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Growing up on the southside of Milwaukee during the late 1960s, I remember a particularly painful coming-of-age moment. We were poor; eleven children wearing Salvation Army clothes. We lived on food stamps, donated food boxes, and free school lunches. We had a barren fake Christmas tree with no presents or peppermint sticks.

One summer day, the neighborhood children and I were playfully chasing a man on a bicycle in the alley. All of a sudden he stopped and pointed at me, saying I had to go home because I was a “no-good Indian.”

My white father, a bricklayer, struggled with alcoholism and bouts of depression after serving in World War II. My Chippewa mother worked part time washing dishes at a Chinese restaurant. My siblings and I were first-generation urban American Indians. My mother left the Bad River Reservation and caught a bus with her sisters in Ashland, Wisconsin, settling in Milwaukee and Chicago. The women took to the city like moths to a flame. A small community of Indians living on the southside of Milwaukee, our brown skin and dark hair stood out in the larger community of nearly all Polish and German people.

Being called an Indian was painful for reasons I did not understand at such a young age.

I grew up with deep roots of racial self-hate. I wished I could fit in better with the dominant society. I wished to God I was not an American Indian.

Once a year, the community held a summer city pow wow. But I never attended the celebration. I was always lost in the day, playing in the park or streets with my friends. My mother gave up speaking her language and never told us what it was like growing up on the reservation—no tribal stories, no sharing of traditions. The only real connection I had to being Indian was the frybread my mother made. It was the best I have ever tasted.

In the spring of 1971, we moved to a burned-out farm house in northern Minnesota, just forty miles from the Canadian border. We were the only Indians in the small town of Big Falls. My father had removed us from my mother’s sisters and the rest of the urban Indian community.

One year, another Indian family moved to Big Falls. My brothers and I made it our mission to harass the Ravensburg boys, chasing them around the playground, bullying them. It would be many years before I had an awakening about hurting those boys.

I grew up with deep roots of racial self-hate. I wished I could fit in better with the dominant society. I wished to God I was not an American Indian.

In my college years, I stayed away from American Indian Center at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, except to pick up my quarterly $500 scholarship check from Bad River.

Most of the students who hung out at the center were fresh transplants from reservations.I could not relate to any of them. As graduation neared, I started applying for jobs. I asked the center’s director if she would be a reference for me. She shrugged and simply said she couldn’t. She never saw me except when I stopped in to pick up my financial-aid check.

Most of my brothers and I settled in Minneapolis, home to one of the largest, most vibrant Indian communities in the country. There are at least three annual pow wows throughout the Twin Cities. The American Indian Center offers ceremonies, feasts, and after-school cultural programs for the young urban Indians.

Eventually, my siblings and I had a reckoning of who we were as half-breed Indians living in the city. We accepted the fact that we grew up without our language, values, and traditions. The sores of self hate began to heal. We even became proud of our racial heritage.

My siblings and I had a reckoning of who were as half-breed Indians living in the city. We accepted the fact that we grew up without our language, values, and traditions. The sores of self hate began to heal.

But when my older brother Gerard died at the age of fifty we decided to return him to our mother’s homeland. We took his ashes to the shores of Lake Superior, next to my mother’s reservation. His son poured his ashes in the big Lake Gitchi-gami, the birthplace of the Anishinabe (Chippewa). Myth informs us that a great turtle rose from the bottom of the lake to the surface. Humans were formed from mud on Turtle Island, which today is known as Madeline Island, the Mecca of our people, a very sacred place.

I returned to the Bad River reservation in northern Minnesota and worked there for two years. While I fit in, it was clear how much the city had assimilated me. I don’t dance at pow wows, never attend ceremonies. I loathe walleye and deer meat—staples of the Chippewa diet. But I love the stories the elders tell. I love to hear the old language and I love playing the slots at the casino.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the culture of urban Indians today. Access to tribal traditions and opportunities to return to the reservation are plenty. I have been rethinking assimilation into the white man’s world. At the turn of the century, the federal government stole Indian kids, forced them into military-style boarding schools and expected these children to join the white workforce, leaving their homes behind for good.

But as I consider the lives of today’s urban Indian youth, I wonder if there is an upside to assimilation. The pride of being Indian in the city burns bright. Urban Indians are assimilating into a mainstream human race that is more tolerant, open to the ideas and values to be gained from Indians. There is an awakening to the mistreatment of the Indian and a longing to heal and learn the lessons of the past.

And yet, the longing to return home also burns bright within the city Indians. The playground of the city has been a fun ride. But like the end of a long, hot, summer day, we hear the call of our ancestors to come home. I long to migrate home when I pass on. I want my ashes poured into the big lake. I am looking forward to making my journey back to Turtle Island.

Mark Anthony Rolo is an enrolled member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and author of the memoir My Mother Is Now Earth.