Sakari Kautz
The story goes I come from a long line
of strong-willed survivors and divers.
We fished and hunted for our food. Strived
to survive, live, undo, what colonialism did to us.
Displaced, chased onto new land, a reservation we couldn’t escape,
left to fend for ourselves.
They brought sickness like a wave,
washing over our people, in their ships and wagons,
while we let them come ashore,
thinking they could need our help, become our friends.
They betrayed, left us afraid of what they were going to do
to our land, our people, our home.
They take our children to schools,
schools where they would change them, never be seen again,
take their names, their culture, their sense of self,
treating us as if we were aliens, something from another planet,
something that needed to be changed, rearranged to look like
them.
We tried to stay strong, protect our mother, fight against the wrong
they did to us, but it was never enough, they kept coming,
waltzing in as if they were gods compared to us, our people,
our land destroyed by their axes, hurt
by the views they pushed on us,
we were hopeless, yet we pushed through,
through the quicksand they trapped us in,
moving slowly but surely, trying to fight back what they tried to change
within. Afraid that if nothing changed, we would go extinct, gone with a blink.
Yet, throughout it all, we survived, through sickness,
through death, through the ripping of our culture off our backs,
We are still here.