Dream Wolf
Aug 24, 2017 · 4 min read

Hello there, Native American here, i agree with you, largely. However, i find some issues with your article, albeit comparatively minor ones.

i would like to pass on a story of something that happened to me personally, and caused me a lot of stress, anxiety, and financial trouble.

Now, despite being nearly half Native (my father was almost full blooded Passamaquoddy) my other half is Irish/German. My mother is a tiny, pale-skinned Irish woman. My skin, in the winter and spring, is also fairly pale, however in the summer and fall i take on more of that ‘traditional red tone’.

I went to college, became a nurse. I was approved for a scholarship provided by the University i was set to attend. I worked hard, graduated high school at 17 with a 3.4 GPA, worked every summer to afford my first car so i would have one when i left for the campus.

But when i arrived at the office of admission to finish my paperwork, i was informed (after a 12 hour drive) that they had given my academic scholarship to a ‘more deserving’ student. Now this upset me, but i could also understand that ‘well this other person obviously must have impressed them’. But that was not the case. When they took me aside to talk about another way to pay my tuition (my family was not poor, but could not afford to pay my tuition) they told me they determined i was ‘less financially stressed’ because of ‘ethnic status’. Their words, not mine. When i asked what ‘ethnic status’ was they told me the scholarship was more targeted at ‘minorities who might struggle with tuition costs’.

I ask them how they determined my ‘ethnic status’ and they told me flat out my family was not ‘in the correct demographic’.

I ended up with a student loan that, when i finally do pay it off, i will end up paying $132,567 for 15K a year of tuition, for 4 years. The only other option was to leave (and not get the security deposit for my dorm back because they dont refund it just because they took your scholarship away)

In short, even though i am registered with a tribe, tic the Native/Indigenous American box on all my forms, they judged me, and took the scholarship i worked hard for, because my family was too white.

Now i got my problems with white people. I dont know the ethnicity of the person who got my scholarship.

But to tell someone who spent EVERY DAY of their summers for 4 years (1 summer in middle school, 3 in high school) taking summer classes to graduate early so they could qualify for a certain scholarship that they cant have what you already promised because they arent enough of a minority is wrong. It is Racist. Not reverse racist. Racist.

Even the African, Hispanic/Latino, and Asian friends i had in college were appalled at the way i was treated.

And this kind of thing happened many more times while i was still IN college. When i was told i had to take either Women’s Studies, or African Cultural Heritage classes, but that i would be failed ‘as part of the course’s program’ so that i would ‘gain a closer understanding of the struggles’ of those respective groups.

And i wish i could say i was making this. I do, because i want everyone to be treated equal.

But when the African American professor greets me as ‘Tonto’ and laughs about even after i ask him to stop, because its insulting, thats racism.

When the Hispanic student who shared a dorm room with me, stole my expensive computer i needed for my classes and sold it, and i was told it was my own fault for leaving it in the open (left it on the desk while i used the bathroom) That wrong, on many levels, and then be accused of being racist for calling him out on the theft?

I agree, telling a black person to go back to Africa IS worse than telling a white person to go back to Europe.

But that doesnt excuse black people like my former professor, who told our class that ‘the crimes against slaves in colonial American have no equal’ and then when asked about the crimes against natives said ‘That is neither here nor there, as the Native people could have easily avoided them had they simply curtailed their sense of honor’ from being racist.

Yes, i have had white people call me racial names.

But only a black person ever called me an insulting name, and treated it as a joke. White people who do it, do it to be cruel, i can brush that off easily.

But people who call me ‘Scalper’ like its a joke, or a cute nickname? No. And my professor did this often enough that i dropped his class and ended up having to take an extra 6 months in that college to make up for it, because i couldnt handle the ‘jokes’ about ‘Red Monkeys’ and ‘Chief Wigwam’.

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    Dream Wolf

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