Once Upon a Time: True Stories of an Aspiring Writer

7: The Indian Princess Appropriation

I FELT ANYTHING BUT glamorous on the day I was initiated as a princess. In fact, I spent most of my time quivering under a piano bench.

The living room was filled with girls my age, about 5 or 6, that I hadn't seen before. I didn't want to be there, and I was infuriated that I couldn't be home. No. My parents made me come here, instead.

I was in the room with Claudine, Brierly, Heather, Michelle, Ashley, and Margaret. But we weren't alone: our dads were there, too. It was like a version of Girl Scouts without the cookies, though we too had plenty of treats along the way. I mean, this group was led by a bunch of dads.

When my dad ushered me out to the kitchen to do a craft project, I grudgingly went with him. We were all decorating flowerpots, and I couldn't see what the purpose was, but it seemed okay. So I went with it.

Still. I wasn't sure what this Indian Princess thing all was about. I wasn't Indian and I certainly wasn't a princess, despite what my grandma was always telling me. Besides, living in a castle would be so boring.

This group, sponsored by the YMCA, would meet once a month, usually on a Thursday evening, and I would learn what it meant. And there were many good reasons to join, as seen below.

#1: Growing Confidence

We met once a month. I didn't hang out with the other girls very much to begin with. When we had meetings, I would typically try to hide among the other dads. During the first or second meeting at my house, I would sit in the kitchen with the dads as they messed around with this floral decorating my mom had which had a sort-of trumpet inside it. The other girls played in the basement, not caring their host was missing. 

Other times, I'd find something else that interested me. Maybe it was someone's dog who needed petting. Other times it was a robotic dog. There was a toy that existed at one point called Poo-Chi, and it could move on its own and interact with you. I could never get mine to work.

Brierly had one, though. All the girls oohed and aahed over the cool new toy, and so did I. A Poo-Chi that actually moved and used its mouth to pick up a bone! This was cool. I wanted to see it, too, but by then Brierly and the other girls had moved to something else.

"I want to see that dog," I said.

"You should go ask her!" Dad kept saying.

I couldn't muster the courage to ask.

I chose to hang out with the dads on several occasions. One day, my dad had enough. We were all at Heather's house, preparing to swim in the pool, when he made me go downstairs and interact with people.

"Go play in the basement. It'll be fun," he said, forcing me down the steps and closing the door.

I don't remember what we did, but it seemed just fine at the time. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all.

#2: Meetings

I was forced out of my shell eventually. We started off meetings by standing in a circle and saying a chant. The dads would promise to be "friends always with my daughter" and we would form a circle facing the dads with our hands criss-crossed. We would be wearing vests with patches that we earned by going to certain events, just like the Girl Scouts did. Our tribal chief, or group leader, would then bring out something called a talking stick.

I should mention that Chief Donny-O was a legend. He wasn't just the chief of our tribe, but the head honcho for all the tribes in our nation. We, the Dakota Blackfeet, were one of about five other tribes in the county. Tribes of the four or five local counties made up a nation, and he was in charge of ours. Don would often be the one heading things at nation-wide events, in addition to being our tribal chief, and there were talks to make socks with his face on them.