I am sitting on the bus (why do people with bizarre ideas about culture always find me on the bus?) and a young man sits down next to me with his girlfriend on his other side. She leans over him, smiling earnestly, and says “Oh, wow, I’ve never seen a blonde Native American before. What’s your Indian name?”
I am too stunned to say anything but “Um.”
Her boyfriend cuts in. “Don’t, baby, that’s rude! It’s like a secret thing.” He looks at me and smiles awkwardly. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “Thank you.”
There are a thousand things wrong with this exchange.
1. Do not assume you know a stranger’s ethnic identity (how the hell can anyone tell I’m Indian, anyway? I’m White-colored).
2. I am not an anthropological exhibit. Please do not reduce me to the level of a curiosity in public.
3. “Indian names” are not “secret”. Where did you even get that? My great-grandmother was born on rez, and her grandmother was a Choctaw slave. I am a Black NDN. She named me Hashininakhapih when she saw me as a child, because I was so round and white and she liked my smile (this is what I’m told). It means, roughly, “salt moon”. So I am Salt Moon. It’s not a secret.
4. Don’t apologize for your girlfriend, baby. That’s rude.
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