Before I start to get deep into things, I realized (while steam cleaning the floor) that I needed to start with my lineage, and why it’s important to you.

I have a lot of reasons why I’m proud of who my ancestors were, and why I keep talking about it, oh, everywhere. I think my friends can recite my family tree better than I can. On one finger, it’s a pretty unbelievable list of people mostly thanks to the long list of people who made similar claims but were lying and out to scam someone. On the other finger, I was the only person who believed Dad’s stories about it. On another finger – let’s say it’s my bird finger – knowing my Dad was telling the truth is the best rude gesture I’ve got towards people who literally said I was crazy, “putting on airs” and even tried to have me locked away.

There’s a whole lot of famous people in my family tree, you see. Directly up, I have Uncas, founder of the Mohegan tribe. (Not loved by all, but famous just the same.) Around him are so many sachems (chiefs), grand sachems (super chiefs) and more than six female sachems that historians insist couldn’t have happened because patriarchy. Further down I have Samson Occom, regarded as father of the Brotherton tribe and also not loved by all. Going up another line I have a few kings of England, Normandy… a lonely German shepherd. I have no idea what he shepherded, but I’ve always been curious.

Keep going up and we’ve got the founders of Norway and Finland I kid you not. (Which was super cool when I found out.) The best part of that branch of the tree is right there is a Samali shamaness who made queen and  is probably the first cougar in recorded history.  Probably not loved by all, but definitely been loved on by a few.

There’s also a random Norseman named Longsword. I really want to know his story.

On another side, and closer to home, are medicine people, shamans: “Indian Doctors” a couple of documents called them. This I think is the branch of the family that had to flee for their lives (as Dad once put it). Even today, especially with the New England tribes, to surface as someone of that bent can have consequences. As late as the early 1900’s, if you came out as someone of Medicine you’d quietly disappear from Martha’s Vinyard. I’ve been careful in the past several years because I was once accused of being a satanist when I was not, and I lost my family for it. I told a linguist contact that I could not join her church because I was “raised traditionally” and lost that contact for it. It’s 2024, and people are just as superstitious as they ever were.

It isn’t that I never toyed with the concept of other things. I’ve had my desperate times. I’ve had curious times. I’ve had your usual spate of experimentation while I found myself. In the end, though, the one thing I’ve always come back to was who my family were.  The things Dad told me. There was no skin color in his tales. They were people, and they were things. He knew I loved to hear it, so he’d talk to me.

Somewhere along the way, the parents fell for the dividing racist crap that’s shoved in our faces day in and day out. I had started family tree research in my early twenties, but as the “evil witch” and a whole lot of generational abuse from my mother I was cut out of it. When I finally was allowed to be serious about going through things (after both parents had died), I discovered very quickly that the only thing important to them had been whether someone was brown enough to record. Mom was desperate to be Cherokee, you see. It didn’t matter that some of those English kings were hers.

In her desperation to bend the family to a lie, things were shattered…ah. It’s a long story that I’ve told elsewhere and may not ever need to be told here. Dad went along with Mom the way he always did, and my older brother… well… he’s an opportunist, even if it means breaking a sibling’s back to do it I learned recently. When I was younger I always knew I’d be the last one. Call it a psychic sense.  Being the Last Unicorn so to speak is not as romantic as the movie makes it out to be. It seers.

When I brought up the pale famous people, both mom and my brother had sneered, “Your dad didn’t care about all that!”

He cared enough to know. He cared enough to get a twinkle in his eye as he told me, as he let his daughter know she was a princess. Just like in the book.

Like I said, in those days the tales had no skin color.

So here I type to you, someone of two lineage views. There was my father, who knew some of it and proudly passed it down no matter who it was in the tree. Then there was my  mother, who couldn’t accept that her ancestors were something to be proud of because it somehow meant she was someone other than who she was. And now there’s me, the culmination.

I’m no one special, really,. I have a way of typing stories only because I’ve spent my entire life doing it. I’ve made impact on some lives, but I’m pretty sure most of us have to someone out there. I have gifts, sure. A lot of people out there do. If I continue with this blog I’ll have a lot of fantastic things to tell you that will probably be true; things I’ve done or seen or know.

But let’s say I didn’t know about the nobility, the shamans, and I only knew my mother’s lie. I’d still have my personality. Chances are I’d still be a storyteller. I’d still have prophetic dreams once in a while – a thing that’s big business because having dreams is not uncommon.

My life isn’t fantastic because of my special lineage. My lineage is fantastic because I think it’s special.

Okay, what does that have to do with you? Why should you care?

I meet people who can’t truthfully talk about kings and queens in their family tree. They don’t have medicine folk. Or Norse “gods”. Some may not know at all. I met one who claimed to have never heard a nursery rhyme (and I’m not sure I believe them). These people I’m talking about were more powerful than I could ever hope to be. They found the arcane arts special enough to care. They made an effort.

They aren’t fantastic because their families are special. They’re special because they made themselves fantastic.

My family tree is much more fun when it’s a private joke between myself and people I like, but sadly native American social standards will often have you hauling out the family tree just to prove you belong. Takes a lot of the joy out of it, actually. But sometimes I’ll like someone enough to say “my ancestor was this and this” and watch. I either get an annoyed response along the lines of “bully for you” or (the worst) hit across the person who has to one-up everything to be better than you. Or I get someone who plays along with it, maybe putting their pinky to their mouth while we twitter ho ho ho at each other. Guess who ends up having the chance to be my friend.

The biggest reason I typed all this was I’ll be talking about it here and there through this blog. Some things will just be important, and that’s the way it is. It’s going to be unbelievable sounding. I’m not going to be lying. Maybe if you’ve come to this blog post in need of something, you’re here to learn how to talk about your own relatives in such a way that they also sound unbelievable without you spinning a single lie.

Because your ancestors can be super amazing. You just have to look at them in the right light.

It’s okay if they were only a German shepherd – the occupation not a dog. Hell, it’s okay if they were a German shepherd for that matter. Imagine the fantastic tale they could tell you about that sheep they saved from the crevice right before it was about to be eaten! The wolves were everywhere!!

A lot of my family were farmers. I think that’s pretty amazing, too. I’m actually trying to follow in their footsteps right now: to somehow get my hands on the acreage to have an orchard. On the old family land would be amazing. By my father’s river is a slight must.

Well. I hope you got my point on all that. No Medicine talk; no magic… well, unless you count the magic of loving all parts of you, and of seeing how great it makes you even when you don’t know it’s there. Self love, I guess.