I Can Make This Promise

“They ask me what tribe I’m from. They ask if I know what buffalo tastes like. They ask about my spiritual beliefs. They ask about the percentages and ratios of my blood.”

Edie starts encountering racist microaggressions on her first day of kindergarten. In the Prologue, she lists some common questions she receives, none of which she can readily answer. At the story’s beginning, Edie is almost entirely disconnected from her family history. These questions reflect the limited understanding that many non-Indigenous Americans have about Indigenous people.

“I turn in the other direction, and an older woman catches my gaze and holds it. She’s seated on a stool at the edge of the crowd. Her T-shirt bears the message ‘Find Our Missing Girls.’ Huh. I wonder what that’s about.”

Edie never learns more about the “Find Our Missing Girls” slogan. In fact, this T-shirt references the high numbers of Indigenous women and girls who are murdered in the US and Canada each year. As an Indigenous girl, Edie faces potential dangers of which she is unaware. Her parents have deliberately kept these topics from Edie, not wanting her to grow up feeling afraid or angry.

“I think about Roger. He was the first person to ever say those words to me. You look Native. And it didn’t feel presumptuous. It didn’t feel like a wild guess. It was like he recognized me. Like he saw something in me. I wonder what that something was.”

Edie and Roger share a brief moment when Roger recognizes Edie for who she is. Edie already knows that she is Indigenous, but she has no connection to her heritage. This moment foreshadows her increasing interest in her family history and in Indigenous culture.