Gyasi Ross: Native youth carry on the strength of our people

Honestly, growing up Native is sometimes really hard, because sometimes it seems like not many people understand our ways or sometimes because it seems like there’s only a few of us. Sometimes it seems like our communities are very poor and that there really aren’t any options like in the rest of the world. Those of us who grew up within our communities knows what it’s like to sometimes feel trapped even amongst all the beauty and culture at home.

Those thoughts aren’t wrong and you’re not wrong for thinking them. Please don’t ever think that. Sometimes being Native really is hard! It’s true! But it’s not only hard—it’s so many other things too. Being Native is beautiful, hard, amazing and painful at the same time.

Being Native is complex.

See, being Native is also a privilege, an incredible honor. Being Native literally means that you were one of a few chosen to carry on a way of life and a gene pool that is one of the most resilient in the world! You were chosen. The reason why that is so special is because that way of life and that gene pool were nearly wiped out some time ago; your ancestors, somehow (I honestly have no clue how), were able to forge incredible strength despite seemingly everybody and everything working toward their destruction. Disease, European settlers, Manifest Destiny, greed, stealing Native children, killing food supplies—these were total war tactics that people do when they hate someone and are trying to exterminate those people.

Yet somehow your ancestors made it through. They didn’t always know they were going to survive—in fact, many times they thought that all Indian people were about to die off. Why wouldn’t they? It was a logical conclusion. Yet, despite believing that death was imminent, that destruction was imminent, that all hope was lost and that there was nothing they could do about it…they did something about it. They did anything they could to survive. Anything. They knew if they just stuck around long enough, just survived somehow, things would get greater later.