Thinning blood : memoir of family, myth, and identity /
Myers, Leah,
Thinning blood : memoir of family, myth, and identity / Leah Myers. - First edition. - New York, N.Y. : W. W. Norton & Company, [2023] ©2023. - 163 pages : illustrations, geneological table ; 22 cm.
Bear. A legend of the Bear Mother -- Real live Indians -- An annotated guide to anti-Native slurs -- Bear's decision -- Salmon. A legend of Salmon Woman -- Roots -- Skinwalker -- Native enough -- Salmon's memory -- Hummingbird. A legend of Hummingbird -- Portrait of a perfect Native -- A writer who can't read -- Hummingbird's movement -- Raven. A legend of Raven stealing the sunlight -- Unreported violence -- Scalping knife turned scalpel -- A letter to my seventh-generation descendant -- The sound of the end -- Raven's emergence.
"Leah Myers may be the last member of the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe in her family line, due to her tribe's strict blood quantum laws. In this unflinching and intimate memoir, Myers excavates the stories of four generations of women in order to leave a record of her family. Beginning with her great-grandmother, the last full-blooded Native member in their lineage, she connects each woman with her totem to construct her family's totem pole: protective Bear, defiant Salmon, compassionate Hummingbird, and perched on top, Raven. As she pieces together their stories, Myers weaves in tribal folktales, the history of the Native genocide, and Native mythology. Throughout, she tells the larger story of how, as she puts it, her 'culture is being bleached out,' offering sharp vignettes of her own life between White and Native worlds: her naïve childhood love for Pocahontas, her struggles with the Klallam language, the violence she faced at the hands of a close White friend as a teenager....Thinning Blood is at once a bold reclamation of one woman's identity and a searingly honest meditation on heritage, family, and what it means to belong.
1324036702 9781324036708
bl2023016314
Myers, Leah.
Myers, Leah--Family.
Autobiographies.
Clallam Indians--Cultural assimilation--History.
Clallam Indians--Biography.--Washington (State)--Jamestown
Indians of North America--Ethnic identity.
Indians of North America--Folklore.--Washington (State)
Indians of North America--Social conditions.--Washington (State)
Indigenous peoples.
Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe.
E99 .C82 / M94 2023
979.700497
Thinning blood : memoir of family, myth, and identity / Leah Myers. - First edition. - New York, N.Y. : W. W. Norton & Company, [2023] ©2023. - 163 pages : illustrations, geneological table ; 22 cm.
Bear. A legend of the Bear Mother -- Real live Indians -- An annotated guide to anti-Native slurs -- Bear's decision -- Salmon. A legend of Salmon Woman -- Roots -- Skinwalker -- Native enough -- Salmon's memory -- Hummingbird. A legend of Hummingbird -- Portrait of a perfect Native -- A writer who can't read -- Hummingbird's movement -- Raven. A legend of Raven stealing the sunlight -- Unreported violence -- Scalping knife turned scalpel -- A letter to my seventh-generation descendant -- The sound of the end -- Raven's emergence.
"Leah Myers may be the last member of the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe in her family line, due to her tribe's strict blood quantum laws. In this unflinching and intimate memoir, Myers excavates the stories of four generations of women in order to leave a record of her family. Beginning with her great-grandmother, the last full-blooded Native member in their lineage, she connects each woman with her totem to construct her family's totem pole: protective Bear, defiant Salmon, compassionate Hummingbird, and perched on top, Raven. As she pieces together their stories, Myers weaves in tribal folktales, the history of the Native genocide, and Native mythology. Throughout, she tells the larger story of how, as she puts it, her 'culture is being bleached out,' offering sharp vignettes of her own life between White and Native worlds: her naïve childhood love for Pocahontas, her struggles with the Klallam language, the violence she faced at the hands of a close White friend as a teenager....Thinning Blood is at once a bold reclamation of one woman's identity and a searingly honest meditation on heritage, family, and what it means to belong.
1324036702 9781324036708
bl2023016314
Myers, Leah.
Myers, Leah--Family.
Autobiographies.
Clallam Indians--Cultural assimilation--History.
Clallam Indians--Biography.--Washington (State)--Jamestown
Indians of North America--Ethnic identity.
Indians of North America--Folklore.--Washington (State)
Indians of North America--Social conditions.--Washington (State)
Indigenous peoples.
Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe.
E99 .C82 / M94 2023
979.700497