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In my life I have maintained a part of my identity by doing what I love and knowing what matters to me. I started dancing when I was very little, only taking one ballet class a week and by the time I was in 4th grade it was boring to me, it had so many rules, and I didn’t want to do it anymore. So I stopped, I don’t really remember what I did in the time I wasn’t dancing because now I usually don’t go more than two days without a class but I must’ve been bored because I started watching people dancing online. Like Orvil learning how to do Native dances, I would spend time watching people online talking about how to perform different moves. I really missed dance. I missed watching the older girls be able to do anything, I miss laughing with my friends backstage, I just missed being able to dance. So I decided to start taking dance classes again, and after I started I couldn’t stop, I just kept taking more and more classes and now I’ve completed many goals I wouldn’t have been able to without dance.

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“She’d gone all the way to Oklahoma to find out where she came from and all she’d gotten for it was a color for a name.” (237) 

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“She’d gone all the way to Oklahoma to find out where she came from and all she’d gotten for it was a color for a name.” (237) 

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“Because while my hair is dark and my skin is brown, when I look in the mirror I see myself inside out. And inside I feel as white as the long white pill-shaped throw pillow my mom always made me keep on my bed even though I never used it.” (198)

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“Because while my hair is dark and my skin is brown, when I look in the mirror I see myself inside out. And inside I feel as white as the long white pill-shaped throw pillow my mom always made me keep on my bed even though I never used it.” (198)

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Blue feels disconnected with her Native identity because of being raised in a privileged white family. As she goes through life, she still has a sense of her Native culture and everyone can see that she is Native but she still doesn’t have the same experiences. She tried to force a certain type of Native Identity onto herself but it didn’t fit, in reality her true native Identity mixes her two worlds together

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Modern Native Identity                                                                                                                                         

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Modern Native Identity                                                                                                                                         

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“One time she used the word devastating after I finished reading a passage from her favorite author—Louise Erdrich. It was something about how life will break you. That’s the reason we're here, and to go sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples fall around you, wasting all that sweetness. I didn’t know what it meant then and she saw that I didn’t. She didn’t explain it either. But we read the passage, that whole book, another time, and I got it.” (21) 

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“One time she used the word devastating after I finished reading a passage from her favorite author—Louise Erdrich. It was something about how life will break you. That’s the reason we're here, and to go sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples fall around you, wasting all that sweetness. I didn’t know what it meant then and she saw that I didn’t. She didn’t explain it either. But we read the passage, that whole book, another time, and I got it.” (21) 

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“Tony’s just an Indian dressed like an Indian on the train for no apparent reason. But people love to see the pretty history.” (234)

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“Tony’s just an Indian dressed like an Indian on the train for no apparent reason. But people love to see the pretty history.” (234)

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Tony has grown up around his grandmother Maxine, who was the one who exposed him to Native history and authors, but his Identity comes from his understanding of what it all means, it’s not spoon fed to him, he has to think and develop his own understandings. He understands the real history and understands that others just look at it as “pretty history”. He understands how to make it his own and truly reclaim his Native identity

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“Which is to say I graduated with my masters in comparative literature with a focus on Native American literature.”  (65)

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“Which is to say I graduated with my masters in comparative literature with a focus on Native American literature.”  (65)

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“But this means more than a job for Edwin at this point. This is a new life.”(243)

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“But this means more than a job for Edwin at this point. This is a new life.”(243)

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Edwin has made his whole career and what he studies all related to Native culture. He maintains these native ways by practicing and learning them everyday. Edwin shows that he wants to be closer to the Native culture so he can be closer to his father.