I’m already uncomfortable, even with the name I’ve just given this essay. What is America? Where is America? The Americas refer to a continent but the name of the country I was born in is called The United States of America. But really, this is all stolen Indigenous land, a place once called Turtle Island, or Abya Yala, meaning ‘mature land’. I use the term Turtle Island as a token of respect to the landmass it refers to, The Americas. For me, the only “true Americans” are the First Nations of this great landmass, but to many of them they would likely refer to themselves first as Cherokee, Lakota, Navajo before saying “American”. Identity, culture and language are deeply individual, even in a singular community or family. The way I self-identify might be different from my cousin.
I am a descendent of the earliest European (French and English specifically) colonizers who came to destroy the great Nations that already existed on this landmass for thousands, and thousands of years. I am a descendent of the Algonquin people, I am a descendent of their children who were born from arranged Indigenous-European marriages. I am a descendent of the Sámi people and of Finnish and Nordic settlers, I am a descendant of those who assimilated and those who resisted. I am descendent of Ashkenazi Jews who hail from Austria and Germany, a descendent of Irish fleeing the famine and colonization. I am a descendent of German and Scottish immigrants. I am an American? I was born here yes, my parents were born here but we do not have rights to this land. This land does not belong to us. We are poor stewards who committed genocide on the people who have always been part of the land, the ones who knew its secrets and its history.
Ethnicity is more than DNA, it is cultural ties to a living community. By that metric maybe more than anything else I am Chinese. My Grandfather moved to China when I was 5 years old and lived there until I was in University. When I was 10 my Grandfather married my nainai, Yuhuan. My Grandmother is from Harbin originally but has been living in Beijing for decades. I have been exposed to Chinese culture for as long as I can remember, on the other side of my family my Aunt Linnea studied Mandarin in college and I was exposed to the language and culture from both sides of my family.
I started studying Mandarin when I was 14 with my Aunt Linnea and my nainai tutoring me during winter and summer vacations. When I was 15 I traveled to China for the first time and explored Beijing for two weeks. I was 20 when I returned to China a second time to visit my Grandparents, and that same year my Aunt Linnea took in a foster baby who was later adopted. That baby, Aida, had a Burmese day care provider who spoke to her almost exclusively in Mandarin. One time at dim sum in Alameda, California I was speaking with a waitress who asked me where I learned to speak Chinese. I rarely refer to my nainai as my Step-Grandmother and I just called her my Grandmother. The waitress assumed I was ethnically mixed and told me that was why I was so beautiful, because of my “Chinese blood”. How do you respond to that kind of a factually-inaccurate compliment?
My brother and I always have to laugh at how people think genetics play out. When we tell people we have a Chinese Grandmother, often the response from the European-American people we are talking to is, “oh, so that’s why you look Chinese”.
I can claim nothing, I can claim everything. I don’t want to take away from identities that I lack lived experiences in, particularly my Indigenous ancestry. I feel an obligation to my ancestors above all else. I want to tell the truth about my ancestors, who they were, where they came from, what languages they spoke, the lives they led, and often for me most importantly-why did they leave?
For me, I am most comfortable describing myself as a descendent of the Sámi, Nordic and Finnish people. To make clear that my ancestors were not all Sámi, and even those that had Sámi roots had often been assimilated to varying degrees. I don’t want to claim something that doesn’t belong to me. I didn’t grow up in Sápmi, or even in Scandinavia, and definitely not in a Sámi village. My first tongue isn’t a Sámi language, or even Swedish or Norwegian. I don’t understand how it is to live with daily racism and colonization that invades every aspect of your life and family. How can I say I am Sámi without these experiences? I don’t think I can, I think my identity in this department needs a qualifier.
I can only do what I believe is morally and ethically correct, so I want to stand up for Indigenous voices and issues and use my voice not to speak to them but to amplify the lived experiences of Indigenous people. I want to be good kin to my distant cousins still living in Sápmi. I want to buy duodji (but not duodji that are specific to a region or a family) from authentic duodjars because that to me, is a material link to my Sámi ancestors. Duodji is not just craft, it is an unbroken chain of traditional knowledge that is passed on generation by generation. It is the Sámi worldview, it is the stories told and the information shared when a circle of people gather together to make duodji.