Genes That Never Fade

In Falen Johnson’s recent play Salt Baby, the central character is a young Métis woman tormented by her pale complexion, which leads people to mistake her for a non-Native. “I been told I look white my entire life,” she laments. She considers DNA testing as a way to prove her Tuscarora/Mohawk ancestry, although she anguishes about the possibility of unexpected results. Would it be so bad if you found out you are only one-quarter Native? asks her white boyfriend. “I wouldn’t be me. I would feel like I had been living a lie, like my entire existence was bullshit,” she answers. Still she pursues the DNA idea, attempting to recruit her father so she will have a Y chromosome to work with. Dad is deeply unenthusiastic. “I don’t want to be anything different than what I’ve been my whole life,” he tells her, echoing her own sentiments. “This land, this place, these people, this is me. A pie chart or a graph can say what it wants about me, but I know who I am.”

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