I remember going on a field trip when I was in preschool in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

An instructor had one of my classmates try on a traditional Pueblo dress. While explaining when and where Indigenous people would wear a dress like this, the instructor gave me and my classmates a history lesson — when, in reality, I had a dress just like this at home and often wore it for traditional ceremonies.

In history books, at historical sites, and in museums, Native people are often framed as a people who participated in the making of America but who no longer exist in modern American society. This rhetoric is harmful to the way we view the history of this country and this land, but it is incredibly common at many museums, historical sites, and interactive exhibits — many that wish to serve the purpose of educating children.

My lens as a Native person has always been unique. I don’t really look white, but I don’t really look Pueblo, either. Once, when I was 5, a friend’s mother asked me if I was a “feather or dot Indian,” meaning she wanted to know whether I was Native American or East Indian, asking me to choose to identify myself through one of two reductive symbols of two very different groups of people. It took me a long time to identify things like this as micro-aggressions, but they did make me hyper-aware of when I was the only Native person in the room.

On the day that my mother, Deb Haaland, was sworn in as one of the first two Native American congresswomen in history, alongside Sharice Davids, this became more apparent to me than ever. The significance of her winning this election reached far beyond our New Mexico congressional district, and even beyond Indian Country as a whole. As we walked through the underground tunnels of the Capitol and made our way to the U.S. House floor, people literally stepped aside to watch my family and me in our traditional regalia. I realized that this could have been the first time people on Capitol Hill had really seen that we are still here.

After decades of oppression, my mother blazed a trail from New Mexico all the way to Washington, D.C. Her grandmother had been taken from her home when she was 8 and put in a boarding school to be assimilated into white Christian culture. Now my mom has the chance to make laws that protect children.

Being the small-town millennial that I am, I was obliged to share the excitement of the week on my Instagram. I invited folks to follow me as I attended a tea hosted by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, snapped a selfie with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and even met actor Mark Ruffalo at a beautiful reception thrown in honor of my mom and Sharice.

Then, over the next three days, came an enormous speed bump. All of the freshman members of Congress, along with their families, were invited to Williamsburg, Virginia, for a New Member Seminar. While members attended workshops, family members were given options for activities, including historical tours of the area. One was at Jamestown Settlement, a “living history” museum near the site of America’s first permanent English colony.

I saw several signs with information that claimed, “Africans were brought to Virginia...this process helped shape African-American culture,” and that read, “The founding of Jamestown sparked...cultural encounters that helped shape our nation and the world.” I came upon an exhibit that showed figures of Powhatan people in a glass case, seen hunting, gathering, carrying babies on their backs, living their lives as they would have before Europeans arrived.