Too Many Cherokees to Count

I love reading out spoken American Indian writers. Oglala Lakota Simon Moya-Smith is just the type of writer I am talking about. 

From Mr. Moya-Smith's About Me page:

"I'm a rug lifter; an Oglala Lakota emissary from the planet Indian. I'm a reporter and an answerer of questions: "No, I don't live in a tepee. No, I am not a mascot, and no, you are not Cherokee." I don't receive a dime from casinos. Hardly is there an Indian that does, but that's not the Rumor. If I wasn't living in a world of cigar shop Indians, "Savage" remarks, plastic-rubber bows & arrows and mascots I'd probably smile more. I am Simon. I am Slaps Kevin Costner. I am a First Nation writer. I see the hypocrisies of American society in reference to Indians, and I must comment."

One of my favorites from his Blog ' I AM NOT A MASCOT  STORIES, POEMS & RUMINATIONS BY SIMON MOYA-SMITH' :

Warning: This Post might offend those who suffer from mewannabeanindianitis
  
Ask an Indian: How to Spot American Indian Wannabes and A Counterfeit Culture: Too Many Cherokees to Count
 
Dear Reader,

I literally have nothing against the Cherokee Nation. I can’t say the same for the Wannabe Nation.

The introduction to their story and skit is predictably the same every time I hear it: “I’m a quarter…” or “My great grandma was a Cherokee princess…” It’s an awful, putrid tale for an Indian to be subjected to time and again, like a ripped bag of hot trash flung in your face every other week. You get used to it. …

But before we delve into that topic, unpleasant as it is, it’s only appropriate that we first visit what I’ve dubbed “The Anomaly:”

It seems to me Anglo America is suffering from an insatiable hunger, an evil appetite ... laboring under a fad-riddled, frightening addiction: the mescaline of the new millennium.

But unlike the 1960s and ‘70s, this latest drug-of-choice comes in neither powder nor pill. It’s not cooked, cut or dried under heat lamps in the basement of some obscure middle-American suburban home. It’s not watered, pruned, plucked, baggied or sold by an aging hippie still clinging to a generation long since past. No. This new drug is on a completely different scale all together (no pun intended), and there is no federal fucking task force assigned to regulate its mass production, nor any self-help books or group therapy sessions to alleviate this plaguing epidemic.

Goddamn it, there should be.

In fact, this far-reaching and widely shared drug is not even illegal. If it were, more than 75 percent of the American population would be serving court-appointed community service in snazzy orange, neon traffic vests picking up trash by the roadside and along hybrid mini-, SUV-drenched freeways.

No, this new drug is a desperate stab at curing the doldrums. Anglo America is savagely sauntering about street corners in cookie-cutter, Costco-drenched communities on some far gone jubilant joy trip, completely ignorant to those around them, enjoying their new drug of choice: ethnic culture.

Read more here: Too Many Cherokees to Count

                
Cherokee by Blood, Native American by Birthright ?     That's my 2 cents