“ I’m a daughter hiding my depression,

a sister trying to make a good impression,

I’m the girl who is sitting next to you,

someone trying to live day by day,

take a look and you will see…

exactly who I want to be.”

I am not the lyrics to the music I listen to,

The way others see me,

Or how I see myself...

I am my familia, my culture, and my heritage

I am my own enemy, but the strength as a victim of my own ethnicity

I lived on the lands called Gran Aparcheria

I was a nomadic whose life depended on the buffalo   

I am who the Onate call Apache

I am who the Spanish call enemy

I call myself Inde meaning “the people”

I am the name  Apache meaning Mescalero

The God of beginning and the creator of god

I am the girl who danced into womanhood

The girl who danced to impersonate the Mountain spirits

My people had our land taken from beneath us by the Spanish Settlers

We fought and took our land back from underneath them

They could not take what was ours!

I am powerful, I am the the tribe called Comanches

Powerful and stronger than any other tribe!

I am the dominant tribe of Gran Apacheria

I was a tribe part of the Shoshone

I am my own enemy of many

I am the leader who started the era of exploration.

I tried to be the superior race,

I am the start of the melting pot,

I conquered and fell many times.

I am the people who were pushed out of my own lands

I was the 75,000 who stayed in the U.S. after the Treaty of Guadalupe

I was the hundreds of people who fled to U.S. during the Mexican Revolution

I became a part of the group lead by the revolutionaries.

Francisco Madero, Pascual Orozco, Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata…

I want to be like the women of my ethnicity

I want to be like Ellen Ochoa, Joan Baez, and Nydia Velazquez

I want to be the first for something,

I want to make history,

I want to make a difference

I want to be like Maria Corazon Aquino

The first for something…

Woman of the year and Leadership Learning Legacy

I am a filipina

I come from Malaysian and Indonesian descent

Once governed by other countries,

Spain, Great Britain, Japan, and the U.S.

I am Emilio Aguinaldo leading for independence  

I ousted the Spanish

I am a melting pot of my own world of confusion

I am a reflection of my own ethnicity