The Sharer

"More than once, I have shared that I am part Native American with classmates because I wanted to share something that I thought was culturally relevant. However after sharing, people have made comments that were playful, but stereotypical. For example, in an entomology class, I shared that one particular insect was important to my tribe for bringing rains. In another class period, a fellow student asked me as I was making  observations of other insects in this class, "oh, are you absorbing its powers?"as if every facet of our lives are somehow mystical and ominous. Another time in an ecology class, we learned a bit about the local ecology and how much the landscape has changed, and an indigenous person was shown on a poster foraging in the local habitat, and a student asked, "hey, is that your cousin?" "