Terese Marie Mailhot: But some of my best friends are White

When there are too many white people at a venue, I get scared. Please don't judge me; my best friend is white (Hi, Rhonda!) I know some great white people, but it is you bad apples who ruin it for your ethnicity. Don't you see you're just playing into stereotypes with your hiking and snowboarding—your enthusiasm for turquoise and the hot new ethnic food that none of your white friends have tried yet. Can't you stop wearing cargo shorts? How many granola bars and cartons of coconut water could you possibly need to carry?

If you could only see that when you ask me to, “get over the past, it was a hundred years ago,” I wonder if you've ever actually been to a reservation, or considered the idea that they're just ghettos, a genocidal strategy.

If only you could see that when you ask me about the plights of being Indian, or if I was “spiritual,” or practiced “any of that stuff,” you really worried me, because I thought, 'man, these white people are so uncivilized.' I mean, where did they learn social tact or cultural respect? Who taught these people to wear sandals with their khakis?

I'm not sure why you guys, who want to be close to us, approach us like socio-cultural anthropologists, studying us in great detail, asking us questions, trying to, “understand.” Part of my role as a woman who wants to decolonize and subvert culture is to reject being known, identified, and managed. I mean, how has appealing to the better natures of white people helped my ancestors? We've tried discourse within settler colonial institutions and all that's done is further marginalize us. Let's face it, you guys are savages. Again, please don't judge me. My husband is white and a credit to his race.