On Roots and Research

“What are you?” ’is a question I’ve been asked by strangers since I was a child. As a little girl, I didn’t know how to answer this question with a simple one-word, one-identity response. And I still don’t. I knew then just as I know now that we were many things. We were American, we were Mexican, we were Filipino and Spanish and Jewish. And on my maternal line, here in Denver I am only a few hundred miles north from where my Picuris Pueblo ancestors lived since the beginning of time. I grew up one of seven children in…