Ainu of Japan and Hiromu Arakawa

Along with the Yamato and Ryukyuan ethnic groups, the Ainu people are one of the primary historic ethnic groups of Japan and are, along with the Ryukyuans and Bonin Islanders, one of the few ethnic minorities native to the Japanese archipelago.

So they were indigenous to the Japanese islands before it became Japanese. Similar to Native populations of North America:

The Ainu were subject to forced assimilation during the Japanese colonization of Hokkaido since at least the 18th century. 

Hiromu Arakawa's manga Silver Spoon is set in Hokkaidō and includes a chapter explicitly covering the history of the island and of the Ainu people. Arakawa in a 2006 interview detailed how the repeated themes of racial discrimination across her works stem from her own family's histories as settlers who displaced Ainu in Hokkaidō.

Hiromu Arakawa (荒川 弘) is a female Japanese manga artist. She is best known for Fullmetal Alchemist which some sources suggest does a good job of depicting discriminated-against populations behaving in complex, real-feeling ways, somewhat incidentally to its main plot.

She's one of five children in a country where most families probably only have one or two kids. I'm extrapolating from American norms, but that alone implies she's probably not mainstream Japanese and is likely an ethnic and cultural minority or at least mixed.

"My ancestors were farmers and homesteaders who displaced Ainu and stole their land from them. But ironically enough, some of my own relatives have Ainu blood in them. That seems complicated, but it's just an everyday fact of life to have neighbors of differing ethnicity." – Hiromu Arakawa

My father grew up on a farm and in the military he mocked the ignorance of "city boys" when he knew things about nature they didn't know. I've never read that farmers inherently know the kinds of things my Dad knew. I have read that indigenous peoples know that stuff.

She doesn't outright say that she is part Ainu, but she sounds like my father: someone glossing over cultural differences by emphasizing "I grew up on a farm." I'm fairly confident Dad did it to deflect attention away from being part Native.

This blog began due to interest in my lost cultural heritage through my father, but it's not really intended to be about Cherokee people exclusively nor even Native Americans per se. This type of pattern seems common the world over.

The original subtitle was something like Exploring the Hidden Native Influence on my Life and the World. It's currently An American mutt thinks about her Native heritage.

I think I shall change it back.