A/N: I am not Native American, and don't pretend to be an expert on Native American culture/religion. I did however try to do at least enough research to make this believable (unlike the writers of the actual show). If I got any facts blatantly wrong, feel free to let me know and I'll try to correct them.

EDIT: Special thanks to Ironbear, who did the above. I've made a few technical corrections using the advice in Ironbear's review. I also wanted to give this story an edit for other reasons.

This story is set right after the Season 1 episode "Cathexis." I don't own "Star Trek: Voyager."


When Ensign Annalie Blackhorse began her shift, the entire ship was buzzing about how Commander Chakotay had saved everyone the day before, utilizing his disembodied consciousness to possess various members of the senior staff, and send messages to them through the medicine wheel Lt. Torres had left over his comatose body. Annalie didn't even try to understand it. As far as she was concerned, it was just another strange "space anomaly" incident, something that would take an extremely in-depth understanding of "technobabble" to understand. Being the ship's botanist, and fresh out of Starfleet Academy, Annalie's scientific repertoire was, so far, relatively limited.

There was a lot of confusion about what exactly had gone down yesterday. Several human crewmembers were jittering about Chakotay using some kind of "Indian technique" to exit his body, as if they thought Natives had supernatural powers. Annalie hoped to god some of them were joking. The commander himself was taking the day off, and not answering any questions. Annalie wasn't about to blame him. She had to admit that she herself had about a hundred questions she was tempted to bombard him with once she got the chance, starting with how it felt to be in the body of someone of the opposite sex.

Since Chakotay wasn't available for comment, a lot of Annalie's shipmates were starting to come to her about it, asking her if she knew anything about the techniques Chakotay had used to exit his body. She got tired fairly quickly of explaining that she had no tribes in common with Commander Chakotay, being from a Navajo father and an Ojibwe mother. In fact, she didn't even have a planet in common with him. Chakotay was from Dorvan V; Annalie was from Arizona. Before that morning, Annalie had never given any thought to Chakotay's tribe. Like a lot of Indians she was private about her beliefs, and assumed the commander was too. But the things she was now hearing about Chakotay and his tribe today were really starting to confuse her.

Then she'd walked into Sickbay for her check-up with the Doctor, and seen what she thought looked like a Mexican seder plate hanging over one of the biobeds. When the Doctor told her it was Chakotay's Medicine Wheel, her confusion went through the roof. Several tribes had their own versions of medicine wheels, but one thing they all had in common (as far as Annalie knew) was that they all looked like...wheels.

Come lunchtime, she was combing the ship's database for information on the culture of Dorvan V. She munched her chicken wrap, scrolling through the information on her PADD. A reflection suddenly overtook her screen, and she looked up to a sight that not a few of her female friends would have envied; Commander Chakotay smiling down at her, with a tray, nodding towards the empty seat across from her.

"Mind if I join you?"

Annalie flipped her PADD over and pulled it away. "S-sure."

Sitting down, Chakotay added, "You don't have to stop what you're doing."

"I," Annalie figured she might as well admit it, rather than beat around the bush. "I was reading about Dorvan V."

"I noticed. I'm from Dorvan."

"I know. Someone mentioned…" Annalie glanced at her PADD, then added, "There's actually not a lot of information out there."

Chakotay thought, then said, "We're a somewhat private bunch." Conversationally he asked, "What tribe did you say you were from?"

She didn't bother to ask how he knew she was another Indian. Small ship, word-of-mouth probably.

"I didn't," she said. "But, Dineh dad, Ojibwe mom."

Chakotay looked pleasantly surprised. "I have both those tribes on my mother's side!"

"Oh!" That was news. "So it's just your dad who was... from Dorvan?"

"Well we all lived on Dorvan. But my father's tribe was the one you're reading about, the re-constructionists. My mother was the 'real Indian.' Navajo, Ojibwe, Hopie...if you ever see my quarters, I've been told it looks like a cross-continental Indian museum. Ojibwe dream catcher hanging over Southwestern pottery."

Annalie, who'd been about to sip her orange juice, smiled briefly. "My dad used to flip when people called us 'Navajo.'"

"Used to?"

"Well," Annalie took her sip and set the glass down. "I suppose he still does."

Like a lot of people on Voyager, she'd begun to get used to the idea that she'd never see anyone on Earth again.

For a moment, she feared Chakotay was about to offer some useless words of comfort about how they might still get home before seventy-five years, but he didn't.

"Find anything interesting?" Chakotay asked, sipping his coffee.

Annalie stared at him, and he nodded to her PADD.

"Oh! Um," she shrugged. "I'd probably have to be from…I mean…it's confusing."

Chakotay shrugged back. "I'm willing to clear anything up for you."

Good god, where to start?

"Okay well, um," she flipped the PADD back over, and looked around the table awkwardly. "I'm…I'm a little lost on…on what part of the world your tribe's actually from. You use antelope skins and eagle feathers, but then it also mentions some relation to the Mayans, and how people from Dorvan would visit relatives in Central America…?"

"We're a bit of both." Chakotay said. "My tribe, the Akoona, is a fairly new one. It was organized a short time after the Eugenics Wars."

Annalie blinked. "Oh. So Natives from North and South America put this tribe together?"

"That's right. It started somewhere in Central America, and then they began to get people from North and South America joining in. Basically, it was a group of people descended from tribes that… that no longer exist. Cultures that were stamped out of existence by English or Spanish conquerors, but whose people weren't actually killed off. They wanted to recreate something similar to what they thought our ancestors did."

"Sounds a bit like Wicca," Annalie said, thinking of what she knew about her friend Ensign Harper's religion.

"Exactly. I…don't know how accurately we got it down. I've done some digging myself and I still can't figure out where the hell we got the animal guides from. But it's what I grew up with."

After munching her wrap a bit, Annalie asked conversationally, "So you lived on Dorvan V your whole life?"

"Most of my life, yes. Dorvan wasn't actually settled until after I was born, but we were among the first people to settle it. Before that we lived on Syrena II, but I don't remember much about it. After that it was just Dorvan V, and then California, Starfleet Academy."

After an awkward silence, Annalie said, "I'm sorry but I have to ask; what's with your vision quest machine...thing? I mean I know what a vision quest is, but..."

Chakotay almost looked embarrassed. "A lot of the cultures we were trying to call back to used heavy drugs for their vision quest. The Akoonah just seemed safer."

Annalie pursed her lips. "But that didn't have anything to do with your out of body experience everyone's talking about?"

"No," Chakotay shook his head. "That was the aliens' handiwork. It extracted my consciousness from my brain, and turned me into some kind of entity." He laughed almost nervously. "What, are people saying I had did some magical Indian trick to pull that off?"

"Something like that."

Blowing through his lips, the commander sighed, "Guess I'll have to start setting the record straight."

They chatted a bit more about their families, time in the Academy, and thoughts on being lost in space, before Annalie had to get back to her station.

"I have to ask Commander," Annalie said timidly, before leaving the table. "What was it like, to be a Vulcan, or a Talaxian, or," she bit back a laugh, "a woman?"

Chakotay's eyes darted, as he searched for the words. "Vulcan wasn't so bad, sounds were more intense. And smells. But the other two," he chewed his lip, before finally saying, "It's good to be myself again."

Annalie realized that answering her questions too thoroughly might breach the privacy of Neelix, Lt. Torres, and Captain Janeway, so she didn't pry anymore. She bid Chakotay goodbye and headed back to her station.


A/N: Chakotay's tribe is never named onscreen. I made up the word "Akoona," going off "Akoonah" (the name of Chakotay's vision-quest-chip, which the "Voyager" writers made up).

I wrote this to resolve the conflict I had about the Chakotay character. I love Chakotay, but am fully aware of what a dreadful stereotype his supposed tribal heritage is. I read a theory on TV Tropes that his "tribe" were just a bunch of New Age hippies, and went with that. Stereotypes aside, the simple inconsistencies with Chaktoay's heritage was a plot hole that needed filling. One episode he's a North American Plains Indian, the next he's from South of the Boarder. As the Nostalgia Critic would say, you can do whatever you want in a story if you "JUST…EX…PLAAAAIN!"

I did not go into detail about Annalie's tribal heritage because that wasn't the point of this story, and I am too unfamiliar with real Native American cultures to do so. I'd leave it to either an actual Native, or a more informed cracker than myself, to do that.

Annalie Blackhorse is a totally made-up character on my part. The name "Blackhorse" comes from Amanda Blackhorse, a Navajo activist currently working to get the Washington Redskins to change the very slightly outdated team name. "Annalie" was the name of a babysitter I had as a kid. I just like the name and thought it fit well with "Blackhorse."

EDIT: About the "real Indian" side of Chakotay's family: though he never once gave anyone a dream catcher (as some "Voyager" bashers who didn't watch "Human Error" believe), Chakotay does have a dream-catcher on his wall in the episode "Unforgettable." (In a scene of somewhat eerie foreshadowing, with the dream-catcher hanging behind Kellin.) The rest of his decor seems to resemble designs you'd associate with the Navajo, Hopi, or other Southwestern tribes (I think...) Anyway, I noticed that Chakotay never specified any of these things as being associated with his father's tribe; but the B.S. from "Tattoo," and the vision-quest machine, were specific to his father's tribe. So my head-canon is that Chakotay's mother was a "real" Indian, and his father was the "New Age Hippie." And he doesn't discuss his mother's heritage onscreen for the same reason he doesn't discuss his mother (whatever that reason may be).