Hi fellow posters, thanks for all your work and research on this site. I joined b/c I wanted to respond w/possible resources to someone researching the 2012 misconceptions, and I thought I'd introduce myself first. My name is María Christina Blanco and I'm Bolivian-American, I consider myself a latina of indigenous descent, as I am mestiza (mixed European and Quechua/Aymara ancestry). I was born in the States to a white American mother and Bolivian father. I live in Boston, MA and I'm a mom and a community health worker, and also a have-been/hope-to-go-back student working on a bachelors degree in public health. My work/studies are about culture & community development and organizing as a resource for health (ie traditional midwifery, community health workers, stuff like that.) I believe that we as people and communities have the resources to create good health from our cultural knowledge, traditions, and power to organize for justice, and I think that to do that we need to listen and learn from each other in a respectful way that values self-determination. I could ramble on & on and reprint my Facebook rant about latino racial identity and the census and so on but I'll spare you
One resource I'd like to repost here, though, is the antiracist essay written by the white author Rev. Myke Johnson called "Wanting To Be Indian: When Spiritual Searching Turns Into Cultural Theft," on google docs at
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3AkBP6hep78IYJ%3Awww.a2u2.org%2Fpictures%2Fpdfs%2FWabanaki+article.pdf+%22wanting+to+be+indian%22&hl=en&gl=us. (A link posted on this forum in 2005 is no longer active.) It really influenced me as a young adult, and maybe it would be helpful to point out to posters who are new to these issues...
