“My name is Aaron Carapella. I have always had a calling towards my Native side ever since I was a young child .Growing up in California-far away from my Oklahoma Cherokee roots-I was intrigued with the story of not only the Ani’yunwi’yah (Cherokee) people, but also of the many other tribes. As I got older I got involved with the Tongva and Ajachamen Nations of Orange County, Ca, learning of their struggles as “unrecognized” Peoples, and from there eventually joined the American Indian Movement and met other Cherokee people who taught me about the traditional way of life. At 19 I started developing a map of the Indigenous Nations of the United States, utilizing their traditional names for themselves and documenting even the smallest and most obscure of tribes, to bring back their memories and honor a Native perspective of pre-contact “America.” Along the way I earned a Bachelor’s in Marketing at Indian Tech and now reside back in the state where my grandparents were born, in Warner, Oklahoma. I have a fiance- Whitney, and a 4-month-old son -Sequoyah Nighthawk. We are raising him in the Cherokee language. I continue to develop more maps of Native “America” that bring honor to the truth of our collective and individual histories. Wado diginali (thank you friends).”
Make No Bones About It 