Where Can We Go To Mend?

When the fireworks sound like bombs dropping on this land and the shouts are like the screaming of our red skinned brethren being torn away from home, when 13,000 years get swept under the red and white carpet, we are banging on drums and linking up arms to say don’t forget we were here and we still exist. You can’t bandage these ancestral wounds. What you are doing to the others that came here from afar, we still carry that scar. They all have a place to seek refuge in our home and Native land, but where can we go to mend?

Who will protect us from our government? It’s a true testament of the Aboriginal spirit that this heart knows it’s own truth no matter how deep you try to bury it.

 

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I am America

All the honest ones on the bottom rung,
hunger without a green clue about how to grow food.
Yet our ancestors had the heirlooms, which would later
be bought by corporate leaders to make
toxic morsels, without real sustenance.

They would see dollar signs in the leaves of the trees,
ignoring the animal need in the seed we
received when we breathed our first
naked breath here, when we were taught to
respect here, this wilderness,
and the corrupt ones with their
pockets lined with lies,
grew rich off our trustworthiness,
or took it, with force, when we
were powerless to defend against them.

We watched what was once fecund,
become what is now a wasteland.
An ashy womb of indifference,
too poisonous to bear fruit.
We said mother earth must have
closed her legs and refused,
and yet they pried and forced
a millennia of greed a thousand feet deep,
so that the scope of it,
could be seen to permeate
every sector, from produce,
to health care, to political
sway, still she lay there
unresponsive to their touch.

It’s like I am America
and you are Europe,
like you rush towards me
with bloody hands,
fresh from raping your
own land, and you come here
hungry, looking to build a
new empire, from the ruinous
resin of your burned down world.
Like I have only an arrow to defend myself
against your lead battalion.

Lost

I awake to my breath in a ghostly cloud above my head.
This white clarity blinds the city.
Unable to rest, unable to dream.
He said our people, the Anishinaabe were possibly the lost citizens of Atlantis, true Atlanteans crossing the Atlantic. Thousands of years ago the Mediterranean was more like a lake and less like an ocean. The land mass of Atlantis formed a bridge from North America to Athens Greece. My kin, the Algonquins migrated to the ancient city and throughout parts of Europe, including Britain and the East. Is it possible the whites were decendants of us? Is it possible an old seed buried deep split open and released a very ancient desire to reclaim itself? He speaks of Sakimay as a place where our people originated. This was the land of my ancestors. He speaks of the seven fires prophecy and the crystal energy our people harnessed, which led to their own downfall, the sinking of our island, the melting of the glaciers, the light that flooded in like razors on our skin and stained us with the red ink of Indians. The turtle island that sank and swam down again, lost in the reaches of time. Oh Turtle, teach us of the truth sewn in hand with the ilk of our ancient medicine, until then we are lost like a city under the sea.

Kōna (Snow)

kanakēs- For a brief moment
kaskēyimēw-she is lonesome for her
kaskina- break it off like a twig,
kācikēwin- something hidden.
kām¯wātan-It is quiet,
kāsēcihcē-wash your hands
kehcināho- make certain; be sure,
kinwēs- for a long time
kisin-it is cold.

The cold, brief certainty of silence.
rapidly flowing down stream, within.
The dim solitude of a broken boat.

Orphan child, at the edge of a forest, butterfly spirit, my hands fold inward to my heart, origami bird, snow star love, the great withholding of a dam, (state of vulnerablity,) before we make fire we must conquer the cold. Hidden in the dark, you grow lonesome for the light. Lonesome for her, you pine, lost in a forest of hurt. You wash your hands of her and the quiet kona falls heavy, river caller of the long snows moon, under ice in the woods of a perpetual winter…

love in a frozen state of longing,
crystal cure for obsidian heart.

We depart this way her and I, North and South in opposite directions, the wolf medicine stings at my heels, where the untouchable wound breaks open, all the world thunders in my heart.

bursting open

I cry
I cry

Eons back in time,
when the long snows moon
was new,
before the ice age,
when firebird was risen,
in her orange deception,
I loved her volcano hot
raining white ash
over
dissolving
continents.

We are ice people,
people of the falling snow,
white clay people
people of the clouds,
river people who hear and see,
fierce people with cold hands
and burned out hearts.

Ebb & Flow

My blood origin is water but thicker than any oil. We were the people of the rapids, always following the tides in and out, as far as they could carry us in our birch bark boats. My grandfather the great Eagle spirit, who could be called on the wind at will, would carry the message of love across the rivers. My father the feathered dancer, always ran with the shadows, ran with the quick horses, wild across the prairie sky, far on towards the high hills, westward to the mountains. He caught the rapids in his veins, the eagle song rushed through him too fast, and I lost his tracks on the wind, it beat quick through his heart like that rabbit on the rails who cried from the weight of the train cutting across his leg. Love is mercurial this is what I chased. I danced with strangers who I hoped could show me deeper into what I felt behind my eyes, spirits passing by like clouds, dark over my head, deer child in storms, under cover of night, crying to the pleiades, snared beneath a thousand shooting stars, willing forward. This is who we are, these are my kin, wild on the hunt, with a scent in us that says love is of this, caught between these river rocks, these feathers, this sky. We follow that scent towards eachother like wild animals marking their journey home again, we will meet at the shore one day. My father visits me in dreams, speaks through the others, offers symbols to guide me closer to the turtle of truth who rises up towards the light. He told me of the 7 teachings, the sacred ways we follow, a path of shells. The beaver works hard to build up these twig towers of hydro electric power that allow us to connect. But the buffalo speaks of respect, tells me “we all have a gift, don’t waste yours, for if beaver did, he would grow long in the tooth and die,” and then we would have a great loss of life, a loss of light to lead us through these dark times.