If you are full-blooded, you get to wear the full gear, feathered bone breastplate and all, and nobody gets to complain. You can even wear those god-awful “Native inspired” clothes that always seem to turn up in flea market booths and mall kiosks at Christmas. Hell, put bear fat in your hair if you want. Just by looking at you, Caucasians are meant to feel the “white guilt” for the acts of their ancestors and for oppressing the “red man” even to this day, so you get a pass even if it is the 21st century, and even if you do look really, really stupid and you’re a lazy, drunken bastard drawing welfare instead of working, and whose teenage kids huff paint instead of going to school. Spare me the sob stories; I’ve lived on a reservation and I goddamned well know.
If you are a half-breed, you get a pass for some native-inspired jewellery or clothing, but it’s got to be from your own or a neighbouring tribe. That means I don’t get to wear Navajo or Cheyenne stuff, but I do get to wear Mohawk, Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, and maybe could push to Mi’kmaq (put up with them for enough years). No feathers or breastplates, or anything (EVER!) in fringed buckskin, but a tasteful beaded bracelet or necklace, or fetish earrings…that’d be okay. The more strongly you favour the white side, the easier you have to go on the Native-inspired anything. If you feel the need, yeah, you can hang one of those stupid dream-catchers on the rearview mirror, but remember that being a half-breed doesn’t mean you’re not supposed to have at least passable taste. Then again, better that than plastic Mardi Gras beads, I suppose.
If one of your grandparents was full-blood, then yeah, you can wear a few Native-inspired things, but keep it subtle because for practical purposes, you’re pretty much white. If you absolutely must have a dream-catcher, for the love of Gitche Manitou, put it in a room where no one will see it.
If you describe yourself as “one-eighth Chickasaw”, you’re white. Nobody is “one-eighth” anything. That’s one of your eight great-grandparents…you’re white. Kind of a homeopathic Injun. Don’t argue. Get over it.
If you are an old, fat, bald white dude in polyester pants, stay far, far away from the flea markets and the mall kiosks because you look like an idiot. I don’t care if you live just 50 miles from the Cree reservation, or whether your great-great grandmother’s third cousin twice removed was half Blackfoot. You…look…like…an…idiot.
EDIT: OMFG. Just…OMFG. Ahahahaha! Aaaaahahahahaha!
