Whiskey Tender

“Dad belonged to the desert like a naturally rooted cedar, and the incongruent way he started shrinking small in town was scary. His new docility embarrassed me.”

Early on in her childhood, Taffa noticed how her parents belonged to separate spaces. Her father was more comfortable in the desert, while her mother thrived in town. This is one of the first indications of how Indigenous people like Edmond have to shrink or deny certain aspects of their identity to fit in with mainstream American society. The metaphor of Edmond as a “rooted cedar” suggests a deep, intrinsic connection to the land, one that is severed in the context of urban life. This serves as a powerful visual of assimilation—where Indigenous identity is subdued not out of choice but out of necessity for survival in a white-dominated world.

“Mom’s family hadn’t the courage to talk about their history, pretended to be above it, and hightailed it out of Socorro, running from the ghosts of their past.”

Taffa’s mother was descended from enslaved Indigenous people in New Mexico called genízaros. After they were emancipated, many genízaros chose to forget their Indigenous roots and observe only their Spanish ancestry. This was less painful than facing the reality of the abuse they had suffered and everything they’d lost. This passage highlights the theme of the effects of assimilation policies on Indigenous identities—Lorraine’s family’s silence and denial demonstrate how assimilation policies led many Indigenous people to erase their own histories for survival. The phrase “running from the ghosts of their past” is especially significant, as it suggests that cultural erasure is not just passive forgetting but an intentional act of distancing from intergenerational trauma.

“Even so, it’s their differences I’m thinking of now: Dad never lived a day when he wasn’t cracking open, his secrets wiggling toward the outer world in acts of humility and pain; his willingness to divulge information was so important for a child with a mother who held her silence for a lifetime.”

One of the key differences between Lorraine and Edmond is how they dealt with their generational trauma and ancestral losses. Edmond could never contain his pain regarding the oppression and abuse he and his ancestors experienced. Even when she was a small child, Taffa sensed her father’s pain and noticed its physical manifestations, like his persistent night terrors. Lorraine, on the other hand, never spoke of her Indigenous ancestry. This contrast reflects the broader psychological impact of assimilation—while Edmond externalized his trauma, Lorraine buried hers. This tension between silence and confession illustrates how different survival mechanisms emerge from historical oppression, shaping how trauma is processed across generations. This quote highlights the effects of assimilation policies on Indigenous identities.

“Still, losing her devastated us by striking at the roots of our family’s traditional knowledge. She was the last Keres speaker in our immediate family, a holder of wisdom gone.”

This passage describes the death of Taffa’s grandmother Esther. As assimilation policies took young Indigenous people away from the reservation, elders died without passing their ancestral knowledge onto the next generation. Oftentimes, there was no written record of Indigenous language or other forms of wisdom, meaning that this knowledge died with the elders. The phrase “striking at the roots” reinforces the idea that culture and language are living entities. Just as a tree cannot survive if its roots are cut, the loss of Esther symbolizes the erosion of cultural identity and ancestral knowledge. This quote highlights the effects of assimilation policies on Indigenous identities.

“In Farmington we were nobody. There was no running into one of Mom’s fourteen siblings at Del Sol Grocery. There were no All-Indian baseball tournaments, and even if there had been, Dad didn’t have his six brothers and five cousins to enter an all-Jackson team. There were no dinner invites from Dad’s older sisters.”

The Jackson family’s move to Farmington separated Taffa from her extended family, community, and culture. It took them from the communal, family-oriented life of the reservation to the isolation and individualism of mainstream American culture. This sense of dislocation speaks to the impact of the Relocation Program, which uprooted Indigenous families from their cultural strongholds and left them feeling adrift in a world that neither embraced nor accommodated them.

“My knowledge of history, over the course of my childhood, came together like a puzzle, one edifying piece at a time. My father’s poor education, my mother’s shame, the early death of my grandparents, propaganda driven by the church and state—all these circumstances had combined to ensure that no one told me New Mexico’s pueblos had been inhabited for a thousand years, making America’s two-hundredth-birthday celebration both an omission and a snub. No one told me the father-son duo at Dodger Stadium were protesting the lack of health care in Indian Country. I was a bucktoothed kid who spent all her Bicentennial quarters playing cowboy games at the arcade, and who worked all summer trying to memorize the list of American presidents—and this ensured that years later I would have to live with the insult of how vague my self-awareness was, and how stupidly it allowed me to behave.”

This passage describes Taffa’s lack of self-awareness growing up in an assimilated household. Several forces conspired to keep her history hidden from her, including assimilation policies and the shame they implanted in Indigenous communities, her inability to connect with her family’s elders, and the pervasive whitewashing of American history. The “puzzle” metaphor reinforces how fragmented her understanding of Indigenous history was—only as she grew older did the disparate pieces of her identity begin to form a cohesive picture. She innocently celebrated the United States bicentennial without understanding what the implications of this occasion might be for communities of Indigenous Americans like herself.

“I remember thinking they seemed fine. They looked like my uncles and aunts. But then I saw them through Sister Angelica Anne’s eyes, and I realized that she didn’t see two young twentysomethings having fun. To her, they were dangerous, utterly lacking in intelligence or restraint.”

In Farmington, Taffa began to experience racism against Indigenous American people for the first time. Initially, it confused her. When a slightly drunk Indigenous couple talked to her through the fence at school, she saw nothing threatening about them because they looked like members of her own family. She was surprised when her teacher dragged her away from them with genuine fear, but she realized that white people often saw people who looked like her family as dangerous and uncivilized.

“Mom even let Sadie come inside the house because she was well behaved and special, different from other dogs—especially the ones I’d known on the reservation.”

Sadie is an important symbol of Taffa’s budding understanding of heritage, bloodlines, and value. In Taffa’s eyes, Sadie’s lineage made her superior to the mixed-breed mutts she knew on the reservation, entitling her to special treatment and privileges. This point of view highlights Taffa’s growing sense of inadequacy and insecurity about her own mixed blood. By contrasting Sadie with the mixed-breed dogs of the reservation, this passage subtly critiques racial hierarchies and the idea of “blood purity” that pervades both Indigenous and white communities.

“I couldn’t put it into words myself, but it felt like my uncles Johnny and Gene had chosen poverty on the reservation for a reason, that their marginalized existence was self-imposed, and maintained as an act of resistance.”

Many Indigenous men in Edmond’s generation saw poverty as a refusal to conform to mainstream American ideals of success. Faced with pressure to assimilate into white American culture, their continued marginalization was a way of rejecting these demands and asserting their “Indianness.” For Johnny and Gene, rejecting white economic structures allowed them to maintain their identity, illustrating how survival strategies differ across generations of Indigenous people.

“I felt the rumble and tremor, but I refused to let it rise to the surface. I refused to let it rise because the howling was beautiful. I had seen that it was beautiful, and Sister did not understand—and Sister did not deserve to see.”

This passage describes Taffa just after returning from her uncle Johnny’s funeral, which opened her eyes to the beauty of her culture. Upon returning to school, her teacher made her stand in front of the class to explain that her uncle died in a drunk driving accident, but Taffa no longer felt ashamed. This moment marked an internal shift—before, she had internalized shame about her family and background, but she came to recognize the power of Indigenous mourning practices. The refusal to let Sister Angelica Anne witness that beauty was an act of defiance, demonstrating a newfound ownership over her cultural experiences and an unwillingness to let them be distorted by an outsider’s gaze.

“Navajo criticism threw Dad off more than white criticism. With whites, his interactions felt transactional. With Navajo people, his anxiety ran deeper. It took years, but I eventually came to understand why Dad felt diminished by Navajo culture.”

Edmond came from an Indigenous tribe that eschews materialism and has few of the visual traditions that Navajo people do. He also chose to move away from the reservation and was unafraid to go against tradition to climb the ranks at the power plant. Combined with his mixed-tribal heritage, he often felt like he was too assimilated and not Indigenous enough, even though he knew that his sacrifices were necessary to lift his family out of poverty. In particular, the passage highlights the complexities of identity within Indigenous communities—how internal hierarchies and perceptions of “authenticity” can be just as damaging as external racism. Edmond's discomfort reveals the ways in which assimilation policies fractured not only individual identities but also relationships between different Indigenous groups.

“The cultural reverberations of the Indian Relocation Act were all around me: Kiowa boys learning Apache War Dances, Mohave citizens wearing Lakota beadwork designs. The intertribal powwow circuit had been birthed by urban migration, but I wasn’t old enough to register all the changes.”

This passage describes Taffa’s experience at the intertribal powwow in Yuma. The Indian Relocation Act brought Indigenous people from various tribes and traditions together in urban centers across the country, and they banded together to uplift and preserve one another’s culture. The powwow became a site of resilience, where displaced Indigenous people create a new, shared cultural space in response to the fragmentation caused by government policies. Though assimilation was meant to erase Indigenous identities, it inadvertently facilitated a blending and strengthening of pan-Indigenous traditions, ensuring survival in new forms. This quote highlights the theme of Coming of Age and the Search for Belonging.

“I wanted to learn about our traditions, ceremonies, and beliefs, and I was happy that we’d seen the museum, but, for some reason, I was embarrassed to talk to Dad about my feelings. He was sure of himself on the reservation—like it was his world—and Mom, my sisters, and I only marginally belonged to it. Maybe I had to insist.”

Because of her assimilation and mixed blood, Taffa sometimes felt as if she wasn’t entitled to her Indigenous culture and history. She felt out of place on the reservation, but she started to understand that if she wanted access to her ancestral traditions and beliefs, she had to claim them. Her hesitation mirrors a larger issue in the Indigenous diaspora—where descendants of forcibly assimilated families must actively reclaim lost knowledge, sometimes without the full support of their families. Her insistence signaled a turning point, where she began to take responsibility for reconnecting with her culture.

“I was asking more questions, and it felt like my interest in our traditions, and the tragedy that had befallen Tommy, had set off a homing beacon in Dad. For the first time since we’d returned from Yuma, he sounded like he was turning toward tribal beliefs to lessen suffering, the nightmare scenario, and the postapocalyptic difficulties we were enduring.”

This passage describes how Taffa’s growing interest in reclaiming her Indigenous heritage also helped Edmond reignite his connection to his family and traditions. The interest of a new generation reaffirmed the value of traditional ways and perhaps showed him that completely abandoning tradition wasn’t necessary. Cultural knowledge, in this case, is presented as both cyclical and healing. The metaphor of the “homing beacon” suggests an instinctual pull back toward Indigenous ways, highlighting the idea that culture, while repressed, is never truly erased. This quote highlights the theme of coming of age and the search for belonging.

“I understood that Mom tried to flatten the enormity of the sky, of the universe, out of fear. She needed two-dimensional constellations, easy explanations without anomalies, simple stories to feel like she could control the enormity of life, while Dad’s people could see that the universe wasn’t two-dimensional at all.”

Here, Taffa describes how her mother’s religion and approach to life was based on a desire to simplify and make herself feel more in control. Likely, this need to take control of her life was her own response to her generational trauma and the lack of agency her ancestors experienced due to oppression and enslavement. However, to Taffa, this way of living felt stifling and exclusionary. The contrast between a “two-dimensional” and a more expansive view of the universe reflects the broader divide between colonial, Western frameworks and Indigenous ways of knowing, which embrace complexity, interconnection, and uncertainty. This quote highlights the theme of coming of age and the search for belonging.

“‘Study hard’ and ‘go to college’ everyone said, but I didn’t want to become the type of person who only chased after material things, status, and money. The idea of finding an elder who could teach me about Native traditions, the idea of existing as part of a non-Westernized community of thinking became the only thing that mattered.”

This passage describes Taffa’s growing frustration with Western capitalist culture and its failure to align with her ancestors’ way of life. While she tried to work hard in school and follow her family and society’s expectations, she struggled to fit into mainstream white American society and found this approach to life less fulfilling. It demonstrates a critical shift in her coming-of-age journey—she realized that success, as defined by American society, does not necessarily equate to fulfillment. Instead, she yearned for a different form of knowledge, one rooted in Indigenous traditions and communal wisdom.

“It was obviously safer if people assumed we were Hispanic, and my mother especially couldn’t understand why I’d want to deal with discrimination if I didn’t have to.”

This passage highlights one of the main conflicts between Taffa and her mother and older sisters. Taffa could pass for Hispanic or even white, and doing so would protect her from the discrimination directed at Indigenous people. This is the approach that Lorraine and her family took, and she couldn’t understand why Taffa wanted to identify with her Indigenous heritage when it just meant more discrimination and marginalization. This moment encapsulates a core tension of assimilation: the promise of safety versus the cost of identity. Lorraine saw passing as a privilege, while Taffa saw it as an erasure of self.

“It scared me, realizing how much I had come to love speeding, drinking, and the glorification of risky behavior. My impulse control was hanging by a thread. Self-harm was our twentieth-century battle cry.”

Taffa began to identify how her growing tendency toward self-harm fit in with a pattern of reckless behavior in her family. Perhaps as acts of defiance or attempts to exercise their autonomy, many of Taffa’s uncles engaged in self-destructive behaviors like drinking and driving. Now, Taffa and even her older sisters followed in their footsteps. Recklessness and self-destruction emerged as inherited coping mechanisms, illustrating how generational trauma manifests in harmful but deeply ingrained ways.

“Eagle might have started class by shining a light on our country’s failure to account for its past violence. She might have acknowledged that many of us had never heard about these atrocities. She might have considered the mental health impact the lesson would have on students like Christian and me. Instead, she made no attempt to contextualize our discussion.”

In this passage, Taffa describes discussing the nonfiction text Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown. Taffa longed for her education to contextualize her experience as a mixed-tribe Indigenous girl in New Mexico, but even when her teachers finally included relevant materials, they were presented with little sensitivity or context. The teachers didn’t consider how challenging the text might be for students like Taffa, and this callousness made Taffa feel more isolated and silenced. Education, rather than being a tool for empowerment, becomes another space of erasure when history is taught without nuance or care.

“I wanted to be thankful for his apology, but when he left, I felt sad. Talking about my half-breed status was missing the point. I didn’t give a crap if Dad had some rumored drop of white blood, or Mom had even more. My main concern wasn’t bloodlines, rather it was the despicable way our ancestors’ ideas had been bled out of our approach to life.”

As Taffa grew up, her concern shifted from confusion about her identity and where she belonged to a strong desire to identify with her Indigenous heritage, as well as frustration and anger surrounding how society discouraged her from doing so. Following her suicide attempt, her father apologized for not understanding how difficult it was for Taffa to fit in with her mixed blood, but he missed the point. Her frustration was not about percentages of ancestry or technicalities of tribal membership but about the larger erasure of Indigenous ways of life. This passage challenges Western, colonial notions of identity, which focus on blood quantum and racial classification, whereas Indigenous identity—at least for Taffa—is about connection, community, and cultural survival. This quote highlights the effects of assimilation policies on Indigenous identities.

“I needed to push the self-doubt out of my heart. I needed to find the courage to get rid of the shame. I needed to resist the conditioning, propaganda, and hate, and make self-love my primary goal.”

Taffa recognized how violence, marginalization, and assimilation policies have conspired to instill shame in Indigenous people. She and her ancestors have been urged to assimilate in mainstream American society and abandon their traditional ways of life under the implication that Indigenous people are inferior to white Europeans. This moment marked an explicit shift toward healing and self-empowerment—rejecting the imposed narratives of inferiority and reclaiming her identity as something to celebrate rather than erase. This realization was a crucial aspect of her coming-of-age journey, signifying the beginning of self-acceptance.

“Listening to him talk, I realized that my parents’ faith had made them adaptive, enduring, and strong. They viewed their marriage and their responsibility to their family as something sacred, and I admired their perseverance, but I also wasn’t ready to forgive America for its racism, and as I got ready to leave the chapel, I told him that’s how I felt.”

Taffa began to understand her parents’ commitment to Catholicism not as a weakness or a concession but as a source of strength. They were fiercely committed to one another and their family, and Taffa admired that. However, it was difficult for her to untangle their beliefs from the racist American society that obliges Indigenous people to assimilate. Where she once saw assimilation as a betrayal of culture, she now came to recognize that survival and adaptation can take many forms. However, while she gained respect for her parents’ choices, she still struggled with reconciling their faith with the country’s history of oppression. This moment captures a layered emotional truth—she could admire their resilience without excusing the injustices that made it necessary.

“I hated when other Natives policed my identity, acting like I was too assimilated, and yet here I was, judging my parents. My attitude about their work and faith, my snobbery about their choices, my desire to turn them into something they weren’t. It was all bound up in an impulse to give them the lives they should have had, the life I felt they deserved.”

Taffa realized that she had been judging her parents for their assimilation into mainstream American society, denying them the complexity and freedom of expression that had so frustrated her. This passage highlights the intergenerational tensions surrounding assimilation, showing how different generations of Indigenous people negotiate survival. Where older generations saw assimilation as a means of protection and stability, younger generations, like Taffa, often see it as erasure. Her realization demonstrates her growth—not only did she recognize that she had been applying the same exclusionary judgments to her parents, but she also began to accept that their choices were acts of survival rather than submission.