Corn and Potatoes
I have long thought of my Native heritage as a silver thread running through the tapestry of my life and holding it together when that shouldn't be possible.
I have a predominantly Caucasian genetic disorder. My father was probably ethnically mostly Irish and French and the Irish have the most families with two or more members with this disorder.
My mother was a German immigrant. Her mother had a maiden name of noble origin. Other than "German noble," I know nothing about her ethnicity or ancestry.
I'm probably about 3 percent Cherokee from my father's side. And I grew up in the Deep South of the US where grits are a thing and it's a thing we got from Native American culture.
Corn and potatoes are both native to the Americas and many "American" -- as in culture of the United States of America -- foods are really foods originally from some of the hundreds of tribal cultures that were here before Europeans began "politely" invading and settling seemingly empty lands when mobile Natives were off in there summering places or whatever, then acting like the return of those people was a hostile invasion.
My genetic disorder comes with substantial gut issues and I have gone through periods where eating at all was challenging. Prior to being diagnosed, as my condition deteriorated, my diet heavily skewed towards stuff like Carnation Instant Breakfast.
In other words, I was living on the kind of nutritional drink they give sick people who can't eat.
Corn and potatoes are two foods I don't have to limit. I frequently eat them together and have written about that elsewhere.
And I have long thought of that as part of that saving grace or silver thread of Native influence running through my life and keeping me alive when I should have died and protecting me from the deadly heritage of my Caucasian genes.
Footnote
Thanks to taking far too many drugs of the prescription variety -- no, I'm not a wild child party girl like some people imagine when I talk casually about heavy drug use -- I have Swiss cheese for brains.
That's my story. I'm sticking to it. No, it's not senility!!!
Anyway, I'm pedantic and like to double check stuff and not assume I know for sure. So here's a couple of sources where I bothered to verify that corn and potatoes are Native to the Americas:
See also Looking for Trouble for more commentary on how I think this mess of Europeans in North America began, rooted partly in cultural and language barriers. Assuming you haven't seen it previously, which you may have because I have likely linked to it AT LEAST once before on this blog.
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