MOCCASINS By Taietsarón:sere “Tai” Leclaire (Kanien’kehá:ka, Mi’kmaq)

As soon as you think it won’t happen again, it does, mindlessly hitting you like a self-driving electric car in a busy intersection.

You’re asked to be the brand ambassador of everything Indigenous.

Such is the case in my newest role as art director for a fashion brand. That’s the thing with being the lone Native at a corporate gig—you’re always expected to represent the entire community. This isn’t the first time that I’m one of the few diverse employees in a sea of Sarahs from Connecticut. Hell, I’ve been asked to be on the cover of more hiring brochures than Meryl Streep has Oscar nominations. I can tell things will be no different in my newest endeavor.

But I don’t care. I made it. After all the years of interning, taking on odd freelance jobs, and Instagram networking, I’m finally an art director. I climbed the corporate ladder, from intern to graphic designer, and now I’m an art director! The degree paid off! (Not paid paid, of course—there’s still decades of debt ahead of me.)

It’s one of my first meetings in the new role. I’m wearing my best Montauk-surfer-hipster-meets-Eighties “over it” prep look. I’m rocking a brand-new pair of checkered Vans that were just opened that morning. Soft green. They’re gorgeous. I’ve prepped visual concepts for an upcoming seasonal print campaign and carry them under my arm like a piece of weighted armor. I glide into the meeting like Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada post-makeover: Is that? A new Moleskine notebook? Gridded? I imagine being asked. It is, I say, relishing my reply. I take my seat at the aging oversized conference table ready to begin.

They run the items of the meeting. Okay, this is kind of boring. No different from the meetings that were had when I was a temp a mere twelve hours ago. I reflect on how junior I was then. He really thought he had the world in his hands, I think about the naïve version of myself from yesterday. If only temp me knew how similar these meetings would be. What a dumbass. I open Flappy Bird on my iPhone 5 under the table as the work tasks continue to be listed.

“Chinese New Year collateral needs to be concepted earlier,” the person running the meeting says.

Done, I think. And it’s “Lunar” New Year.

“We’d like to turn the preview collections into a printed book, instead of digital. Is that doable?”

Easy. I’m close to matching my high score on Flappy Bird.

“Next on the agenda: we’re launching a pair of men’s moccasins.”

The room goes quiet until, “Tai, that’s okay, right?” It’s the big boss. Talking to me.

I look up from my new high score right as the tiny digital bird descends to its death. “What?”

Everyone is looking at me.

“We’re making moccasins—is that okay?” she repeats.

I don’t know what to say. Why am I being asked this? Oh yeah, you’re the red man. I can tell from the way she’s holding the printed meeting agenda that she’s eager to move on. The truth is, my opinion in this moment doesn’t matter at all. We both know that, at this point, the moccasins have already been designed. They’ve already been produced in some faraway factory. As we speak, thousands of them are probably crammed together on a cargo ship the size of my reservation in transport to the United States. I’m simply the rubber stamp at the end of a white person’s guilty conscience.

“Is that okay?”

The question lingers. The truth is, I don’t have an answer. Yes, moccasins are traditional footwear of my people, but what kind of moccasins are we talking about here? Plains style? Ornately beaded ones? My new checkered Vans are cutting into my ankles, making it hard to think.

Do I own the design of moccasins? Does anyone? What’s the difference between honoring and stealing? This is too much to handle. Especially now that the Chopt salad I just ate is turning my stomach inside out. My delicate Native stomach. I wonder what my ancestors would think of me at that moment. Sitting in a conference room on the fourteenth floor of a skyscraper in Manhattan, a building that was probably built by the ironworkers from my own community forty years earlier, trying to answer my boss’s question as I start to strategize the fastest walk to the good bathroom.

“Tai?”

I didn’t answer fast enough. Now it’s awkward. The silence is deafening. I manage to mutter something: “Can I see them?”

She pretends to be excited by my question and starts going through the folder in front of her. “Here they are,” she says as she holds up a printout.

Yep. There it is. Basic moccasins that look like a pair I would have gotten made for me back home. The difference is, these have rubber soles for all those laborious trips from a Volvo to the front door of a Whole Foods. They’re nice. I’d wear them. I also know that in exactly twelve months, they’ll sit on a sale rack with a sign that reads: ADDITIONAL 15% OFF SALE ITEMS. The ones that aren’t sold will probably be tossed or, if we’re lucky, donated. Not to any reservation or Indigenous community that could use them, of course.

“Tai?”

I get up. “Would you mind coming back to this? I need to use the restroom.” As I quickly exit, a trickle of blood from the back of my ankle begins to stain my brand-new shoe.