Being Native

My mother told me when I was a little girl that she was Native American. Her real parents were and she wanted to find them. She never told me directly that I was Native, but I knew that since I was her daughter I could infer my decent. For years I watched her toil with her heritage. We went to reservations and museums. All of her artwork was made on reservations. It was her most prized possession. I do not think that I ever saw her as empassioned by something as when she was searching for her birth parents. 

In her pursuit, she would forget that she had children of her own and that we were part of this struggle with her. I was young then and my mom had already become abusive, but she had moments when she would share the freedom and hope that she gained from connecting with Native culture with us. When I was six, I think a major obstacle came in her way and she became ill. I remember how distraught she was over the thought of her search for her parents ending. She wanted to hire a private investigator. 

Hey mom, we are still here. Hey mom, I don't know if this is you or the drugs but you are hurting me. Hey mom, you are turning my curiousity about you into hate. Hey mom, you are someone else's daughter, but I am yours. 

After I left my mother's care, people could tell I was native because of my skin tone in the summer, my face shape, and my body type. I never owned being Native American. The choas growing up in drugs, abuse, and poverty became the only culture that I was exposed to. 

In college, I tried to connect but I am not native "enough." What is enough? I know I didn't grow up n the reservation and my skin is so light I pass for fully white. That is the Irish half of me washing the Native out. I never wanted it to be washed out-- I didn't even fully grasp what it is. I want to, because I can feel the missing part. Native spiritualiy calls to me. But I am an outsider... forever an outsider. 

Isn't it funny how people can feel sorry for you, but when you grow up without a family on the outside of any community, no one will accept you later.. 

Funny. Today I began reading a book about writing and the writing process. I have realized why I felt stuck in the writing process for the last year. I need to warm myself up before I begin writing. I need to let myself get out the mess and the stress becfore I can say something that is powerful. For some reason, I had become so overcome with a fear of the audience that was reading that I began writing horrible work product. 

The essay that I just wrote may have been the most powerful thing that I have written in the lest six months. Realizing this has been a little frightening, because my friend, I am in law school and I am writing all of the time. This realization means that what I have been writing has been crap, which is evidenced by my journaling for the past year. But yeah know, who is paying attention anyway? Law school is just biting off bits of my soul little by little.. oh well. Oh, and perhaps I should more heavily edit my material because I accidentally handed in a mid-term that did not have a complete sentence, and that one point mark-off means something here. 

Is it okay to turn a blog into a free writing catalog? I actually do not care what the rhetorical answer is because I am going to make it so.

Dear Committee

Thank you for presenting today during the lunch hour about admissions at UW. I am writing because when we were speaking, I felt that there was some tension. I just wanted to clarify my perspective.
As a first generation college student that was able to attend Stanford on through a targeted program, I have thought a lot about inclusion in institutions of higher learning. I am white, but I was also in foster care and my siblings are incarcerated.  I did not think that I was going to attend to law school, because I did not have any reverence for the law. I decided to come to law school the summer before my senior year of college when I advocated for change in the U.S. child welfare system. When I applied, I was not supported through the process and I did not study for the LSAT at all. I think many students that come from diverse backgrounds my struggle to find the time that it takes to prepare for law school admission. Not all people of color come from certain socio-economic backgrounds, but if we look at the spread of wealth in the U.S. it is undeniable that we may need to address issues surrounding poverty and inequality when looking to broaden UW Law's diversity in the classroom. (Especially if UW wants to be a leader in public service law, as well as a leader to finding new ways to engage disparately affected demographics of people in the legal profession).

Before I came to UW Law, I chose to take a gap year to work as a policy coordinator. I worked on issues affecting current and former foster youth. The majority of the youth that I worked with were transition aged (18-24) youth of color. When they came to the Capitol to give testimony they exhibited an initial resistance to government structures and a strong distaste for the police. If I talked to them about their future, many of the youth said that they would never be able to attend law school.

If we are serious about making UW a more diverse place we need to address support issues in recruitment and retention. We need to reach out to communities to see what they want to learn about the law and perhaps tailor visitation days to teaching around that goal and exposing youth to the legal profession.

Today was a day about reflection. When I engage with black letter law and legal concepts it is really easy to spot where the disconnect often occurs for various racial and ethnic groups, and socio-economic classes of individuals.

I received a phone call from an old place of work to give me an update. After hearing the news, I took to google. Researching is what new and lawyers-in-training do. I researched the name and the news was the first thing that appeared in my search bar. I looked through the other people who were arrested in the "sting." Unsurprisingly, the majority of those arrested were of color, and present in the population were a disproportionate amount of transgender people of color. Sad. Sad. Sad. I have serious doubts about policing practices in the U.S. and this only serves to further solidy my thoughts.

Mondays have a bad reputation. Yesterday didn't help that reputation much. After I had to complete a take-home mid-term over the weekend, I think I was ready to crash. My only evidence is that I was supposed to go to a dinner, so I went home to changing. Before I began to change, I laid down on the floor. Three hours later I got up, and I had missed the dinner.

Judge me. That is a judge-able moment.

I can't wait until tomorrow. Em will be here and I can make her do things to make my life easier for a few days. I am feeling overwhelmed by life right now. My introvert self is being extended in ways that are too exhausting.

In other news, it is looking like I will be taking a visit to the Deep South again this summer. I have two interviews with Federal District Court Judges in Tulsa, OK and Birmingham, AL. The universe is telling me to put my feet to the fire. I talk a lot about social inequality and racial issues. Where better to confront all forms of social oppresssion and socio-economic issues than the Deep South? I have my skirt suit ready. Hopefully, I can maintain some sort of verbal eloquence throughout the interviews. I also need to remember my biggest strength and weakness... I always forget when I am sitting in a chair across from someone I don't know. Maybe the distance of electronis devices will ease that anxiety.

Before I had time to post this blog, I had to send out emails to three of the student groups that I am in. Wow. Maybe that is where I went wrong. I need to reign myself in, or maybe it is too late.