As told to BC Pires

My name is Tra­cy Ass­ing and I'm the on­ly Amerindi­an in Town.

I on­ly have one broth­er but I think of my­self as com­ing from a large fam­i­ly in Ari­ma. Be­cause my ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly has al­ways had a huge pres­ence in my life. I live in Cas­cade now.

My mom's fam­i­ly lived at the top of the hill and my dad's at the bot­tom, along the riv­er bank, lots of aunts and un­cles in-be­tween. The Carib Queen, Valenti­na Med­i­na, was my grand­fa­ther's sis­ter. I spent my ear­ly child­hood up the hill, down the hill, ex­plor­ing the riv­er, watch­ing it change with flood­ing and quar­ry­ing and pol­lu­tion.

All the women in my fam­i­ly were schooled un­der the Catholic church from the time of the Ari­ma Mis­sion. I went to Catholic school. I un­der­stood it as for­mal­i­ty and rit­u­al. But I wasn't "raised Catholic." The for­est is a tem­ple. The wa­ter­fall is a place of wor­ship. Na­ture takes its course. Af­ter we die, we go on to feed oth­er life. Life ever­last­ing.

Around the world, in­dige­nous peo­ple have been swelling Catholic ranks for cen­turies. A com­mon con­ver­sion tac­tic was the re­place­ment of the Earth Moth­er with a Catholic rep­re­sen­ta­tive: the Vir­gin Mary, San­ta Rosa, etc. So they would, we would, go to church, but still hold on to our be­lief sys­tems. I had for­mal re­li­gious in­struc­tion at the church and at school. I was very good at it.

For us, our Amerindi­an her­itage is a way of life. Re­la­tion­ships with the riv­er and the for­est, with an­i­mals we raised and hunt­ed were cul­ti­vat­ed very con­scious­ly. I didn't think it par­tic­u­lar­ly unique un­til I start­ed go­ing to school. First his­to­ry lessons are in­evitably that the is­land's first in­hab­i­tants were dec­i­mat­ed and the in­dige­nous then dis­ap­pears from the his­tor­i­cal record.

I pray all the time. To the sun. The moon. The ocean. The riv­er. The moun­tains. The land, so things can grow. The plants. I give thanks for every­thing I en­counter, good and bad. I go in the for­est. I am dis­tract­ed by my wor­ries. I stump my toe and fall down. I learn to pay at­ten­tion to where I am go­ing. I learn pa­tience.

I was di­ag­nosed with hy­per­ac­tive thy­roid at age 13 and docs want­ed to put me on lithi­um and ra­di­a­tion. But I don't take any of the clas­si­cal­ly–read "med­ical­ly"–pre­scribed treat­ments. My dad start­ed me on yo­ga and New Agey/Amerindi­an po­tions and crys­tals, changed my di­et and for the most part it has worked. But it is hard for me to re­lax. I can't even float. The clos­est I get to re­lax­ation is hav­ing a hand-rolled "bush cig­ar" in the for­est.

In­stead of a ted­dy bear, I had a ted­dy cat. I share my apart­ment with a cat called "Cat." I want­ed to ho­n­our her wild, nat­ur­al life and didn't give her a "hu­man name." Al­though the land­la­dy calls her Nin­ja. We talk of­ten and she likes it when I call her, "Wild Girl" or "Sweet Girl". (The cat, not the land­la­dy.)

As I grew in­to be­ing a writer and recog­nised the pow­er of pub­lished work, I felt com­pelled to write the in­dige­nous back in­to the sto­ry of these is­lands. My doc­u­men­tary, The Amerindi­ans pre­miered at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Fes­ti­val in 2010. It won best short doc­u­men­tary at Toron­to's Caribbean Tales last year and is be­ing used in Caribbean Stud­ies and In­dige­nous Stud­ies class­rooms at sev­er­al schools in North Amer­i­ca.

There were many rea­sons for in­dige­nous peo­ple not to stand up be­fore: be­ing called un­civilised or can­ni­bal. A beer is a Carib, right? And Arawak sells chick­en. I think we will find that in­dige­nous blood runs through the veins of a greater sec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion than we have al­lowed our­selves to imag­ine.

Be­ing Amerindi­an is im­por­tant to me and to my fam­i­ly. It isn't all that I am but it is the who I am that I will al­ways rep­re­sent.

The best thing about be­ing the on­ly Amerindi­an in Town is that no one asks any ques­tions when I dis­ap­pear in­to the bush. The worst thing is (deal­ing with) the peo­ple who treat the place like they're vis­it­ing. And they are ter­ri­ble vis­i­tors at that. The oth­er day I found a beer can stuck in the stone un­der­neath a wa­ter­fall.

"Tri­ni" is the ti­tle con­ferred to some­one born here.

My blood is in the soil of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Read a longer ver­sion of this fea­ture at www.BCRaw.com