The girl on the right is my nanita, mi abuelita, my grandmother, if we still lack a common frame of reference (though I always called her "nanita"). My papá's mamá. I didn't know her too long, but we lived with her for a short time, and those days are some of my favorite memories.

Mi antepasados/as on my nanita's side are very fierce, all of them. And I'm not trying to smack on an Indian stereotype! They are! Well, let me be specific. By "fierce," I mean...happy. Strong. Direct. Expressive. I don't mean "savage." You will see more pictures and know what I mean, given the overlap and comparison. They all stand and look into the camera with fire, and self-knowledge, and a certain liveliness that reminds me of some images of a certain cat I know. It makes me smile and feel a deep affection. Because I understand them by their eye and their stance. I know their heart. Because they live still, in me.

From what I know, my nanita became a United States citizen and moved here from Juarez, Chihuahua (Mexico). My father's Uncle Jeno brought them over. At some point, then, she became a migrant farmworker, and was living with her husband, mi abuelo (my grandfather), Felipe Herrera—who I do not believe ever became a US Citizen. He was a Mexican citizen. Him, I never met. Of course, the last bridge is my father, but all these are stories for later. And there are very beautiful and admirable people on my mother's side I would talk about, as well.

For now, I proudly share with you this picture of Aurelia and María de la Luz ("Maria of the Light") Quintana, in "Two Indian Girls at the Turn of the Century," as my father has named it. His uncle Roberto (Quintana) took this picture in 1917, when my nanita was only 11. This is one of the most valued pictures in his collection, and one of the oldest and in the worst condition. I've tried to bring out the details a bit. But the image, itself, is on an old tin can which is almost a uniform gray, and the contrast is terrible. I did my best, but did not want to mess too much more with the cracks. I'll find a happy medium between artificially smoothed-over and minimally touched/repaired, but for now, I dont mind the artifacts. They feel, to me, a valid part of the portal through which my ancestors now look into my own eyes. The scars of time, the furrows of years that have been riven into the fragile paper medium.

I stare into it, try to see past that. Try to connect to the eyes. Can they see me? Does the blood know itself? We stand in such different worlds. Looking at pictures like this, I better understand certain feelings that have come to me, all my life. Certain priorities, yearnings, beliefs about my environment, the amount of sun I crave, the physique, the love of nature and the ability to feel at one with it, exchange with her, refresh and nurture her.

It's important to know of where we come from. To know what parts of Earth nurtured our family line. It is not a piece you can forget, there is no piece that will cease to matter. And growing up away from the Brown in my family, I was a bit of an anomoly. Both my full brother and myself. We looked quite distinctly different. Not the Black Sheep. Je-je. I smile. The Cocoa Sheep.

And I felt apart from my history. I existed in a nether state.

Who looks like me?

I love to see these pieces of my family, these earnest, dark, proud pieces of my family. I feel at home. I feel at one. I don't look exactly like them, either. But now I can see all the pieces of me. And it makes so much more sense.

And it carries on. The bones, the spirit, the name, the blood. Mixes, makes new faces, but re-uses the old...

...Nanita is much darker (especially in this early foto), but her eyes and face remind me a little bit of my eldest daughter, who has beautiful eyes that have, her entire life, prompted some people to ask if she is "part Asian."

I'm guessing that they see the reflection of the Nahautl and the Taramuhara indians—and whatever other mixtures we don't know about swirled about in there—looking back at them through her gaze. (My eldest daughter's mother is Scottish/English, after all. Not very "Asian" looking.) But just as I see the spirit and the humor of mi antepasados in the proud stance of my eldest son, as he takes his turn in front of the lens, it is clear that the proud ancestry of our Indian past also shines back out of my daughters' eyes.

It's important to know where we come from, who came before us, and from where on the Earth our People came. There is a love there, a debt there, then. A respect, and a gift, too. A belonging. An obligation. A future.