I'll start by telling you what I know. I cannot tell you what I don't know. I'll start by telling you what it is that I don't understand. This is my story. This story starts with me. It has to start with me.

    I'm not Ainu. I'm not Japanese. What right do I have to speak about Japanese-Ainu relations? I could very well be told that it is all none of my business. I could very well be told that Americans have no moral ascendency over the Japanese when it comes to annihilation attempts, assimilation programs and ethnocide/genocide campaigns.

    When people of one group or nation encounter people of a different group or nation, I think most of us try to be friendly, helpful and understanding as individuals. However, we must never forget that we are representatives of the group or nation of which we were born and raised. It takes a long time to get to know and really trust each other as individuals on a really deep level. And even if we do, it is always a somewhat tenuous relationship. It can fall apart at anytime, especially if we think we really understand what has happened in the past.

    In 1991 I was asked to become translator for Yai Yukara no Mori, an Ainu culture preservation group that was the offspring of the Yai Yukara Academic Society, founded in 1973 with the purpose of reclaiming the stolen Ainu heritage . . . of taking it out of the hands of Japanese academics who inadvertently often proclaimed that the Ainu were a dying people. This is easy to say if you are not Ainu. It is impossible to accept if you are.

    In your roots lie your strength, your pride, your hope for your children and your great grandchildren. Without your roots and your vision for the future, you lose your confidence, you are floating without anchor, you cannot put forth your best. You are easily manipulated. You don't understand your purpose in life. You become a kind of decoration. You make the other side look good. The other side is credited for being broadminded and liberal and understanding because they are associating with you. This is called the colonizer-mind set. Needless to say the "vanquished" peoples cannot accept this. Their ancestors may have been murdered, their lands may have been stolen, and their languages may have been repressed, but their spirit is not dead. Their culture has not been eradicated. They are still fighting for their very lives . . . and that is something we colonizers must admit that we don't understand. To pretend that we do is to trivialize their experience.

    This was made very clear to me one day in May of 1992. Yai Yukara no Mori was having its first spring camp. Sixty of us, Ainu, Japanese, me and my three Japanese-American children, had been gathering wild mountain vegetables and had finished cooking and eating our banquet of traditional Ainu foods.

    Food is culture that you can eat and share. Eating is a form of intercultural communication. Drinking is, too. I love the taste of home brewed doburoku when it is young and still has the sightly sour taste of yogurt. It is a strong rice wine that is not clear like sake. It has a cloudy white color. The fact that we were drinking an illegal home brew definitely added to the flavor.

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