Our identities are super diverse in terms of tribes, regions, assimilation/traditional, religion, education, socioeconomic statuses, language, urban, rez, rural, etc.

Because of this, you're going to get a lot of native people who prefer different things so be aware of all the voices that speak out about the things that happen in Indian Country and on reservations.

Native identity is extremely complex that comes with different levels of security within cultural identity. Some people can grow up rez but never been a part of their traditional cultural practices, but understand the culture from a collective lived experience.An urban indian might go to ceremony and know the language but not understand the way life is on the reservation and growing up around just natives and the protocols of every day life living within a tribal community.

So many different variations are going to give you different ideas of what being Native means. Is it a lineage? Is it blood quantum? Is it acceptance from a tribal community? Is it more complex than that? sovereignty, culture, language?

So sometimes when you ask questions as a non-native, realize that you are hearing from the perspective of one native person that has a unique lived experience of what it means to be an indigenous person and that sometimes might lend to the responses you may receive, pending the question (such as life on a reservation (where, per cap tribe or not, rural or not), mascots, blood quantum, tribal government, language, culture).

With that said, this does create a lot of tribal politics amongst our own people and it can get pretty vicious, especially when you include nepotism in a tribal community.