You can buy authenticity

We leap from All Hallows Eve to Native American Heritage Month just by turning a page on the calendar.

Halloween agitates some of my American Indian brethren. Native regalia aren’t costumes and resentment brews when trick-or-treaters don feathers and fringe.

What gets me is the fake stuff—the Disneyfied Pocahontas off-the-shoulder deer-skin dress and the dyed chicken-feather war- bonnets.

I found on the web an outfit called “authentic Indian headdress” on a costume site. Just $35. Isn’t that what the settlers paid for Manhattan?

And now November arrives and with it a reason to honor American Indians. We get to see films, performances and art shows wrapped around a theme.

And that’s fine.

Just don’t forget the other 11 months of the year because we still have to deal with poverty and diabetes; mascots and Kennewick Man; grave-robbing and high school drop-outs.

Honor us by returning our ancestral homelands, recognizing sovereignty and ridding schools of shameful mascots.

[Photo from a website called Costumes 4 Less, which labels this as an authentic Indian headdress. See http://www.costumes4less.com%5D