I don't know what it means to be Native American.  I know that I am one, and that's pretty much it.  I'm also White, though, even though my mother has always taught me to value my Indian-ness.  But I never learned what that meant, not from her or the two or three family members that strongly identify with being Cherokee.  I mean, what I know I learned from movies and documentaries just like everyone else.  I know I feel a deep emptiness inside, and sometimes there's a rage about what I am and what happened to us.... but I try not to let it bother me because it just brings me down.  I just don't know, you see.  I think that's where the real pain is.