For times when there appeared to be no good solution or answer my father lightened things up with a line from Robert Frost’s “Love and a Question”:
“Stranger, I wish I knew,” he would say.
“. . . . but before we begin
we need to acknowledge
that the land we stand upon
was traditionally occupied
by the [name your tribes]
from time immemorial but
who don’t occupy it anymore
because it is now ours. Their
culture is amazing, by the way.”
Settler, what might be this need
on your part
to acknowledge
if that is even the right word
that we are standing on land,
settler, you and I,
that you state is now yours?
Thank you
You’re welcome
Don’t rub it in
(weak smile)
(Ojibwe style head nod)
Settler, welcome to the homeland
Gaawiin; none of these seem right.
Shall we quote the saddest of lines
sung by Buffy Sainte-Marie:
“Hands on our hearts we salute you your victory”
or shall we kneel?
How many of these
land acknowledgment statements
that are in truth
land acquisition statements
have I listened to,
the coldness of reality
delivered earnestly righteously
or crowing perhaps
with a triumphantly virtuous
preening of feathers
or that one time
by a young Native woman
not in a position to refuse
the peculiar honor
who though somewhat uneasy
maintained dignity
and self-respect for us all?
Is there a proper response
to a land acknowledgment
land acquisition statement
and all that has followed that loss
displacement deprivation starvation
removals broken families
disrupted dreams lives destroyed
absent children dying far from home
alcoholism trachoma tuberculosis
rolling through decades, centuries,
in the wake of your acquisition of land,
your acknowledgment statement
feeble futile and for what reason and need?
Settler, I wish I knew.
My spirit spirals in the wake of ancestors
then pauses; I look at the sky
questioning while day passes
dusk falls stars look down
amanj, amanji i dash
and I don’t know, and I wonder
what would Elders
whose advice I would seek
if they were not absent
bodies gone to the next world
or minds preceding the physical journey,
what would they counsel?
“They are our guests,”
an old man once said to me,
“guests on this land
and we treat them the way you do
when somebody comes to the house,
invite them inside, offer them a place to sit,
share what you have, that’s our way.
Wherever anybody goes, we are either guests
in their house, or they are a guest in ours
and that’s how the Ojibwe do it.
The Creator made us to be that way.”
Gii-gikenjige, geget.
Birthed long before the question
the response is our existence,
the continuity of our ways
by breath and heartbeat
learning and teaching
words and deeds
we are the lifeblood
linking ancestors and descendants.
Settler, biindigen; namadabin; wiisinin.
Aniin miinik? I wish I knew.