Personal Narrative: My Native American Heritage

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Growing up as a child in Swinomish I always knew to be home before the streetlights came on, because as I child I was always told the story of the basket lady. The basket lady is supposedly a lady that would walk around the Reservation at night carrying a basket and would grab any kids who were out past dark. Legends like this are part of my heritage. Heritage is history, it’s a very important part of what has shaped me into who I am today. Most of my beliefs and values are from my Native American heritage comes from my dad’s side. My grandma is white but she grew up in the native culture, and my grandpa is full Mexican but no longer speaks the language or follows the culture. Being Native American is a big part of who I am. Growing up …show more content…
As a child she was always very sick and her parents had a hard time raising her and they would always fight. She doesn’t have any good memories of living with her parents, they never had money and they were both always drunk. Eventually she went and lived in La Conner with her grandparents, but spent a lot of time on the reservation and throughout her life she has continued to live on and around Swinomish. As she grew up, she got most of her culture and traditions from Native American lifestyles. “They always took me in and would do anything for me and so I’ve always just felt like I was native like them” she told me when I interviewed her. When my grandma got older she also raised her children, including my mom in Swinomish, even though none of them had any Native American ethnicity either. My grandma and mom both grew up with a lot of the Native American foods including fry-bread and salmon and traditions like stick games. That meant those kinds of traditions were passed down from them and my dad. So even though that part of my family isn’t native or from the Swinomish tribe it is the Village that they consider home and their culture. Which makes me feel even more connected to Swinomish and my Native American