Because of the money, I believe. My daughter was classified an 1/8th quantum Chippewa. One of her father’s cousins did a TON of genealogy work and demonstrated her grandfather Bill and his 8 siblings were full blooded Chippewa, not half as he was registered (Bill’s dad had a birth certificate listing hims as White,…

This sounds exactly like my history. Thank you for explaining it more eloquently  than I could have.

Indians, horses, and dogs. The three things that are categorized by blood quantum in the US. I’m half Indigenous, with the half coming from two tribes that are referred to as sister tribes. The two tribes speak the same language, have the same traditional foods and dress, we harvest the same wild foods, and our…

Quyanaqpuk for this essay!

My ex-boyfriend went on a family vacation once where he and his sister were forced to share a bed. It made him so uncomfortable that he slept in the opposite direction as her AND on top of the covers. And those were the nights he didn’t just give up and sleep on the floor.

Haha!  My niece did that to me.  My sister was traveling overseas, and she called to see how everyone was.  I said we were all pretty good except that Beth (the 18-month old) didn’t seem to want to eat.  Well, she said, you’re fine as long as she doesn’t throw up.  We hung up, I picked up Beth, and she vomited down my…

We miss you around here!

50 years ago, I was 5, walking down the stairs on Christmas morning and my mom practically screeching “What do you have all over your face?”

Hi there! Glad to see you back!

HI DEER LADY!

Awe, poor kiddo. 

I have a very distinct memory of being carried to the car from my aunt’s holiday party clutching a plastic bag containing the wet undies that I had peed in at the party.

Oh man, I worry about these women staying safe. 

DEEP

True that. Until Bub, it never occurred to me that zombies might have any awareness at all.

My parents always thought it was so cute that I’d tuck all my dolls to sleep at night. They’d find their shoes turned into makeshift beds filled with Barbies. Tissue boxes were emptied in pursuit of tiny blankets. I was just such a loving kid with caretaker instincts. What they did not know was that my older sister…

My great grandmother lived to be 99 years old and she did it by living harder than anyone else in the family. Her house had no indoor plumbing, and she’d haul water from the town reservoir every day. Her toilet was a bench with a hole in it set over a latrine that had been dug underneath the house. And this, dear…

Sharks. I was deathly afraid a shark would get into the pipes and bite me when I was on the toilet, or get into the bathtub. In pools, I would stay near other people, because I thought it’d improve my chances if a shark got in through the water intake or if there was a Bond-type villain keeping a shark in a tank on…

UK television’s uniquely terrifying children’s programmes of the 1970s - not just the obvious things like Doctor Who and Children of the Stones - but the stuff aimed at really young kids.

I remember as kids we’d run full speed towards light switches to turn the lights on before the monsters could catch us. Because monsters disintegrated instantaneously when light hit them. And we had scientific evidence for this. We never saw monsters with the lights on, so obviously our assumptions must be correct.…