You're a dirty Indian

After WWII ended, the US Government had a work program designed to train Native Americans but rather than create jobs for them with their new skills on Reservations, they relocated them to major metro areas. Chicago was but one of them. As a result, I grew up with a lot of Native Americans, none of which called themselves that. All my friends just said they were Indian, and they'd tell me their tribe.

This is similar to someone saying they are Ukrainian, Polish, Czechoslovakian rather than identifying their national origins as "Eastern European." The Indians, after all, were not one big hodge podge, but many sovereign nations that already existed before anyone else showed up on the shores of either North or South America.

And of course my Indian friends all lived in the same neighborhood as I, which meant we all lived on the wrong side of Broadway. There were not a lot of Asian Americans where I lived, since the bulk of them lived on the street north of where I lived, and thus they all went to another grade school, so in some ways it is understandable that an ignorant child could assume that anyone who wasn't white could be Indian.

So there I was one day, waiting in line for the bell to ring so I could go in with all the other kids on our first day of school, after the summer break. A girl I had never seen before turned around, saw me standing in line behind her, and with all the spite, venom and hate her little brain could muster, told me to move away from her, because, "You're a dirty Indian." Given the demographics of my neighborhood, I actually would have fit in better being called a Mexican or Puerto Rican, although I am Asian American.

Not long after, two of my grade school friends arrived in line. Judy, whose family hailed from West Virginia's coal country, and Linda, who actually was Santee Souix. Children being children, what bothered me the most at the time was that she said I was dirty.