Tell Me Who You Are
Cherokee, Catholic, and Trans
My family didn’t put any kind of gender norms on me, because our language doesn’t allow for it
By Ahyoka, as told to Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi
I’m a Keetoowah Cherokee, full-blooded on my mother’s side, though I’m light-skinned and light-eyed. At 27 years old, I’m one of the youngest first-language Cherokee speakers, since we spoke only Cherokee at home. As a kid, I didn’t know people spoke anything else!
I’m also president of my school’s Catholic Student Organization, and a transgender person, a Two-Spirit person living in rural — really rural — Oklahoma. I used to look very different. I was the popular, preppy-looking jock guy with a short haircut, I had tats, I was so skinny. But as a child, I just naturally came up as a girl. My family didn’t put any kind of gender norms on me, because our language doesn’t allow for it. We don’t even have a word for “gender” in our language! If I say he is doing something or she is doing something, “doing” is the same word. All the words in our language are that way. In our traditional way of life, we believe that I don’t tell you who you are, you tell me who you are, and that is who you are.
