To Be American

As my body was arousing this Saturday morning from a restful sleep, I was thinking. Sometimes I get my best thinking done before full reality sets in, when there's still room for imagination in my brain. I was thinking about the term Native American. This is not about Native Americans of indigenous descent. This is about native Americans like me of Heinz 57 descent. To be a native means to be born in a certain place. I was born in America; that makes me a native American, right? I cetainly can't be a native Brit or a native German, or a native Syrian. Even the native Syrians in my family tree were descended from Greeks and quite possibly others. The native Sicilians in my children's family trees were decended from Arabs; they did not call themselves Arab Sicilians. So why do I have to call myself a European American or an Arab American? Why can't I be a native American? After all, it seems pretty much agreed that the indigenious Americans originated somewhere else. Perhaps they should more correctly be called Siberian Americans. No, I guess that won't go over too well. In the meantime, I hope it will be okay for me to call myself an native American, born and raised in America, as were my parents and grandparents and many more before them.