One of my best friends in elementary school in South Dakota was a Native girl who was fostered by my neighbor, a large, gruff, white elderly woman who had fostered over a hundred Native kids in her lifetime.

I was a child wrapped up in my own white middle class experience. I wish I’d asked more questions as we roller skated down the street and played Red Rover with the neighborhood kids. I didn’t wonder why there were so many Native kids in the foster system or at the house next door

I accepted the narrative I heard from the white adults that their parents were alcoholics and addicts who didn’t love their kids enough to change their lives. I’d never asked why. I never asked Amy about the “Indian school” she used to go to.

I never thought twice about the disconnect of my old neighbor lady loving “Native style” and intricate beadwork and moccasins, while at the same time trying to get all “her kids” to assimilate to whiteness by force and disparaging their families and homes and ancestors.

And when my friend Amy moved away, back to the reservation I was told, I didn’t understand why she didn’t want to stay in our quaint little community when she was promised a car and a college education from her white benefactors.

My memories are likely flawed from that time. I’m certain now my childhood naivety and my white context shielded me from a thousand things I should have seen and questioned.

I’ve just finished Native by @KaitlinCurtice and I’m rethinking those memories from 30 years ago and realizing that Amy’s memories of roller skating and Red Rover with a skinny and awkward white girl on a street in a town full of white people are likely complicated and sad.

I’m learning. I don’t know how to speak about this rightly. But I am listening and I hope others do too.