All too soon it would be time for us to go.  Our trip was way too short but I did not want to impose any more upon my cousins.   Burk and I are museum junkies and we both have a love of history.  My passion for Native American art and culture stems from my own Choctaw grandmother, despite the fact that she lived her life as a white woman.  I cannot say that I blame her, given that in her parents’ lifetime there was the largest mass hanging in U.S. history — and it was of Native people.  My sweet, still sharp mother said we must go to the Heard Museum before we left Phoenix.  I was so sad she was unable to join us.  My cousin may have thought we were nuts bringing an infant into a museum, but she was our baby and we would be taking her through them her entire life whenever we got the chance.  I was proud this was to be her first.  This picture I thought summed up our little family beautifully … only instead of a cradleboard she had a carriage.  It was a smallish museum positively jammed with Native American culture; Burk and I could have gotten lost in there for hours.  We had the fortune of traveling to Alaska and New York at this point (among other cities) and I can tell you it is the best Native American museum I have ever had the pleasure of visiting.  What a treasure trove!  Their mission is “to be the world’s preeminent museum for the presentation, interpretation and advancement of American Indian art, emphasizing its intersection with broader artistic and cultural themes.”  All I know is it was an embarrassment of riches; truly phenomenal.  I thought how fitting it was that this is where my part Native child would go first — even if she was too young to remember it.  The half Mohawk Canadian songwriter Robbie Robertson said, “You don’t just stumble upon your heritage.  It’s there, just waiting to be explored and shared.”  That is precisely what we did on our sweet child’s first ever trip away from home … at the Heard Museum.