NDN Country is small

May 17

For the first time Jessie was standing on her ancestral Karuk land last week in Northern California (actual northern, along the Klamath River) and had no idea she was on the property where I grew up. She unknowingly saw my grandmother, brothers, sisters and cousins homes. She was in California for her work on the documentary “Undamming the Klamath”. When she was there she asked our mutual friend Chook (who I grew up with and she had been on the camera crew who interviewed him for the documentary) about getting a tribal basket design tattooed. He pointed her in our direction, to check out Tattoo 34 because Jessie has lived in Portland her whole life. I am so thankful to Chook for connecting us with Jessie.

She came in to the tattoo shop today for walk-in Wednesday. We had only emailed and I didn’t know what she looked like. But when I walked into the shop lobby she stood up, we stepped towards the other and hugged, without hesitation or one word. It was like we had always known each other.

Jessie got a tattoo from Toby of a Karuk basket design found on her great great great grandmother Elizabeth Hickox’s basket. She now has a permanent reminder of her family and her people.

And while she waited and got tattooed we talked and talked and also just sat together, enjoying being in a space with someone whose ancestors knew our own, this far from our homelands, feeling the warmth of knowing and connection. It was a good day to be Indigenous :)