“My Cherokee name is Gigage, which means red.
My family, on my dad’s side, are mostly all full-bloods, so they speak a lot of Cherokee fluently. And so they’ll call me Gigage. My mom’s family is Keetoowah. All of them have jet black, straight hair on both sides. They have either that dark brown or that golden honey-looking brown or black.
When I was born, it was pitch black, and then it slowly transitioned into red hair. Everyone thought, ever since I was about eight, that I dyed my hair. And still now everyone’s like, what hair color is that? People say, is it dyed?
I got no trouble at school or from other people ever. I was almost the only natural redhead in high school, because where I’m from there were a lot of Indians or kind of a mix I guess you could say, so they had like brown hair or they dyed it blond.
Where I grew up is very rural. On our farm we mostly had cattle and chicken houses. I kind of want to get out of the small town, because that’s all I know is a small town. In Watts we don’t have a gas station, we don’t even have a stoplight. That’s how small it is. All we have is our school and a convenience store.
A lot of people where we live, they just work on farms. They’re content with their lives. Like really content. There’s the market for their goods.
I’m studying to be a nurse right now. I’m currently waiting to take my state boards to get my nursing license.
Oklahoma’s just calm, quiet. You see cattle everywhere you look. Get to the middle of Oklahoma and you will literally see tumbleweeds.
Helping each other brings people together. Like, “I know we haven’t talked in 20 years but can you help me with this and I’ll owe you back that favor?” And no hassle, no strings attached, no nothing. Because in Oklahoma not everybody will agree on everything. Yet there’s this sense of getting along and working together. I like that.”
