify as any of those people personally. I love my ancestors; but i don’t really get down with all the genetic “family members” from before my grandparents. Because I’m born and raised in mainstream American culture. Like my parents, and their parents, and before that, since time is relative, it’s hard to say that i am “related” to people i never met. So i kinda go by what my Russian friend Avi Boyko says. 


I answered the southwestern guy verbatim, “I'm American.”; and he was confused. Because he thought i meant i was a patriot or a republican! I laughed at the confusion i created. I told him, the percentage of genetic makeup in me from colonial times is irrelevant. I am not interested in keeping conventional truths. So to answer your question, in my own terms, my heritage is american. 


Now, i am clearly not of Native American ethnicity. I’m white. Or caucasian. But now that my people have committed genocide upon yours, enough time has passed where we gotta rebuild and construct new terms for who is who.


I’d like to reclaim what it means to identify as american. Not native american because in our beautifully diverse planet, those people are my inner humanity; yet not my in-born culture. Nor do i mean any association with some old patriotic politically-red guy. I mean i wanna be a modern day Revolutionary. That means living in the Now & that means subscribing to the belief that I AM ONE; OF A KIND. I’m someone living in the present moment and in the year 2025; since life is about creating ourselves, i’ve invented a poetic way to describe what feels accurate to myself as a unique human being.


So… that’s just who i am this week. 


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