Becoming Metis

"To learn who I am today, on this land I live on, I've had to recover that heritage and realize a multicultural self."

In this section, Melissa Nelson is talking about growing up i America, you encouter many multicultural individuals. In the quote above, Nelson is talking about how she needs to learn about her past in order to figure out who she is today. The challenge Melissa Nelson was faced with was to find her authentic voice as a mixed-blood person who has both Native American and European ancestry. She knows that her mother is Native American and her father is European, so she knows that she is considered multicultural, however, she does not know much about where she came from. In her journey of discovering her past, she found out that the reservation where her mother was born and raised is called the "Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians". After discovering a little where she came from, Melissa Nelson is now concerned with learning how to honor all parts of herself, including the spiritual traditions of her mothers ancestors, as well as the traditional knowledge of her European ancestors. All of this wondering brings us back to the quote, where Melissa Nelson is saying that in order to discover who she is and where she lives, she has to know about her multiculltural backround. Nelson illustrates her point to the reader extremely well by sharing the information she recieved about her past ancestors and how she now understands who she is as a person. She explained that while exploring what her multicultural self is, she found herself "swimming through a sea of racial beliefs-full-blood Indian, pure full-blood European; tained mixed-blood, diluted soul." Melissa Nelson took the time to look into her past history and discover herself as a multicultural individual.