The Ancestry genealogy test came back and…

I am disappointed.

I had hoped I was closer to 50% Indigenous. With the results I got, everything feels pointless. I am white-passing, that is harmful enough, but knowing with 100% certainty that I am predominately Caucasian? Ouch. I feel like I am intruding upon a culture that isn’t really mine. I am no better than the asshole psychology teacher at TRU that thinks he can get away with his bullshit because he has some distant Cherokee grandmother or something of that business. I am no better than the white savior trope of those old movies like Dances with Wolves. It hurts. I am status and I grew up learning Secwépemc culture, but how can I truly belong if I am less than 1/3 native, only 14% Secwépemc and 16% St’at’imc? I feel like an imposter.

I spoke with my boyfriend about it this morning when I got the news and he tried his best to comfort me but I know it will take me a long time to get over this. I knew something like this might happen and I tried to prepare myself for the disappointment, but I had still hoped and hoped and hoped that it wouldn’t be true.

I don’t know how to move forward. I don’t know if therapy will even help because, really, there will always be that little bit of negative in the back of my mind. I am status and my kids will have status too, but it hurts because my unfathomably long line of ancestors will die off, possibly within my lifetime, and that will be the end. There is no legacy to pass on.

That is all. Putucwíye.