{"id":618,"date":"2015-05-20T06:41:57","date_gmt":"2015-05-20T06:41:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/2015\/?p=618"},"modified":"2015-06-14T22:15:54","modified_gmt":"2015-06-14T22:15:54","slug":"evolving-identity-chasing-an-idea-of-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/2015\/evolving-identity-chasing-an-idea-of-home\/","title":{"rendered":"EVOLVING IDENTITY<\/font>
Chasing an idea of home<\/font>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Story by Cheri Trusler, photos by\u00a0Ashley Roness<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Shania Hall and Michaela Frazier, friends who grew up in Missoula, away from their own tribal reservations, have developed personal ideals about what it means to be Native American, or as they would say it: \u201cEn-Dins.\u201d<\/p>\n

Living off the reservation, but feeling like they belong on one, both Hall and Frazier have come to terms with, and even embraced, an off-color term constantly flung at them: \u201cApple.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hall, a Blackfeet tribal member: \u201c<\/strong>An apple is an urban Native American, it\u2019s a slang word. It\u2019s kind of derogatory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frazier, who is Northern Cheyenne: \u201c<\/strong>Just kind of assimilated to white culture I guess. That\u2019s what an apple is.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two girls met in class in middle school, and became fast friends, sharing the split identity of Native American teens who grew up away from their families and the culture of reservation life.<\/p>\n

When Frazier and Hall would walk the halls of their school other Native American kids would call them \u201capples.\u201d Shania\u2019s eyes squint from the grin on her face as she remembers high school stories.<\/p>\n[aesop_video width=”content” align=”center” src=”vimeo” id=”127375725″ loop=”on” autoplay=”on” controls=”on” viewstart=”on” viewend=”on”]\n\n

\u201c<\/strong>We used to try to act hard core,\u201d she explained. \u201cWe\u2019re Native and then we\u2019re actually like born and raised in Missoula so we would try and walk around our school like badasses but it was not working.\u201d<\/p>\n

The girls live like the majority of Native Americans. According to the 2010 census, 78 percent of all Americans who identify as Native American are living off reservations.<\/p>\n

Jake Arrowtop, with the Indian Education program, works with the students who move from the \u2018rez\u2019 to Missoula County. He provides some insight as to why some kids would be inclined to call others \u201capples.\u201d<\/p>\n[aesop_quote type=”block” align=”center” quote=”\u201cThey are just challenging what an authentic Indian is, you’re not authentic if you didn\u2019t grow up on the rez,\u201d explains Arrowtop. \u201cIt\u2019s a pretty mean thing to say to somebody.\u201d”]\n

The girls weren\u2019t trying to be \u201cauthentic\u201d so much as they considered their behavior as honoring their families past.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/strong>We weren\u2019t standing on our soap boxes or whatever like, \u2018Hey! We\u2019re Indians!\u2019\u201d Frazier said. \u201cWe just did what was required of us or we thought we should do to kind of honor our tribes individually.\u201d<\/p>\n[aesop_image img=”https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/2015\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Wildcard_03.jpg” align=”center” lightbox=”on” caption=”Shania Hall is living with her sister in Missoula, Montana. Instead of paying rent, Hall babysits, cleans the house, runs errands and cooks during the week.” captionposition=”center”]\n

Hall personally represents her culture by learning prayers and participating in traditional Blackfeet sweat lodges. She looks like a native kid with high cheekbones lifting her dark brown eyes. Her complexion is naturally tan and her black hair is so thick she can wrap a hair tie around it once and it\u2019ll hold. In her opinion, she is an apple because of the way she talks. In Browning, where her family is from, accents are thick and slang is abundant, Hall stands out because her voice is clear and shows no signs of an accent. She calls that \u2018talking white\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/strong>My cousin said, \u2018like you don\u2019t even talk rez, you talk so white,\u201d Hall said.<\/p>\n

Frazier is half Northern Cheyenne, and half African American on her father\u2019s side. She is much darker in complexion and has tight, dark brown curls. It\u2019s the subtle things that make Frazier stand out with Native American characteristics from her wide flat feet, to the hint of a Native drawl she picked up from listening to her mother speak.<\/p>\n

After a death in the family last fall, Hall moved to the Blackfeet reservation to live with her aunt off and on. She plans to attend the Art Institute of New Mexico on a full ride scholarship. Living in Browning makes her homesick though, for Missoula. Sometimes she drives back to Missoula to stay with her sister and see her friends.<\/p>\n

Frazier also hopes to move to Northern Cheyenne reservation, despite new testimony from her friend warning her of the pitfalls. But Frazier wants to learn the Cheyenne language. She says that is her biggest disconnect with her identity as a Native woman and she aims to fix it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know my language and that\u2019s something that my cousins are privy to,\u201d said Frazier. \u201cThey know the culture. They are constantly submerged in the culture and they know a lot more than I know and I really wanted to go back and go to [Chief] Dull Knife College and learn the language.\u201d<\/p>\n[aesop_image img=”https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/2015\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Wildcard_02.jpg” align=”center” lightbox=”on” caption=”Michaela Frazier goes to the University of Montana\u2019s Mansfield Library every night to study. As a freshman student Frazier struggles to balance work, school, taking care of her mom and having a social life.” captionposition=”center”]\n

There’s an average of about 9,000 Native Americans living on each Montana reservation. In Missoula, they make up only two-and-a-half percent of the population, which adds up to just under 3000 enrolled Natives.<\/p>\n

Cecil Crawford, a school counselor with the Indian Education program, knows the girls well and recalls their senior year at Hellgate.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/strong>They struggled. We used to have to chase Shania around to get her work done,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat saved her is art.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two so-called apples are about to split ways this fall when Hall moves to New Mexico for art school. Frazier plans to stay in Missoula for now to work on a degree in social work. No matter where they end up, the girls plan to stay in contact and carry with them the bits and pieces of Native traditions and urban lifestyles that make up their own unique flavor of culture.<\/p>\n

An apple culture.<\/p>\n

\u00a0For past Native News editions visit the archive\u00a0here.\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/h5>\n[aesop_gallery id=”569″]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Story by Cheri Trusler, photos by\u00a0Ashley Roness Shania Hall and Michaela Frazier, friends who grew up in Missoula, away from their own tribal reservations, have developed personal ideals about what it means to be Native American, or as they would say it: \u201cEn-Dins.\u201d Living off the reservation, but feeling like they belong on one, both […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":577,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[45,30,69,31,68,86,84,87,18,51,85,60,59,83],"class_list":["post-618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-urban","tag-45","tag-ashley-roness","tag-blackfeet","tag-cheri-trusler","tag-journalism","tag-michaela-frazier","tag-missoula","tag-native-american","tag-native-news","tag-northern-cheyenne","tag-shania-hall","tag-um","tag-university-of-montana","tag-urban"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1044,"href":"https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions\/1044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}