For the record,  my jewelry tastes aren't just $5 glittery mood rings shaped like bears.  Or pricey custom setting cat's eye opals and dreamy aquamarine cabochons.  It also includes things like my Ojibwe made beaded necklace and Lakota made beaded earrings that I wore today in honor of Deb Haaland being sworn in Secretary of Interior.  

(This necklace is one of my favorite pieces,  actually. It reminds me of past lives in Native American  tribes and past lives in Egypt.  It's just very tricky to match with anything other than a single solid color top.)

First indigenous tribe member to ever hold the office of the interior!!  And while there are some issues surrounding freedman's rights (descendants of black slaves held by members of native tribes,  and often unofficially due to rape, descendants of tribal members as well as the former slaves)  and her support of laws denying them full tribal rights. And that's a right mess.... But it's still such an important step forward to have an indigenous person as head of the bureau that cares for the land and water and air and wildlife of this nation! 

The freedman's issue is difficult because of the way tribal rights are conferred by official bloodlines and how hard that is to document in those who were owned as slaves by tribes in the 1800s. And I understand the emphasis created around tribal bloodlines to weed out people with family stories of tribal descent trying to use the money/hunting/higher ed rights meant to uplift the extreme poverty on reservations.  It's self-preservation and protection of what little remains to them as their own nations....And I understand that, though the Freedman's Rights cases are particularly painful and a great injustice, twice over....  But there are lots of unverified stories, including within my own family... Supposedly my mom's dad's dad was part Cherokee and Dakota -- but the family story isn't documented in any way. So i don't talk about it much and I don't claim the heritage because who knows?  

That side of the family is quite literally an enigma -- my mom's mom's side is mostly straight forward, we can even document it back to the last witch officially burnt at the stake in a town near the Black Forest.My aunt who has lived in Germany my entire life found it in the church records doing genealogical history delving and had it verified. (The witch who was burned was the older sister of my great-greath-grandma I don't know how many generations back, on my direct matrilineal line.  Yeah, I do have actual witches bloodline, documented, in addition to my da's Jewish (including Cohenim marker) and Hungarian heritage. Also gypsy blood. I'm quite a mutt with a VERY ridiculous bloodline, lol. And my mom's dad's mom Marie was French-Canadian and Scots-Irish-English, was very Catholic.) But my mom's dad's dad's side is truly an enigma.-- quite literally my maternal grandfather's grandfather came to the US under a changed name speaking a language nobody recognized and went to his deathbed without ever telling anyone his original name or country of origin. All we know about him is that he played the fiddle, drank a lot of whiskey, had jet black hair and a cleft in his chin. And his wife was also an enigma beyond her name and that she was born in Oklahoma "or somewhere in the Plains" -- it's from her that supposedly we have Cherokee and/or Dakota blood. I do know that even though I don't claim it, every Native American/First Nations person I have ever met all across the US and Canada look at me and tell me I am one of them, if not from this life's blood than from my past lives. But because I don't want to take or claim what may not be mine, I will say that there's a family story of it but that it's undocumented and unverified so I don't claim it for myself though I am proud and honored they would choose to claim me -- for in most tribes, before the European invasion, being claimed and adopted into a tribe made you as full a member as any born into it.

So anyway. I have VERY strong soul ties to the tribes and how they've been treated, and perhaps blood ties in this life, but I only use anything of cultural significance with deep reverence of the traditions and without appropriation.  I limit myself to tribal created jewelry, art, and dream catchers and to purchasing herbal teas form them and attending pow-wows and ceremonies to which I am invited but never to presume or to show up uninvited. I actually refuse to burn white sage or palo santo since the force of will intention is what matters for cleansing ceremonies, not what you burn itself, and to burn those endangered species if it's not part of your bloodline heritage IS appropriation. I actively loathe new age hippe/witchy/yogic white cultural appropriation of shamanic traditions that they were never invited to share in and that have actively caused plants to end up on the endangered species list. You do NOT want to get me started on my true feelings about sage burning... 

Anyway, having Deb Haaland hold that office to be in charge of policies for the natural land of this nation itself is such wonderful precedent! And so important for tribal representation and empowerment.