I am not Pocahontas by Elissa Washuta

I am not Pocahontas is written by Elissa Washuta; the article focuses on vanishing the
indigenous people. Elissa’s voice is full of confusion as a child because she is not sure of her
identity. She gets questions like “how much Indian are you?” which brings more questions to her
than answers. Elissa only knows that she is half Indian because the mother was Indian and the
father was not. However, her mother feeds her curiosity by giving her a card that had her ethnic
breakdown; so, she has fractions of Cowlitz and cascade blood in her making her an awkward
hybrid.
She lives in denial because Elissa thinks Disney’s” Pocahontas”, which was released in
1995, was the real Indian, and she was the fake one. Hollywood Indian and many other films
focused on the confrontations of indigenous communities and the colonizers. Films like thunder
heart (1992) point out that a person’s identity is determined by the blood quantum and shakes the
ancestral memory from Lakota, a character in the film. Many Indian tribes use blood quantum to
define their membership. Non-Indians introduced these baselines, bringing out the effects of
colonization on the natives.
Overall, Elissa is confident of her tribe and determined to live happily as a legitimate
person of mixed ancestry. The author’s audience is the colonialists’ nations which discriminates

Surname 2
and makes life unbearable for natives with mixed ancestry. Remarkably, the text speaks to the
Americans who came and changed the lives of the natives. The Indians have to prove their
identity and the extent to which they are natives from time to time, and this irks the Washuta.