i've been hesitant to share this, but here goes nothing...

hearing over the noise and through the silence

my mother told me about my uncle bob. 

robert lee, he fought for the south. 

shh, don't tell. he fought for the south.

our uncle bob.

mom, it's ok. my uncle bob, he was a good man.

no shame for my uncle bob. 

my uncle bob.

my mother told me i was an austrian princess.

a secret austrian princess. 

the civil war cast us out. cast us out of austria.

i am a secret austrian princess. 

my mother told me we were irish. oops. we're scottish.

mcrae is scottish. my grandfather is mcrae. my grandfather's grandfather. 

he's mcrae. i'm kirsten. kirsten is my grandmother's married name.

grandmother kirsten, she's blackfeet. 

grandmother kirsten, doesn't know her son's father. grandfather's father.

grandmother kirsten, she's blackfeet. she's blackfeet...i'm blackfeet?

grandmother kirsten, she's blackfeet.

i'm blackfeet?

they say i'm indian. i'm not indian. i don't know what it means to be indian. 

are you indian? they ask. they all ask. they ask everyday. i never know the answer.

am i indian? i don't know the answer.

if i say yes, am i posing? am i pretending? am i lying?

if i say no, am i withholding? am i suppressing? am i hiding?

my mother says, you're so lucky you know your mom. you know your dad.

you're so lucky, she says, for the family you know, the family you have.

you're so lucky you're american. you're american, american. 

we've been here forever, my mother says. forever, my mother says.

i'm blackfeet?

my mother's mother she speaks again. dakota, she says. dakota. 

my father's grandmother she speaks again. montana, she says. montana.

they say to me, lakota. they say to me blackfeet. my mother says forever. 

who am i?

french, lakota, scottish, irish?, blackfeet, cree? or creek?, austrian, german.

does that make me who i am? am i part of all of these? 

my foot? what part is that? my elbow, what part is that?

no. 

i am not part anything. they are a part of me.

my heart is 100 percent me. i am all colleen. 

even now i can't get the words out. how do i say them? can i say them?

will they come out?

can they ever come out?

i may never know. 

but i know i am me.

i am colleen.

feeling on top of the world

wow. 

the huskies won the championship. vicky and i raced back to the newsroom from mcmahon. it was all a-buzz. a tingling tangible excitement in the air. 

we had to rearrange where to put the content, decided to hold off a news story so the softball story could take the whole front page. 

i. was. pumped.

i. was. scared.

i didn't know what to do. i looked at my mockups for a full front page cover. nothing special. if we got the right photo, we could do it. 

and then christian sent me his headline from oklahoma city: Later, Gators.

at that point, i knew i had to give justice to an incredible headline. i had to give justice to a great story. i had to give justice to that awesome shot. i had to do it all. and i had to do it now.

my palms were sweaty, i felt the adrenaline rushing through my veins, pumping faster and faster, like it was pulsating to the beat of the music blasting in my ears. 

i knew i had it. i saw it in my mind. i let the page dictate what my hands did. 

finally, it was almost done. i let people see it. we printed it out. deliberated. finally, we knew we had it. sending it off to the printers with a certain amount of trepidation, hoping we did it right.

turns out we did. i felt confident about it last night. i e-mailed one of the authors of sportsdesigner.com thanking him for his site and telling him how it inspired me for this paper.

he responded:

Excellent work!

As a UW grad (1994, but never worked at The Daily), I'm very impressed. I think I'll post the page. The hats are a great touch.

i re-read it, not believing what my eyes had told my mind. read it again. and again. now slower this time. and then faster and faster. omg. omg omg!!

not believing what luck i had fallen into, i quickly went to the site. it seemed to take FOREVER to load. and then...

it was like my heart stopped. and then started pumping so hard i thought my sleeping family would be able to hear it. i gave an audible YELP of excitement. i heard movement upstairs, should i go wake them?? tell them the amazing news????

my hands shook. i posted the link on facebook, still high on the adrenaline. wow.

feeling on top of the world.

probably the highest i've felt all year. :D

fast as molasses

for the first time in my life, i spilled molasses. and it ran all over the place. 

yup. you heard me. or rather, read that right. the molasses went everywhere. 

i opened the van door to get the rest of my belongings from moving out of my apartment when i hear the THUNKRASH of a glass jar breaking. it was my molasses — a recent favorite of mine when baking bran muffins — and the driveway meeting in a crash landing. it was SOOOOO hot out that the molasses immediately ran everywhere. i stood there staring at it in wonderment. wow, i thought, that sure is going fast. 

crazy how in this heat, molasses runs fast, and people run slow. i've been feeling as if i have been moving through molasses the last few days. but now that i've actually seen how molasses can move, maybe i've been moving like molasses running through people? 

funny how this heat has just turned everything topsy-turvy. the newsroom is super hot. we're all walking around in our tanks and shorts and sandals when just a couple weeks ago, you couldn't walk home w/o a jacket. 

yup. i measure my life through the daily. and as i sit here now, i think to myself how fast the daily has passed by me. it's like molasses, thick or thin, it keeps going, and sometimes it will surprise you how fast it can actually go.

in the next few days i'll post a shout out to my time here as design chief, putting that job to rest and welcoming next year as the managing editor.

the angry indian

i was listening to native america calling today and something they spoke about really got me thinking. they were talking about "when do you feel most native." and the point was made that many times, the indian only comes out around non-natives when you get angry about something offensive someone said. 

i realized that i have become an angry indian. i only talk about native issues/topics when someone plays devil's advocate or ask a question that i feel needs a lengthy — and often times bitter — answer. i never get to talk happy about my experiences. people don't want to hear that.

i've had so many positive experiences through this journey. one of which is reconnecting with my blackfeet roots (and pretty damn sure about those lakota roots too). i had an amazing experience about a month ago i've been timid to share with people because i feel they may judge me for it. and i almost don't want to share it because maybe it will make it less special.

but in order to make an effort to not be an "angry indian," i'm going to share it here. 

i was invited to sweat with my t.a. who has opened my eyes wider than i thought they could go. so wide i think i can see things in the back of my head. it makes me know things i didn't know i could know before. like the fact that i need a hairbrush since i can see all the way to the back of my head now. she saw my eyes opening and the pain and hurt and confusion and saw that i was lost. she said, come to sweat lodge. so i came. 

i'd sweat before, once, last summer. it was done by lulu. she led it in a lakota tradition, she is creek. it was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. i felt blessed to have been a part of it. so i jumped at the opportunity to sweat again. 

it was the same. it was different. it was done in the blackfeet manner. even now i smell the sweetgrass. and i am overwhelmed with a calm on my chest. 

dark, hot sticky. you're nowhere and everywhere at the same time. you are completely out of your body but much too aware of the heat and wet of your skin. you move and you feel your skin. you feel all your skin. you hold up your head with a limp arm. you pray. you sing. you feel your voice coming from the very tips of your toes. it surges through your body, keeping you there; keeps you from completely going away. people say they need a hot shower so they can just cry. just crying in their hot shower. this is that. and so much better. so so so much better. you are in your mother's womb. the ground is holding you up. it's the only thing holding you up. then the songs speak to you. i feel the song in my chest. it hits my heart. hits at it and hits at it and hits at it. finally the shell breaks, like a dam, and all the water of emotion come pouring through my skin, my eyes. i feel the escape as i cry out. i sob. i can't understand it. i just feel it. i rock my body back and forth. cradling my spirit. soothing my soul like the precious babe it is, vulnerable and scared. i feel completely alone. i let myself cry out. i let the sobs come. and then i am not alone. i am surrounded by women who are supporting me as the ground supports me. without words. i feel their support. the door is open and i breathe in the clean air. for the first time in a very very long time i feel as if i can breathe. my lungs gulp in the clean cool air, bringing me back to my body. bringing me back to now. i fill up with the clean air. all the dark air is out. clean air in. i breathe. i breathe. sobs keep coming, forcing out the hurt the pain the dark. each new breathe i take is a new light. i grab my chest only to find the heaviness gone. i feel i have come home after a long trip away. i know i am right where i am supposed to be. 

i find out later the song that broke my heart's shell was blackfeet. it was a song to call them home. but i already knew that. i knew that already. 

after the sweat is done, i walk outside. i look around. there's a car that drives by. it's light almost blinds me. i call my name. i call it again. the word is heavy on my tongue. colleen. me. mine. colleen. coll een. i breathe. a heavy breath. i'm coming home. returning to my body. i was gone. i try to return. 

my face feels free. my chest is open. i was unable to call myself back all the way. i eat the sweet pineapple and i feel the juice run down my wrists, my arms. the sweetness brings me back a bit more. i go home. i go to work, too soon. i still have my open chest. it gets stuffed with not things i want to be in there. but karen took care of me. but that's another story.

i am thankful for the song. i am thankful for the prayer. i know now why i have always felt this pull to montana. it's my home. i need to go back. it's calling me back. the songs, the smells, the prayers. i want to feel the happiness of the bond that i'm lacking. 

if i feel it, maybe i won't just be an angry indian. maybe i'll just be indian.

what year are we in? weird, i thought it was 2009...guess not.

7-year-old gets unwanted haircut

this is just outrageous. clearly there's still a lot of change that has to occur. the story speaks for itself. if i'm feeling like it, maybe i'll leave my thoughts later. can't right now. too angry.

other things to complain about

oh this job. oh how this job has taken its toll on me. first, glasses. and NOW i have this huge bruise on my pisiform, as well as a callus there, too. it hurts. i'm getting beat. and i'm getting beat bad. there is bleeding occurring under my skin. this sucks.

and let's not even get into how it affects me mentally! unfortunately i can't capture that on a photo...

what most non-natives know about tribal government

as i am both very interested in native issues as well as journalism, a few people have mentioned mark trahant's name to me, as he is a native journalist. then i was asked if i'd seen the video where president bush attempts to explain sovereign nations in the 21st century. 

if nothing else, this just goes to show HOW MUCH people — and not just your average, out-of-the-political-loop joe — actually don't know about tribal governments.

Watch the video here:

Bush explains it all