My mother had no idea of what tribe she was, nor did her mother. They were raised out of the culture in Los Angeles. The family was completely assimilated into the white culture. She always experienced prejudice. Later on, when we moved to the burbs, we both experienced prejudice.

The kids would call me names. They would say your mom’s an n-word. Everybody was white in our neighborhood. Everyone was protestant. It was clean-cut. The boys played sports and the girls were cheerleaders, and everyone was Republican and everyone went to church. It was just squeaky-clean.

My parents moved there because they wanted me to have a nice normal upbringing, but it was pretty hellish. There was no room for creativity. But those were the times. It was stifling, but it might have been good for me. It made me face a lot of things.

Finally I went through high school there.

I went to Downey Elementary school in the nineteen sixties in the ‘burbs. It was so suburban. Do you know the TV show The Wonder Years?

I’m the same age as the character of the kid in that show. They had the look, the cars, and the houses. It was the nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties, dead on!

I went to Downey high school, the same school as Karen and Richard Carpenter. They graduated a few years before me. I didn’t know them, and they were millionaires by then.

We just weren’t into their music at all. She had a beautiful voice but their songs were so sappy and saccharin. I graduated in 1975, so we all liked Led Zeppelin or David Bowie. The music we liked had nothing to do with the Carpenters. But all the teachers liked them. They said the Carpenters were great kids.