What Happens When You Inherit a Mohawk Identity, But Not All the Knowledge?

I recently finished two books by Gabriel Horn, The Native American Book of Change and The Native American Book of Wisdom.

Like The Theory of Crows, these books didn't feel like I was simply reading something. They felt like I was finding pieces of a conversation I was already having with myself.

There were so many themes that connected with things I've been openly talking about lately. Identity. Change. Survival. Ancestry. Nature. Culture. And the complicated feeling of trying to understand where you belong.

One question kept coming back to me:

What happens when you inherit an identity, but some of the knowledge and practices that should have come with it were interrupted before you were born?

I grew up in Akwesasne knowing I was Mohawk.

But I didn't grow up deeply connected to language, ceremony, or traditional teachings. I moved around a lot and went to different schools where I was often the token Native kid. I knew I was different.

I also grew up in a very contemporary, colonized world. Even living on a reservation didn't mean that everything connected to my culture was available to me.

My great-grandmother Catherine went to residential school. The effects of that history didn't end with her. Generational trauma can move through families and influence the choices people make, often through fear, survival, and pain.

I grew up between worlds.

White and Native.

Queer and straight.

Contemporary and traditional.

And for a long time, I sometimes felt like an imposter in my own identity because I didn't know everything I thought I should know.

But here's the thing.

I didn't need all the historical facts in my head to know who I was.

I just felt Mohawk.

That has been something I've been thinking about more as I've gotten older.

The books also made me think about how colonization wasn't only about taking land. Destroying food sources, disrupting relationships with nature, suppressing culture and ceremony, and attacking Indigenous ways of life were all part of the larger attempt to disrupt Indigenous peoples and their ways of living and knowing.

Nature wasn't separate from life.

Animals were food.

The land provided medicine.

Culture and survival were connected to the land.

So what happens when those connections are disrupted?

What happens generations later?

And what happens when we begin finding our way back?

I've been thinking about change differently too.

Change is inevitable. But losing your values, your relationships, or your cultural center doesn't have to be.

Indigenous cultures have survived by adapting, continuing, remembering, and carrying knowledge forward. Survival isn't only about preserving everything exactly as it was. It's also about knowing what to carry with you as the world changes.

That idea really stayed with me.

Maybe survival isn't only about what was lost.

It's also about what remained.

Somehow, through all the disruption, I still grew up knowing who I was.

I grew up between worlds. Native and white. Traditional and contemporary. Queer and straight. Always figuring out where I fit.

Now I wonder if being between worlds was never really about not belonging.

Maybe it taught me how to see from more than one place.

And maybe wisdom isn't about having every answer.

Maybe it's learning how to pay attention. To observe. To question. To listen to our relationships with people, community, land, nature, ancestors, and the generations that come after us.

That's part of what reading has been giving me lately.

These stories don't necessarily give me answers. They help me recognize questions I've already been carrying.

They give me language for things I've felt but didn't always know how to explain.

And sometimes they remind me that I'm not alone.

I think that's becoming an important part of my creative practice too.

I don't want my art and storytelling to only be about my struggles. I want to understand what those experiences are teaching me and find ways to carry that learning forward.

Through art.

Through stories.

Through teaching.

Through community.

Maybe that's why these books have connected with me at this point in my life.

Change happens to us.

Wisdom helps us move through it.

Story is how we carry what we've learned forward.

Art is how I make that story visible.

And community is why I share it.

I grew up knowing I was Mohawk.

Now I'm learning more about what that means to me.

I don't need to have every answer.

I can keep paying attention, keep learning, keep creating, and keep asking questions.

Maybe that's enough of a place to begin.

Kit Thomas | Indigenous cultural reconnection

If this resonates with you, leave me a comment. I'd love to know what you're thinking about in your own journey.

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