Hi fellow posters, thanks for all your work and research on this site. I joined b/c I wanted to respond w/possible resources to someone researching the 2012 misconceptions, and I thought I'd introduce myself first. My name is María Christina Blanco and I'm Bolivian-American, I consider myself a latina of indigenous descent, as I am mestiza (mixed European and Quechua/Aymara ancestry). I was born in the States to a white American mother and Bolivian father. I live in Boston, MA and I'm a mom and a community health worker, and also a have-been/hope-to-go-back student working on a bachelors degree in public health. My work/studies are about culture & community development and organizing as a resource for health (ie traditional midwifery, community health workers, stuff like that.) I believe that we as people and communities have the resources to create good health from our cultural knowledge, traditions, and power to organize for justice, and I think that to do that we need to listen and learn from each other in a respectful way that values self-determination. I could ramble on & on and reprint my Facebook rant about latino racial identity and the census and so on but I'll spare you
![Cheesy :D](http://newagefraud.org/smf/Smileys/default/cheesy.gif)
One resource I'd like to repost here, though, is the antiracist essay written by the white author Rev. Myke Johnson called "Wanting To Be Indian: When Spiritual Searching Turns Into Cultural Theft," on google docs at
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3AkBP6hep78IYJ%3Awww.a2u2.org%2Fpictures%2Fpdfs%2FWabanaki+article.pdf+%22wanting+to+be+indian%22&hl=en&gl=us. (A link posted on this forum in 2005 is no longer active.) It really influenced me as a young adult, and maybe it would be helpful to point out to posters who are new to these issues...