Becoming Metis

                Many of the themes we have read about lately are reoccurring, such as themes about multiculturalism, colonialism, and place and home. When Melissa Nelson states "To learn who I am today, on this land I live on, I've had to recover that heritage and realize a multicultural self", she means she has to discover who she is, individually. She states how she is a mix of cultures and breeds, Native American and European. Her goal is to find a culture and religion and spirit that fit all of her native cultures, as well as describing herself.  Nelson states she wants to “honor all parts of myself; the spiritual traditions of my Ojibwe ancestors as well as the traditional knowledge of my European ancestors” (Nelson 147). She told us her story about her native and new traditions and that will help her find herself in a religion. She mentions to us how her mother remembers only a little bit of her native tongue, Anishinabemowin. Even that, however, was a mixture of Cree and Canadian French. I feel that if she learned her native tongue it might help her choose which traditions she can relate to most. Both of her parents had lost most their native tongues because if they were going to become American then they had to forget about the past.
            Melissa Nelson then tells us how she doesn’t feel connected enough with her indigenous past to claim any Indian spirituality (Nelson 148). She explored on her own, by reading books and by lectures. Nelson had to find her multicultural self, meaning taking in all she can between her Native American and European past as well as finding her own creativity now that will express her, separately. To find that, she often wrote poetry and started to play the selje flute. “We all have Earth-based spiritual traditions in our past and we should work to uncover our heritage. But we also have our own individual creativity, imagination, and distinct relationship with what we call the sacred” (Nelson 151).