My niece asked me how I would react if she revealed she was a man instead of a woman and I told her I'd take her suit shopping.

Don't get me wrong, her current suits are nice, she rocks them, but Native men have a long and important history to uphold when it comes to presentation.

Sure sure there are song, ceremony, and other considerations, but that'd all have to come later.

Her hypothetical led to a long conversation about history and Native men's current vanity and how it's all connected

To note other genders in our community have similar history, I just can't speak to those in the way l can to this, and others I'm sure can do it better.

Also to note, I only mention suits cause its niece D's style, being extra comes in many styles, being individual is part of being extra.

Trust me, Native unks wearing a band t-shirt and jeans, thought about the ensemble and what their audience is gonna think about it.

That's because extra is traditional, style is cultural, and vanity is survival.

My grandpa Ike rode his wagon 40 miles from home to town to get supplies, sell work, and do odd jobs.

He did it wearing clothing over his clothing and water to wash with.

Two sets of pants and a pull over, over his shirt.

He'd pull over outside of town and wash off and take off his outer layer and the dust covering them.

Why did he do this?

Several reasons most are connected to colonialism

1, it's always been traditional to look good, you wanna see extra, look to an ndn man and his underlying reasons for the clothing he chooses.

Add to this historic trauma from colonial society and residential schools constantly telling us and others that we are primitive.

Taken as children and physically and mentally abused in order to "civilize" us and make us human.

Move further into colonialism, and Native men were often the public face of their families and their nations, they looked bad then their wives looked bad, their nation looked bad. And no self respecting Native was gonna allow that.

I mean my grandfather's clothes were all made by family, so his clothes had to be perfect, otherwise his family just wasn't civilized.

So when my grandfather got to town he couldn't be dusty, his Clothing couldn't be messed, even if all the white people where filthy.

It was ok for them, but if he showed up dusty he was a "dirty savage" that didn't know better and his wife "didn't care for her family"

This wasn't just about his vanity.

If he was as dusty or had dirty hands like the white man next to him, nobody would hire him, sell to him, or buy from him.

He would work next to white men in fields and on construction projects and clean his hands, face and clothing as soon as they were done, just to be accepted by his bosses as equal to the white men.

He could either be called vain and work or a primitive animal and not.

Because Nobody wants to work with, buy from or sell to the dirty savage.

To not have a higher standard meant his family didn't get what they needed to live.

Not to mention the children of anyone that wasn't 10 x extra were taken away to be "raised civilized and clean" by abusive priests and nuns.

Vanity was a shield, a tool, a doorway to the things his family needed to survive.

So many pressures in life required him to never drop his standards.

And so it was never enough to just be like everyone else, a Native man had to be extra to be seen as even the basic level of human to outsiders.

This mentality seeped into life, into the way my grandfather was in all aspects of his existence.

His hands never stayed dirty, his shirts never stayed stained, and his hair always looked amazing.

He stopped by the stream every day coming home to wash up even long after he traded his wagon for a pickup.

He never came into the house with dirty hands or sweat from his labor.

His wife and family deserved the same respect as the outer world.

He lived that life, he taught that life, he was the example of that life.

So when you think of the vanity that is the Native Unk remember the men that raised us had to be extra to be seen as human.