"I am Indian, my family had always told me. For years, however, I let society tell me otherwise.

I lost my Indianness in the chasm separating those two views. And it has taken me much of the past decade to circle back, retracing both my and my ancestors' steps, to rediscover and begin to appreciate its importance.

I am Choctaw and Cherokee, but you would not know it if you saw me; I could easily pass as white. For a good chunk of my adolescence, as I struggled to figure out who I was, that racial ambiguity swallowed me up. I wasn't Indian or white, I thought. I didn't know what I was. And to some extent, I didn't think it mattered.

But it does."

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Seth Prince: merican Native (The Oregonian 2/1)