THINNING BLOOD

A Native American writer reflects on her ties to her dwindling tribe.

Georgia native Myers was 12 when she first traveled to the tribal homelands of the S’Klallam people in Washington state. Even though she was not raised to fully embrace her heritage, she knew that her soul had found its rightful home. In this four-part collection of essays, the author excavates the history of the women in her S’Klallam bloodline and reflects on how she may be the last person in her family who will ever carry “the title of tribal member according to our blood quantum laws.” She organizes the text like an imaginary totem pole, with each of the four family members she discusses represented through an animal spirit story and essays that intertwine their lives—and Myers’ own—with S’Klallam history and culture. Her full-blooded great-grandmother Lillian occupies the bottom of the pole. Lillian was Bear, a woman who protected those she loved, including the mother who scorned her for marrying a White man and bearing half-blood children. Next is the author’s grandmother Vivian, whom Myers envisions as Salmon. Feisty and independent, Vivian swam against the current by falling in love with a White man, running her own business, and beating breast cancer twice. Sitting atop Salmon is Hummingbird, the animal Myers associates with her mother, a kind and energetic woman always seeking to help others where she lives in Alabama. At the very top of the pole is Myers’ animal, Raven, a creature she chose for its cunning and creativity. As Myers reminds readers—through musings on the forced sterilization of Native women and the death of the S’Klallam language—her fate and the long-term fate of her tribe are one and the same. One day, her people may be “as much a myth as the sea-wolf or the thunderbird.” Thankfully, we have this record to remember.

A quietly elegiac memoir that could serve as an enduring historical document.