Being born with ambition in Portland garunteed me for a diagnosis of anxiety. 

Having an internal drive for success in a town where people work half time in the industry of serving food and drink (but full time at drinking and partying) has lead me to consistently disappointing relationships and remarkably unsatisfying employment experiences. 

I feel like the only person who has some place to be, the only one rushing to meet a deadline, which I had to set for myself purely because I want to accomplish something with my life. 

I've gotta move away before my high strung nature is driven completely insane by this laxidasical town. I already tried once.

A few years ago, I saved up money for six months and livd in NY for three months. I failed to find a job or apartment, and quickly bailed on my dreams, flying comfortably back to my easy west coast life. 

But I hate it here. I crave a struggle. I want to fight for the life I want and I need to impress myself. 

This aching need to return to The City feels like a bad foot cramp that will only go away if I push into it, wearing out the muscles until they finally give up and let go.

The only cure for this poorly located ambition is a few years of hard living. And then, maybe, I will finally be able to stroll aimlessly down the street, no plans ahead of me but a vague commitment to whiskey with friends.

I keep forgetting to remember

which ones deserve my magic

and which use it all up,

moving on with no remorse

And to be wary of casting spells

on the ones I don't mean to ensnare,

who I will fly away from

without knowing I've left them trailing behind.

Expanded journal entry circa 2010:

I was at lunch after my first conference where I had just presented a paper about how Native Americans exemplify the comparative literature departments theme that year:Trash. As the only undergraduate amongst a group of phd students I was thrilled to have my eager remarks accepted into their witty banter. This meal was my inauguration into the big leagues for nerds.

We discussed the various presentations we had just heard, and I mentioned how bad I felt for having just made everyone at the conference cry when I read my account of u.s. history. But also, I noted, how crazy was it that they were really surprised enough by the news that indigenous people had it rough to be lead to tears? As I recalled their weepy faces I thought, I live with this history everyday, come on! Why are you crying over this?

At this point, one of the phd students blurted out how he wished someone would just create an Oppression Camp for White Men. Someplace they could go to be oppressed for a week so they would forever know what it feels like, so they could not only empathize with a story about the tragedy of my native ancestry, but to actually feel it viscerally like only a person who has been tormented by oppression can. (This genius phd student happened to be a white male himself, though he fancied himself particularly enlightened, which I agreed he was since he recognized the great need for such a camp.) We all joked at the irony of his suggestion and continued our lunch.

I cannot tell you how many times I fantasized about that camp after that day. Oh, it isn't that I truly wish to harm anyone. But don’t you secretly feel that all people who’ve lived perfectly cushy lives just don’t get it sometimes? Isn’t it sweet of me that all I want to do is give them a broader, more sympathetic worldview? And isn’t it good that I want to end their ignorant remarks about women and minorities so that women and minorities don’t have to be angry with them anymore?

Maybe that camp will just force the attendees to read Edward Said and essays on Eurocentrism. For the men I will throw in some Simone deBeovoire and Irigaray. Wouldn’t that help? Better (legally, or ethically) than some of the other programs that have run through my mind… I don’t know if it would ever really work. Only those on the outside can tell what is happening inside, to paraphrase Irigaray. After all, those on the inside don’t really have anything to gain, so who could make them attend?

Hey, how are you?

Okay. I'm doing okay. How about you?

I don't hear your response.

I'm okay. I tell myself

I'm okay. And saying out loud

that I'm okay

makes me wonder

if I am

okay.

Every moment of every day

Is a struggle to feel "okay."

And just when I get caught up in not realizing

I'm not not okay

someone asks me how I'm doing

and I remember

again, each moment is

an assessment

of my body:

Do I feel dizzy?

of my thoughts:

Where am I going?

and to keep my heart from beating out of my chest

I grip my fingers into my things,

inhale sharply

and hold my breath,

widen my eyes and focus

on a distant object while I tell myself

that I am going to be okay.

How about you?

I’m what they call a “City Indian." I don’t have stories about life on the rez, but as a kid I was told we had native relatives somewhere down in California. They were my mother's family, people we were never very connected to.  Until my parent's relationship reached a breaking point. Then she decided to reconnect with these wild half siblings I had heard so little about. 

I remember visiting one of these siblings for the first time, an aunt who lived in Eureka, and feeling the damp, dark, and lonely emotions of an outsider. I was nine, and my mom had piled my three sisters and I in the car for the 7 hour drive. As a treat, we stopped at a little shop in downtown Eureka. I was allowed to purchase this big stick of roll-on glitter that tasted like candy sweet chemicals. I rolled it indiscriminately on my chubby cheeks. 

We arrived at Aunt Sarah's small house after dark. I was sleepy yet restless from the longest car trip I had ever taken.

[Later, in Sam's bedroom]

I sat on a dirty brown carpet and felt the glitter sticky on my cheek. I leaned against the bed, where my cousin taught my older sister a thing or two about life. We stayed up past midnight with no word from our mom about bed time. I watched MTV and saw Missy Elliott's "No Rain" video for the first time. The bright lights, lewd gestures and bizarre imagery of a woman dancing in a trash bag frightened me. I kept watching until I fell asleep, sad and scared, wrapped up in somebody’s jacket. 

When I as in college looking back on this awful night I learned that my aunt and her friends were doing bumps of coke between pulling swigs of cheep beer. That was the first time I heard Gwar. I was a devout little Christian girl until I was thirteen, and that was the first time I knew there was darkness in this world. I wouldn't have understood then that my rural relatives were reacting to that darkness, not creating it. I had it easy growing up in the city.

I wanted my mom to grab me and my three sisters and drive us all the way back to our little home on 82nd avenue, where the fighting of my parents was much more quiet, and no one drank. 

I grew up just one block in from Portland’s own 82nd avenue, the same drag of pavement they tried to rename “The Avenue of Roses” to mask the true images it evokes: used car lots, fast food joints, dingy strip clubs and Chinese restaurants. It gave me an intense desire to expand my horizons, if you know what I mean.

82nd is in fact the fastest way to get to PDX Airport, but the only plane trip I’ve ever taken was to Disney Land in eighth grade. In high school I satiated my traveling itch by hitching rides to Montana with my best friend. We swam in the clear water of Flat Head Lake but, other than her relatives, I never met any of the local Montanans. When I was sixteen I lived on my own in Seattle for five weeks during a dance intensive at Cornish College, but the friends I made there were all liberal young girls like myself. I figured I needed to get out of the Pacific North West to experience difference.

I followed the Willamette river south for college, physically attending University of Oregon while my brain fantasized about traveling Route 66. I studied philosophy in a naive attempt to learn about the East Coast through pragmatists like John Dewey. Maybe I should have thought more about gaining tools to get a job so I could afford to travel to the East Coast. After graduation, the only thing I was qualified for was a call center job an old friend from high school connected me with. She said the pay was decent so I couldn’t say no. I didn’t realize that phone was a ticket to my long awaited journey around the country.

You’d be surprised how emboldened people become when talking to a customer service representative on the phone. After a few weeks of work I found that I was just human enough in the caller’s mind that they knew I was listening to them, and just mechanical enough that they ignored the possibility of my emotive capabilities. With master training in the art of disguising my own location, people form different states assumed that I had the same background set of ideas as them. I had callers from Louisiana vocalize their racism and ask me to back them up; I had people from New Jersey flood my ear with legalese and become infuriated when I didn’t comprehend; a woman from South Carolina off-handedly stated that she had a third-degree murder charge against her, and possibly burglary, she couldn’t recall. I was thrown smack in the middle of callers’ intimate drama and learning more about the different people of this country then I ever would have by meeting them in person.

You see, I’m a shy person by nature but at work I suddenly had no choice other than to converse with everyone. I met a 78-year-old Arizonian woman who had been trying for a month to track down a lawyer that had previously worked with. “Do you know where I finally found him? It was through a Native American listing. I like the Indians. You know, of all the minorities they have been the most screwed over! So I donate a lotta money to ’em.” Another moment I remember fondly is when learned what a roustabout was by chatting to an ex-oil rig worker in the South. It probably took me about five minutes to unravel it from his Texan tongue, but now I’ll never forget that he worked out at sea doing odd jobs on the rig, risking his life by exposing himself to asbestos. Then there was the day-to-day joy of Southern Hospitality in the form of a sweet young woman wishing me a happy weekend, and the inspiring entrepreneur spirit in twenty-year old men seeking patents for their new tech businesses in California.

In my head there gradually formed a matrix of United States caricatures and truisms: No one lives in Montana, as I NEVER received calls from area code 406. People from New Jersey are ass-holes, but usually whip smart. People from New York are always in a hurry, no matter what. All old women think the world revolves around them and their needs must be met immediately. Children as young as four can use telephones to call their moms at work, and often do. There are a lot of people getting divorced in this country. There are a lot of lovely immigrants who just want their visas in order. When someone from the East Coast begins their sentence with, “Hey, how you doin’” this is not an invitation to actually respond, they are going to keep talking. Middle-aged men from Texas yell, old men from Texas mumble in hushed, incoherent tones. People from the West Coast don’t take calls after 5pm and are often out of the office for yoga. People on the East coast answer their cell phones until 8pm, and are almost always in the office. What struck me the most was how much I enjoyed the rare call from people in the Pacific North West. They took the time to chat with me and appreciated when I asked them how their day was. People in Jersey would get huffy like I was wasting their time. I also related to the responses of my home town locals. There was no need to pretend that I was used to six feet of snow in the winter, or that I was a construe of buffalo meat. It was a relief to say, “Yeah, it’s still raining, but I love it!” and “Have you tried that vegan restaurant yet?” To take an actual trip around the country and see how these people act in real life will be great when I have the funds. In the meantime, I learned I’m an Oregonian and a Portlander by conscious choice, not just birth. This is where I feel impassioned to stake my claim, the venue where I can vocalize my citizen concerns to like-minded individuals. I realized how much I value state’s rights. Americans are all so unique that its impossible to group us all together and get us to vote alike. This isn’t to say I’m pro “States Rights” as defined by radical conservatives or Tea Partiers. I’m just happy that I don’t get calls from Romney for President on my cell phone like people in the Red states do.

A brief dialog between my mother and myself, regarding a photograph of her grandmother she was reproducing.

Mom: At first I felt guilty for not being true to the way it really was. But it's not there, I have to make it up!"

Me: Omg mom it's crazy to me how you say things that fit so perfectly into my writing. I write creative non fiction because so much of our history is lost. We fill in the blanks and try as best we can to tell what we think would have happened, but we can't know. It's important that we try.

A decent amount of time has now passed since Coca-Cola's "America The Beautiful" commercial controversy began, but I have yet to see anyone discuss the issues surrounding the young Native American girl singing the patriotic song in her indigenous language. Do we really feel comfortable with this? 

As a native myself, I am always extremely critical of they way Native Americans are portrayed (and agree to be portrayed) in pop culture. Upon seeing this commercial I had to ask myself, "Do I feel comfortable with this? Is this a positive and progressive image of what it means to be a Native American today?" I answered no to both portions of the question. Here is why:

First and foremost, there is the issue of endorsing a product that contributes in a huge way to the diabetes epidemic. Native Americans today are descendants of people who subsisted on hunter-gatherer diets. Our bodies evolved store every little bit of fat and sugar we consume. The modern American diet of processed foods and sugar loaded sodas such as Coke have therefore lead to a diabetes epidemic for our population that is even worse than what the regular American faces. We should not be supporting this kind of unhealthy consumption, especially for our people who are extra susceptible to it's deadly side effects. 

I also feel is was exploitative to ask a young girl to take on the task of portraying the modern Native American in a national ad campaign. I can't help but feel that she was unable to think critically about the implications of her actions, and that the people at Coca-Cola probably knew this. A young girl is easy to win over with the promise of being projected into nearly every American home and business. Don't get me wrong, I do believe she thought she was doing a good thing. But I cannot agree that asking our elders to translate a song glorifying the United States into an indigenous language is a good thing. I am not sure why they agreed to do it. In these tough financial times, I am sure that a mega corporation such as Coca-Cola had a rather predictable means of persuasion.

Let's discuss the specific native language that was chosen for this ad, Keres. Keres is a language of the Peublo people of the Southwestern United States. While most indigenous languages have been lost due to the dismemberment of tribes, Keres has remained strong. This is a direct result of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.

While their independence from the Spaniards was short-lived, the Pueblo Revolt gained the Pueblo Indians a measure of freedom from future Spanish efforts to eradicate their culture and religion following the     conquest. Gutierrez, p. 146

The only reason Keres is still around today is because the Pueblo people fought against the takeover of their land 334 years ago. How then, can they use that mother tongue to sing the praises of the very nation who did eventually overtake them? 

Finally, I must point out that many Native American's do not live in America. Those of us whose tribes have retained large enough numbers have fought to remain sovereign nations. Why would we want to sing about America when we do not live in it? Most infuriating of all, the mash-up video equates Native Americans with immigrants who have been welcomed into this country. No, I do not take issue with America accepting new citizens from foreign countries. Quite the opposite, in fact. But too see the original inhabitants of this land equated with immigrants… well I don't quite have the words to describe how disrespectful that feels. Coca-Cola, you do not need to work to convince us Indians that we are welcome here. This is our land, and you should feel fortunate that we have always welcomed others to it.