Who gets to tell the story of the people of the United States, of the Americas?

Originally written in May 2024. I’m sharing these thoughts now just as they were written—raw, searching, and unresolved. In the months since, my thinking has continued to deepen, and I plan to share an update soon. For now, here’s where I was, sitting in the tension of identity, belonging, and voice.

Who gets to tell the story of the people of the United States, of the Americas?

For far too long, it’s been the colonizers, the white supremacists, the slave owners, the Jim Crow defenders, to the victor belongs the spoils, they say. Historiography is important but money and power and whiteness have for far too long defined how the global majority can live, free, or not free, to identify. How many of us have had our identities decided or defined by the people in power or in charge of our towns, communities, localities, regions or countries? One drop rules, and census groups matter for this conversation. Language matters, as it always does.

A few years ago, I came across a call for submissions to a playwrighting opportunity with Native Voices which read: “The Autry brings together the stories of all peoples of the American West, connecting the past with the present to inspire our shared future. Through Generation Now, a partnership with four other theatre companies – Children’s Theatre Company, Latino Theater Company, Ma-Yi, and Penumbra…” The call further described that they would co-commission Native playwrights to write pieces which would serve multigenerational audiences.

The ideas rolled around in my mind, repeatedly and kept me distracted while I tried in vain to think about other things, tried to be a productive member of society. Why was this keeping me up at night? Days later, I re-read it to my friends and opened up about the roller coaster of emotions that had erupted inside of me as I continued returning to the call.

My best friends suggested I could be struggling with feelings of being othered as a person of color. Yes, I was. And also I was struggling to get ahold of or to hold onto or to let go of these arbitrary, tattered lines of one, or two or more of my identities. These identities of mine are all confused: Tejano. Tejana. Mexican. Mexicana. Mexican American. Chicana. Latina. (Hispanic.) white. (Latinx.) These words which have evolved before me, around me, and have been used by others to define me or label me or my ancestors. These labels, markers, identities, identifiers, have evolved throughout history in society and in language and meaning, over time, have often been defined and redefined by outside forces with more money and power than that of me or my ancestors. And yes, it has all gotten me thinking.

I was frustrated with ‘the man’, ‘society’ but most of all, I hated myself for not knowing. I had come out as queer to myself (and eventually my family and friends and my community just one year ago) and I had apparently naively believed that I was finally getting to the most authentic version of who I am. Yet at 41 years old I remained unable to even begin to articulate how I did or did not fit into this opportunity based upon how this group of theatre groups chose to define Native American.

I think some Indigenous tribes and communities require a certain percentage of proven blood lineage to qualify for tribal membership. But how do I even find or begin to find the people, the group, that I might be a part of? Where could I, where could my family, fall in that world of community garage sales and signup sheets? In my daydreams I’ve created another reality where I go adventuring. I get to travel the world asking different indigenous communities and tribes across the so called Americas—in the same spirit of the newborn bird in P.D. Eastman’s “Are you my mother?” I could set out to find my place in the world. In my adventure, I could move beyond googling, to writing, then calling and later to driving or flying…and then to knocking and finally to inviting people from diverse groups across the Gulf Coast states, the Southwest, the West Coast, all of Latin America..to answer me, hopefully over a coffee or a tea: “Are you my People? Are YOU my PEOPLE? Are you MY People?”

But if what I had always believed or at the very least, what I have always said proves to be true, hadn’t the border of these so called United States of America, barely been created by people, likely people other than my people, basically immediately before it crossed right over us? Yeah, just like Selena’s dad said, my people, my ancestors, that border crossed us. And we gotta be the best of both worlds to each world.

Aren’t the Americas then mine to claim in at least one sense of the word? Who does the land belong to, in terms of telling its story? When people, myself included, when we use Native American to refer to the Indigenous people native to the lands later stolen and labeled as ‘America’ a tribute to an infamous colonizer who took by force this very land from them, are we not continuing to center any stories we try to tell around the very colonizing oppressors who caused upon us and our ancestors the various traumas which we have inherited from the generations before us, the very same traumas which remain inside our bodies, keeping the score and which we endure to this very day?

I remain highly suspicious about everything, each of these ideas. They buzz around the hive inside my mind, and they die every day battling alongside my heart and soul admirably, with honor. But none of them have produced a conclusion that feels just. Does Mestizo ‘count’ as Native American? Who decides? Not a dreamy, longing, Mexican American playwright, right? Authors of sociology texts with theories or Historians? Historians from which side?

In the end, I did not apply for the opportunity. I struggled too much with the idea of stealing an opportunity away from an actual Native American or First Nations artist. Yet, why on Earth was the Latino Theatre Collective collaborating in that call for Native playwrights? What did they know that I didn’t???

Weeks later, my partner Hadlee and I and my brother, were at Thanksgiving dinner with my cousin Sammy and his family. I described wavering between anxiety and turmoil as I grappled with these issues of identity. My mom and Sammy’s mom are sisters. And Sammy and I, along with our siblings and other cousins and extended family, had grown up close. If I remember correctly, we both grew up identifying as Mexican in the small towns of Galveston and Texas City which served as our little pond-stomping grounds.

“Do you think we’re Native American, I mean do you think that call for submissions was for someone like me, someone like us?” I was genuinely curious to know what he thought because we have always had great debates and political and philosophical conversations when we get together as adults; he’s a writer, too. He’s traveled the world as a Marine for more than 20 years and I was curious to hear him answer—and I had no idea where he would land. Like me, Sammy had also learned to speak Spanish fluently as an adult; him graduating from Spanglish to professional fluency on the military’s dime and me, graduating from Spanglish to professional fluency, while caring undocumented and detained Latino children detained by Immigration (“Homeland Security”).

“Are you kidding, prima!!? Of course, we’re NATIVE AMERICAN, that’s what Mestizo means. We are Indigenous. We’re…everything!” And in response to my question about which boxes he checks to represent his identity on government forms, he laughed aloud, took another drink from the bottle of beer in his hand, grabbed a bite from the charcuterie board, popped it in his mouth and said:  “Check all the boxes!!!” he had said. And he meant it.

It took my breath away. Even after my primo’s lovely wife Liz, his kids Chente and Quique, my family, too— they all agreed, and yet, with my brother nodding at me, clearly convinced and my partner smiling hopefully at me, I remained unresolved.

I still longed for a better resolution. Deep inside, I was curiously reluctant to accept this answer, the one which my cousin Sammy felt so entitled to.

Who gets to tell the story of the United States/America’s history? Let’s talk about that, please.