Children: My children will not live the life I did. They will not see themselves as I see myself. They are different from me. And yet no choice they make can erase who they are or where their roots lie. Teocintle became maize. Maize became corn. But in changing it…

Birth: My son, you were born on the Day of the Dead So that my grandfather might be born anew My great grandmother birthed him on Chichimeca soil without anything to dull her pain Your mother birthed you on Tongva land without anything to dull hers Tell me how your…

Celebrating the Senate’s vote to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, and reflecting on her journey and ascent to become the first Black woman Justice on the US Supreme Court, led me to an essay that I wrote in the Fall of 2004: On corn tortillas and peanut butter ... I…

While I was in graduate school in New England the university’s official newspaper published a column that stated, “The only thing [baseball coach, Dusty] Baker has a Ph.D. in is something that starts with an N and rhymes with Tigger.” I felt that my classmates and the graduate school, writ…

After I graduated from college I became a teacher. It wasn’t long before I realized how little I could help kids in this world they did not create. I stole textbooks from the school district warehouse because the powers that be had just adopted a new curriculum and had yet…

The worst thing you can do as a parent is complain. The judgement is swift and severe. …

Polling of head-to-head matchups today show both Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders beating Donald Trump by the widest margins. But since Michael Dukakis did not beat George HW Bush by 17 points, and Mitt Romney lost the swing states polling said he’d win, and it took seven months to write…

Beginning in November of 2002, then-President George W. Bush and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft began a “Special Registration” program (also known as “Domestic Call-in Registration”) as part of the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS). Despite objections from the ACLU and others; despite documented civil rights violations and the detention/deportation…

The preponderance of articles written regarding Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test while not flattering to her are serving to spotlight Native American voices in “mainstream” spaces. This is a good thing. Historians have added great value to the conversation by pointing out that white supremacists have used claims of Native American…