Honoring our Circles

This is a poem I have been working on while we find the children.  EM

 

Honoring our Circles

 

We are taking back the names

Taking back the places

Taking back the lies

You like to eat like candy

 

You shame us when our much

Is much to much to handle

The same as you do when our little is much “too small”

You offer a syrupy call

“Assimilate”

“It is easy”

“These ways are much superior”

“You already speak our language”

 

But my body holds the memories

The harm and hopes and medicines

My body stores the seeds –

Knows the path to ceremony and the sacred

Knows the guides on both sides of the sky

 

So we are taking back the names

Taking back the places

Taking back the secrets used to justify the harm

 

We are remembering our ancestors

Inviting them to meetings

Listening to their wisdom

Caring for the wounded

Listening in our dreams

 

We are trying out forbidden words

Tasting them on our tongues

While you try to quantify the tortures

Do you listen to the stories?

Of rapes and missing family?

Of family who were …?

A noble nun?

Or a woman burning infants in a furnace?

What is the “dark moods” she mentions in her letters?

 

And when will we talk about bribes and intimidations?

Slavery in these “Schools”?

Wars fought on the surpluses of children?

Of the sex and money made for white men

Whose children now live in mansions

And influence us on media?

 

So we are taking back the names

Taking back the places

Listing to the Grandmothers

Who help us see the way

 

We are taking back the places

Where you threw us

Into graves you hoped would hold us

Our children given shovels

Taught to dig their own dirt beds

So you could disappear your “problems”

These people too pure/too whore

We weren’t trouble

Till you turned us into outlaws to keep our songs alive

 

So we are pulling back the curtains

On the drawing rooms your treasured

Showing all the decay your pretend is not there

We are imagining some futures

Not made outta money

Investing in our spirits

Turning our tongues to their roots

 

But our bodies carry stories

Some tattooed deep

Some clear upon our faces

Some still in motion

Some from lands left behind

We join this journey

Each from where we were

Each to plant a seed

To grow a better future

Where we don’t measure people with money

And where we remember that giving is a gift

 

Come join the circle

There is space to do the work

Songs to keep you strong

Peoples to hold you up as the curtains come down

Matriarchs of fire who can grant and take names

And guide you round the circle back to the beginning

Which is where we will be living

Feeling out our names

Visiting our places

Speaking our truths

And honouring our circles

Pehiw 2021 and 2022

July 2021 and Jan 2022

Elizabeth MacDonald, Métis (she/her)