The D.C. Series |
The following interview is part of a series The 90% ran about the experiences of Natives living in Washington, D.C. during and following the election of Donald Trump.
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Jenna Thomas (Oneida) was born and raised in the Northern Virginia area. After leaving to attend college on the west coast, she returned to DC on an internship program and, in her words, “sort of fell in love with my city all over again and the opportunity here. You just sort of feel it in the atmosphere. There was kind of this young hope and all this promise of real change that I could make.” After transferring to a college in the DC area, Jenna became actively involved in the service community and the Native students association. She is currently completing her doctorate.
This interview took place in 2017.
*Note -- Jenna Thomas is a pseudonym to protect the interviewee's anonymity.*
This interview took place in 2017.
*Note -- Jenna Thomas is a pseudonym to protect the interviewee's anonymity.*
The 90%: Since you moved back to DC, what have noticed about the Native community? What their thoughts were during the campaigns and the election and now the inauguration?
Jenna Thomas: [My college] is a very politically active university as you can imagine being in the heart of the city, a few blocks from the White House. There was a lot of conversation around specific issues, but I didn't perceive it to be hostile. It was very productive, and I think people were just excited that we were transitioning. Go talk to any student that really, really supported the Obama administration — I think people saw what we thought would be the new administration as this promise since it could have been the first time a woman was president. It was a very exciting time to be a student.
In terms of the Native community, in the early stages a lot of us were excited about what a female presidency could mean for our community. I think especially us women, we were excited about job opportunities that might come to light and sort of this idea of having a role model that would maybe be able to have even more doors opened for us.
I remember when the election results came out and it’s something that I’ll never forget. The day after, I came into work and was looking around the office for my boss. I was still reeling from what had happened and couldn’t find the words to express what I wanted to express. I remember she came into my office in the back corner of the building and she just broke down in tears. It was a very surreal moment for me to see my boss (who is so many years my senior and who I’ve always looked at as this very strong, put-together woman — nothing can break her) in tears. She said, ‘I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s going to happen to our students.’ That was something that, even though I knew it was real, it brought it home even more for me. As a Native woman, as a minority woman, what’s going to happen to me?
It was sort of this sense of fear that I had never felt before. Growing up, I've been subject to everything under the sun. People have always made little microaggressions, asked me where I'm from (and been very confused when I tell them). They've asked if I'm a "Native princess like Pocahontas" or if I "live in a teepee." I've witnessed adults perform "whooping noises" in imitation of what they believed to be "real Indians." These experiences became so commonplace that I began to give the same, repetitive rebuttals, eventually settling for an uncomfortable silence or changing the topic of conversation. I’m not excusing their behavior and saying that it’s right, but it’s something that unfortunately I’ve sort of grown used to.
I grew up below the Mason-Dixon line, but the days immediately after the election were the first time in my life that I actually felt afraid to be who I was. I’m going to a pretty liberal university in the nation’s capital and I felt afraid to be walking around on the street on my way to class and afraid to be on the Metro and afraid to raise my hand in class because I wasn’t sure if my professors harbored that same hatred and discrimination. Last fall was a scary time.
But I will say, the beautiful thing about what happened afterward is the Native community, the various multicultural groups on the campus, and the University itself really rallied together after that. Seeing my generation and my peers sort of say, ‘Ok, this is where we’re at. This is what the Administration is. He’s President. What positive things can we do in response to this? How can we take this hate, this misunderstanding, these discriminatory policies, all of this, how can we as young people flip the script and do good in this world given what’s going on?’
The community just came together. At [my college], the students did a walk-out of class and marched in protest in the streets to the White House. All around campus, safe spaces began to surface where people could just come and express any feelings or talk about things. There was this feeling of community and togetherness. I’m not going to say that everyone [here] is a Democrat or feels a certain way, because there are definitely people from all walks at any university, but I will say that I feel like the entire [college] community rallied together and took the hurt that they were feeling, the pain that they were feeling, this sense of loss, almost like all the progress that we’ve made in history is now sort of — what it felt like to me was that it was coming to an end or that we were moving backwards. They took all of that and in a constructive way, they sort of transformed that into art, into social justice, into advocacy, and I think that’s one of the most beautiful things you can do when you’re put into a situation like this. It gives me so much hope. For however long this situation lasts, I know that my peers and my generation, we still have a lot to give. We still can do the things we’ve set out to do. We can still achieve our dreams and do all of that while enacting positive social change.
The 90% What about the first few weeks of executive orders and the beginnings of some federal policy changes? What are your thoughts as someone who has been closely affiliated with policy work for a long time about what the first few weeks of the administration mean?
JT: That’s really tough. It’s definitely been hard for me. When you have someone running for president, they say they’re going to do a lot of things. Sometimes they do it and sometimes they don’t. The first few weeks of the Administration, it almost was like, ‘This is a dream. This can’t be real.’ What’s been very scary and very concerning for me especially is the impact of the travel bans. There have been students who have written about this very eloquently, and I don’t know how they had the courage to share their stories and I’m very grateful that they did. There was a story that was circulating about a student who was from Iran and had just gotten accepted to graduate school at [my school]. He was about to go to the airport and was twelve hours away from taking his flight when he got an email from the airline saying, ‘You can’t travel to the U.S.’ He had spent thousands of dollars on GRE prep, on English classes, and now because of the current situation he is being sent to his country’s military and his dreams of graduate school, at least for the foreseeable future, are over.
There’s another story about a young woman who is twenty years old and halfway through her college career at [my college], has spent more than $150,000 of her family’s money to come to this university, and people have reached out to her to basically tell her that she has to return to — well, she’s from Syria but they’re saying she can’t even go back to Syria. She’s now being sent to Turkey. She has to leave immediately and she can’t even finish the semester. It’s so disheartening to know that. My peers, they’re all young promising individuals with so much to give, it’s just so heart-breaking that they can’t finish their education because of this new policy that’s come out. You hear policy coming out, you hear rumors or you see something on TV, but it always makes it real when it’s someone in your community that’s affected by these issues. Things have become a lot more real as I’ve heard these stories of students that I probably sit next to in class who in a week or so might not be there. That chair might be empty. And for what? It’s very upsetting, and it’s hurt a lot.
It’s been overwhelming because there’s a lot that’s been happening. It’s not like, oh one thing happened this week, and then you have a month break and then another thing happens. It’s been everyday that you see something on the news. Every day. It’s hard, too, because there are so many different issue areas that it’s like, where do I focus my attention as a young person? I feel very strongly as an Indigenous individual about the pipeline, and then there’s the education side with students being pulled from their universities and sent back or sent away. I feel strongly about that, too. As a young person, where do you direct your attention? What do you do? It almost seems like there is a continuing pattern of human and civil rights violations. I know that’s personally what I’m struggling with, and I know my peers are struggling with it. We want to do something, but how do we positively direct our attention? Where should we focus first when there’s so much going on? You feel kind of caught in a tornado and you don’t know when the storm will be over, when you can come out, when you can actually surface and do something.
The 90%: I think a lot of us are feeling that way, feeling that this is an onslaught and we don’t know what to do. What do you do as a DC resident when you don’t have a voting representative in Congress? Who can you reach out to advocate on your behalf?
JT: That’s the trouble. I do technically have Virginia residency, so I’ve been able to reach out to my representatives, but I do know students who have gotten DC residency. A lot of college students off the top of their heads might not know who their representatives are, might not even know what their representatives stand for, and they don’t even know if the people who represent them are fighting on behalf of them or if they’re contributing to this growing problem. One of the cool things that I’ve seen on Facebook are people posting statuses and saying like, ‘If you live in this part of this district, this is your representative and this is the phone number’ with a sample script of what you can say if you want to call and leave a message or whatever. That’s been really helpful when it’s hard to know what specifically I can do. Having people direct those resources through social media, I now know who to contact. If I don't have the words to say, having that sample script posted on the status on Facebook is absolutely wonderful and takes the pressure off of ‘Do I have to come up with this five paragraph eloquent essay about the way that I feel?’ When sometimes I don’t even know how I’m feeling right now myself, having someone have that sample script of ‘This is what I care about,’ or ‘This is what I feel is wrong’ is so helpful. It’s been so encouraging to see that on social media.
I've also been trying to contact different organizations in DC. The cool thing about DC is you have a lot of headquarters for different organizations like the ACLU that you can reach out to them and see if they have any projects or any initiatives that they’re currently working on that you can be a part of. That’s been very helpful in directing that energy in a positive way. Do they have people helping to organize a protest in DC? Using your right to protest to speak out against what's going on, that’s becoming way more common than I think it ever was before. Are they organizing gatherings? Some organizations are even having safe space conversation things where you can come and share your feelings with other members of the DC community and that's been really cool, too. If you didn't know to look for it, you wouldn’t have found it sometimes, and so when I find a resource or an organization that has something going on, I share that with my friends. It takes you from feeling powerless to powerful, and you feel like, ‘Ok, so I’m not the president of the United States, maybe I’m not an elected official, but here’s how I can contribute.’
I think if, especially young people now, if they take that mindset of not defeated and not ‘There’s nothing I can do because I’m just one person,’ if they instead take that attitude of ‘There’s always something I can do, no matter how small,’ I think we’ll start to see more. It’s going to take a long time, but I think in the coming weeks and months, I certainly hope for years to come, we’ll start to move onward and upward together as a nation. As communities, we’ll start to hopefully become a lot better for every person in this country.
There’s a lot going on, but I think if you can find something small you can do, you never know where that will lead you. When I first started to intern, I thought to myself, ‘Well, it’s an internship, I’m just getting this basic experience.’ But when I became invested in my work and grew to truly care about the organizations I was working for and the projects I was working on, I started to see how the work I provided for my supervisors contributed to the bigger picture, to important change across our communities and our nation.
When you open the conversation and start to talk about these issues with others, then they start to think about these issues more and even care more about these issues. That creates this ripple effect in people. As with everything, there’s going to be some people who, no matter what you do, are set in their ways with a certain fixed mindset. They’re not going to be receptive to change or learning new things, but I think it would be remiss of me to write those people off and not try to reach them.
The 90%: I’m so excited to post this. There’s so much hope in what you’re saying, and that’s so exciting. I think a lot of us maybe outside of DC are just feeling like there is not a lot of inspiration or hope on the horizon. I think this is going to be really important for people to hear and read. Are there any remaining thoughts that you want to share?
JT: It all comes down to the message I’ve been trying to send of thinking of yourself as powerful instead of powerless. Even on some level if reaching out to a representative or getting involved politically is too daunting or too much, one thing that I’ve found that people feel like they can do is service — serving your fellow humans, serving alongside your community, and bringing positivity into the world that way. When you start doing service, you start caring more about these issues, and you find a connection somewhere with what’s going on with policy, what’s going on with the country, and what’s going on internationally. It’s a good place to start.
Also, self-care. As much as we take care of other people, especially now more than ever, you have to remember to take care of yourself. There’s a lot going on and it can be very easy to get bogged down by things you see on social media. It can also be easy to fall into a negative mindset, casting your anger and frustration outward on people who don't deserve it. Sometimes taking a step back from all of that can be productive in its own way. It's important to stay informed, but equally important to do that in a healthy way.
Things are different and I’m sure people that are working on the hill or at federal agencies who are constantly dealing with this new change that might have a different perspective about how it affects their 9-5 and the work that they do, but I was very afraid that DC itself would become a dangerous situation. Obviously, the news will portray things a certain way, and I know they portrayed that one protest that happened on the inauguration day as people breaking windows. Yes, those things did happen, but there were so many peaceful protests that day that the news did not show. My fellow students have pictures and videos of just coming together to peacefully protest. I think that’s encouraging as well. You can still have your voice heard and it doesn’t have to become this absolutely out-of-control chaotic thing. The work that people have done to get their voices heard has been absolutely incredible. The Women’s March was so peaceful, so well done in a way that you could tell that our message was put out there in the universe, and I think that the really incredible thing was so many people coming together over a common cause without violence or anger-fueled retaliation.
As a Native woman, as someone that identifies as coming from a minority community, I know some members of minority communities didn't feel like their voices were completely heard in that space. Identities are so tough — I identify as a woman but I also identify as African-American and Native and Hispanic because of where I come from, and when those identities intermesh sometimes it’s almost like, ‘Which one do I choose today?’ Coming from multiple identities can be really complicated, but I’d like to see more work done in the future with that, making sure that all voices are heard, all people can speak their mind, and we can deal with the complexities together. I’m sure there’s more than one person, more than just me that feels this way, of having to wear multiple hats all the time. Dealing with that complexity of multiple identities and sort of feeling like, hopefully we’ll get to a point where if somebody asks me a question like ‘Well what’s it like to be a Native person now?’ I won’t feel like I have to speak on behalf of every Native individual who ever lived. That’s what they expect me to say. I’m hoping our nation, our country, our communities get to a point where we can understand each other and we can learn more about each other and it’s not this antagonistic situation. It’s not this pressure situation where, like some people told me, ‘Just pick one.’ I’m a complex individual just like anybody else is a complex individual, and I identify with a lot of things. I’m hoping that when we do that, that we can take our nation to a different level, to a different place, and I think the way to do that is to come together as communities, build those bridges. If there’s a person that’s different from you, reach out, have those conversations, invite them to coffee, try to understand them, share experiences about yourself. The more we build relationships with our fellow humans and the more that we serve our fellow humans, eventually hopefully, and I really hope so, our nation will be where we want it to be.
Jenna Thomas: [My college] is a very politically active university as you can imagine being in the heart of the city, a few blocks from the White House. There was a lot of conversation around specific issues, but I didn't perceive it to be hostile. It was very productive, and I think people were just excited that we were transitioning. Go talk to any student that really, really supported the Obama administration — I think people saw what we thought would be the new administration as this promise since it could have been the first time a woman was president. It was a very exciting time to be a student.
In terms of the Native community, in the early stages a lot of us were excited about what a female presidency could mean for our community. I think especially us women, we were excited about job opportunities that might come to light and sort of this idea of having a role model that would maybe be able to have even more doors opened for us.
I remember when the election results came out and it’s something that I’ll never forget. The day after, I came into work and was looking around the office for my boss. I was still reeling from what had happened and couldn’t find the words to express what I wanted to express. I remember she came into my office in the back corner of the building and she just broke down in tears. It was a very surreal moment for me to see my boss (who is so many years my senior and who I’ve always looked at as this very strong, put-together woman — nothing can break her) in tears. She said, ‘I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s going to happen to our students.’ That was something that, even though I knew it was real, it brought it home even more for me. As a Native woman, as a minority woman, what’s going to happen to me?
It was sort of this sense of fear that I had never felt before. Growing up, I've been subject to everything under the sun. People have always made little microaggressions, asked me where I'm from (and been very confused when I tell them). They've asked if I'm a "Native princess like Pocahontas" or if I "live in a teepee." I've witnessed adults perform "whooping noises" in imitation of what they believed to be "real Indians." These experiences became so commonplace that I began to give the same, repetitive rebuttals, eventually settling for an uncomfortable silence or changing the topic of conversation. I’m not excusing their behavior and saying that it’s right, but it’s something that unfortunately I’ve sort of grown used to.
I grew up below the Mason-Dixon line, but the days immediately after the election were the first time in my life that I actually felt afraid to be who I was. I’m going to a pretty liberal university in the nation’s capital and I felt afraid to be walking around on the street on my way to class and afraid to be on the Metro and afraid to raise my hand in class because I wasn’t sure if my professors harbored that same hatred and discrimination. Last fall was a scary time.
But I will say, the beautiful thing about what happened afterward is the Native community, the various multicultural groups on the campus, and the University itself really rallied together after that. Seeing my generation and my peers sort of say, ‘Ok, this is where we’re at. This is what the Administration is. He’s President. What positive things can we do in response to this? How can we take this hate, this misunderstanding, these discriminatory policies, all of this, how can we as young people flip the script and do good in this world given what’s going on?’
The community just came together. At [my college], the students did a walk-out of class and marched in protest in the streets to the White House. All around campus, safe spaces began to surface where people could just come and express any feelings or talk about things. There was this feeling of community and togetherness. I’m not going to say that everyone [here] is a Democrat or feels a certain way, because there are definitely people from all walks at any university, but I will say that I feel like the entire [college] community rallied together and took the hurt that they were feeling, the pain that they were feeling, this sense of loss, almost like all the progress that we’ve made in history is now sort of — what it felt like to me was that it was coming to an end or that we were moving backwards. They took all of that and in a constructive way, they sort of transformed that into art, into social justice, into advocacy, and I think that’s one of the most beautiful things you can do when you’re put into a situation like this. It gives me so much hope. For however long this situation lasts, I know that my peers and my generation, we still have a lot to give. We still can do the things we’ve set out to do. We can still achieve our dreams and do all of that while enacting positive social change.
The 90% What about the first few weeks of executive orders and the beginnings of some federal policy changes? What are your thoughts as someone who has been closely affiliated with policy work for a long time about what the first few weeks of the administration mean?
JT: That’s really tough. It’s definitely been hard for me. When you have someone running for president, they say they’re going to do a lot of things. Sometimes they do it and sometimes they don’t. The first few weeks of the Administration, it almost was like, ‘This is a dream. This can’t be real.’ What’s been very scary and very concerning for me especially is the impact of the travel bans. There have been students who have written about this very eloquently, and I don’t know how they had the courage to share their stories and I’m very grateful that they did. There was a story that was circulating about a student who was from Iran and had just gotten accepted to graduate school at [my school]. He was about to go to the airport and was twelve hours away from taking his flight when he got an email from the airline saying, ‘You can’t travel to the U.S.’ He had spent thousands of dollars on GRE prep, on English classes, and now because of the current situation he is being sent to his country’s military and his dreams of graduate school, at least for the foreseeable future, are over.
There’s another story about a young woman who is twenty years old and halfway through her college career at [my college], has spent more than $150,000 of her family’s money to come to this university, and people have reached out to her to basically tell her that she has to return to — well, she’s from Syria but they’re saying she can’t even go back to Syria. She’s now being sent to Turkey. She has to leave immediately and she can’t even finish the semester. It’s so disheartening to know that. My peers, they’re all young promising individuals with so much to give, it’s just so heart-breaking that they can’t finish their education because of this new policy that’s come out. You hear policy coming out, you hear rumors or you see something on TV, but it always makes it real when it’s someone in your community that’s affected by these issues. Things have become a lot more real as I’ve heard these stories of students that I probably sit next to in class who in a week or so might not be there. That chair might be empty. And for what? It’s very upsetting, and it’s hurt a lot.
It’s been overwhelming because there’s a lot that’s been happening. It’s not like, oh one thing happened this week, and then you have a month break and then another thing happens. It’s been everyday that you see something on the news. Every day. It’s hard, too, because there are so many different issue areas that it’s like, where do I focus my attention as a young person? I feel very strongly as an Indigenous individual about the pipeline, and then there’s the education side with students being pulled from their universities and sent back or sent away. I feel strongly about that, too. As a young person, where do you direct your attention? What do you do? It almost seems like there is a continuing pattern of human and civil rights violations. I know that’s personally what I’m struggling with, and I know my peers are struggling with it. We want to do something, but how do we positively direct our attention? Where should we focus first when there’s so much going on? You feel kind of caught in a tornado and you don’t know when the storm will be over, when you can come out, when you can actually surface and do something.
The 90%: I think a lot of us are feeling that way, feeling that this is an onslaught and we don’t know what to do. What do you do as a DC resident when you don’t have a voting representative in Congress? Who can you reach out to advocate on your behalf?
JT: That’s the trouble. I do technically have Virginia residency, so I’ve been able to reach out to my representatives, but I do know students who have gotten DC residency. A lot of college students off the top of their heads might not know who their representatives are, might not even know what their representatives stand for, and they don’t even know if the people who represent them are fighting on behalf of them or if they’re contributing to this growing problem. One of the cool things that I’ve seen on Facebook are people posting statuses and saying like, ‘If you live in this part of this district, this is your representative and this is the phone number’ with a sample script of what you can say if you want to call and leave a message or whatever. That’s been really helpful when it’s hard to know what specifically I can do. Having people direct those resources through social media, I now know who to contact. If I don't have the words to say, having that sample script posted on the status on Facebook is absolutely wonderful and takes the pressure off of ‘Do I have to come up with this five paragraph eloquent essay about the way that I feel?’ When sometimes I don’t even know how I’m feeling right now myself, having someone have that sample script of ‘This is what I care about,’ or ‘This is what I feel is wrong’ is so helpful. It’s been so encouraging to see that on social media.
I've also been trying to contact different organizations in DC. The cool thing about DC is you have a lot of headquarters for different organizations like the ACLU that you can reach out to them and see if they have any projects or any initiatives that they’re currently working on that you can be a part of. That’s been very helpful in directing that energy in a positive way. Do they have people helping to organize a protest in DC? Using your right to protest to speak out against what's going on, that’s becoming way more common than I think it ever was before. Are they organizing gatherings? Some organizations are even having safe space conversation things where you can come and share your feelings with other members of the DC community and that's been really cool, too. If you didn't know to look for it, you wouldn’t have found it sometimes, and so when I find a resource or an organization that has something going on, I share that with my friends. It takes you from feeling powerless to powerful, and you feel like, ‘Ok, so I’m not the president of the United States, maybe I’m not an elected official, but here’s how I can contribute.’
I think if, especially young people now, if they take that mindset of not defeated and not ‘There’s nothing I can do because I’m just one person,’ if they instead take that attitude of ‘There’s always something I can do, no matter how small,’ I think we’ll start to see more. It’s going to take a long time, but I think in the coming weeks and months, I certainly hope for years to come, we’ll start to move onward and upward together as a nation. As communities, we’ll start to hopefully become a lot better for every person in this country.
There’s a lot going on, but I think if you can find something small you can do, you never know where that will lead you. When I first started to intern, I thought to myself, ‘Well, it’s an internship, I’m just getting this basic experience.’ But when I became invested in my work and grew to truly care about the organizations I was working for and the projects I was working on, I started to see how the work I provided for my supervisors contributed to the bigger picture, to important change across our communities and our nation.
When you open the conversation and start to talk about these issues with others, then they start to think about these issues more and even care more about these issues. That creates this ripple effect in people. As with everything, there’s going to be some people who, no matter what you do, are set in their ways with a certain fixed mindset. They’re not going to be receptive to change or learning new things, but I think it would be remiss of me to write those people off and not try to reach them.
The 90%: I’m so excited to post this. There’s so much hope in what you’re saying, and that’s so exciting. I think a lot of us maybe outside of DC are just feeling like there is not a lot of inspiration or hope on the horizon. I think this is going to be really important for people to hear and read. Are there any remaining thoughts that you want to share?
JT: It all comes down to the message I’ve been trying to send of thinking of yourself as powerful instead of powerless. Even on some level if reaching out to a representative or getting involved politically is too daunting or too much, one thing that I’ve found that people feel like they can do is service — serving your fellow humans, serving alongside your community, and bringing positivity into the world that way. When you start doing service, you start caring more about these issues, and you find a connection somewhere with what’s going on with policy, what’s going on with the country, and what’s going on internationally. It’s a good place to start.
Also, self-care. As much as we take care of other people, especially now more than ever, you have to remember to take care of yourself. There’s a lot going on and it can be very easy to get bogged down by things you see on social media. It can also be easy to fall into a negative mindset, casting your anger and frustration outward on people who don't deserve it. Sometimes taking a step back from all of that can be productive in its own way. It's important to stay informed, but equally important to do that in a healthy way.
Things are different and I’m sure people that are working on the hill or at federal agencies who are constantly dealing with this new change that might have a different perspective about how it affects their 9-5 and the work that they do, but I was very afraid that DC itself would become a dangerous situation. Obviously, the news will portray things a certain way, and I know they portrayed that one protest that happened on the inauguration day as people breaking windows. Yes, those things did happen, but there were so many peaceful protests that day that the news did not show. My fellow students have pictures and videos of just coming together to peacefully protest. I think that’s encouraging as well. You can still have your voice heard and it doesn’t have to become this absolutely out-of-control chaotic thing. The work that people have done to get their voices heard has been absolutely incredible. The Women’s March was so peaceful, so well done in a way that you could tell that our message was put out there in the universe, and I think that the really incredible thing was so many people coming together over a common cause without violence or anger-fueled retaliation.
As a Native woman, as someone that identifies as coming from a minority community, I know some members of minority communities didn't feel like their voices were completely heard in that space. Identities are so tough — I identify as a woman but I also identify as African-American and Native and Hispanic because of where I come from, and when those identities intermesh sometimes it’s almost like, ‘Which one do I choose today?’ Coming from multiple identities can be really complicated, but I’d like to see more work done in the future with that, making sure that all voices are heard, all people can speak their mind, and we can deal with the complexities together. I’m sure there’s more than one person, more than just me that feels this way, of having to wear multiple hats all the time. Dealing with that complexity of multiple identities and sort of feeling like, hopefully we’ll get to a point where if somebody asks me a question like ‘Well what’s it like to be a Native person now?’ I won’t feel like I have to speak on behalf of every Native individual who ever lived. That’s what they expect me to say. I’m hoping our nation, our country, our communities get to a point where we can understand each other and we can learn more about each other and it’s not this antagonistic situation. It’s not this pressure situation where, like some people told me, ‘Just pick one.’ I’m a complex individual just like anybody else is a complex individual, and I identify with a lot of things. I’m hoping that when we do that, that we can take our nation to a different level, to a different place, and I think the way to do that is to come together as communities, build those bridges. If there’s a person that’s different from you, reach out, have those conversations, invite them to coffee, try to understand them, share experiences about yourself. The more we build relationships with our fellow humans and the more that we serve our fellow humans, eventually hopefully, and I really hope so, our nation will be where we want it to be.