Gyasi Ross: Reflecting on learning, leadership, loss and love

Happy New Year to you all…I hope that it started off with smiles, passion and time spent with loved ones. I spent my New Year’s Eve, exactly as I’ve spent many, many other New Year's Eves, on the beautiful Suquamish Reservation: blowing up stuff with fireworks, drinking Martinelli’s sparkling cider with family (and almost having to beat up some drunk white dude).

Lots of drunk, white dudes on the Suquamish Reservation—there was actually a Supreme Court case about it. Wild times.

This post is sort of scattered—lots happening at the end of the year, lots of thoughts going through my massive dome.

The end of 2012/2013 was probably the year when I did the most “growing up” I’ve ever done. Growing up sucks, and Natives are infamously stubborn grower-uppers (I’ve begun to realize now that Native men are, in fact, no different than really any men of any color—none of us want to grow up and all of us have the Peter Pan complex). Still, I’ve had to; I had no choice. A lot of my heroes and role models passed on in the past year or so—it’s a part of life, and if no one steps into those shoes, the next generation won’t have anybody to look up to.

I get it.