Prompt: Share something good about being native/being in native communities/going on in the native community (you can also share how it's not perfect, but just generally positive things)
I was a part of a transplanted native community. My grandparents, Quechua people from Bolivia, immigrated to Missouri with several of their friends. They immediately formed the Bolivian Society of St. Louis, open to native and non-native people of Bolivian descent, and within a couple of years they managed to find many other Bolivian families and create a large family of sorts. However, none of us lived close to each other, so the community only came together several times throughout the year.
Considering the lack of native and latinx communities in the greater St. Louis area, the Bolivian Society became and has remained a very important part of my identity and that of my family. It has been difficult for much of my family to adapt to the predominately white communities near St. Louis, but the Bolivian Society has allowed us to be much more intentional about our involvement with the Bolivian and Quechua communities and to not take these communities and traditions for granted. Being a part of this community has helped me understand that wherever I find myself in the future, whatever communities I find myself surrounded by, there are pieces of my communities all over, I just might have to put in a little bit of work to find them.
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