This isn’t tape on our
mouths.
This is not being able to utilize our voices.
To not teach others what we know.
To tell them who
we are and where we came from.
The families we love.
Or the homes we live in.
This is oppression.
This is a tool for what others used to silence those who they chose not to hear.
A band aid to
heal, but to heal what though?
There is nothing
wrong with us.
We are who we are and these are the voices that were given to
us.
Our gifts.
Our values.
Our ability to
express love, sadness
and to vocalize our fears.
Yesterday many
of our ancestors, relatives, parents and
grandparents wore
similar tape.
They were
silenced.
They were
oppressed.
The people that
supervised them put this tape as band aids over their mouths so they couldn’t communicate to one another.
They did it so that they could
heal.
But they were never sick.
Instead of
healing the tape
became restrictive.
So tight you had to leave who you were behind, in order to breathe through its grasp.
The tape diminished or obliterated their spirits, their bones, and their innocence.
All of it was taken away.
Some died still wearing their tape.
Their native
tongues never returning.
They were children.
These children
full of life and
wonder.
Turned into
hallow shells whose names were replaced with designations and ‘new’ names.
But they weren’t the ones who were lost.
The ones who
truly became lost were the ones who didn’t know where their home was any more.
Some went to the
address or place that
began their childhood fantasies.
To repair the
healing they once endured.
But many
returned only to face realistic nightmares.
Family became
strangers and the bruises were revealed.
The damage was
done.
Were they really
healed?
Many struggled
to live.
To discover who they were again.
While others
chose to thrive.
They were the ones who got away.
Who were able to remove that imaginary adhesive stripe and were able to use their voices again.
To educate themselves on who they were and what
their stories meant.
To reflect on the lives that
were enforced upon them.
Of the ones who still wear their tape and never learned to take
it off.
Of the people
who ran still wearing
their band aids that
ended up encasing
their spirits and identities.
The ones who
thrived had to reprogram their motherboards to learn to be themselves again.
They fought for the
rights and freedoms
of the persons they
lost both within themselves and to whom never made it home.
They fought and continue to fight
today.
Some even tell their stories with their native languages.
The scars of intergenerational hurt has begun to heal.
Their children,
our children and our children’s children are
learning their language once more.
They are the ones who talk about what happened.
And of the homes they live in now and the families that they cherish.
It isn’t easy for
all, since some are stuck in a whirlpool of confusion and post traumatic stress.
These are the
generations who are feeling the impact of cultural loss.
But there is
help for them and not in the form of bandages, but of hope.
We need to
listen to these
stories and educate others
of our history.
Of our cultural genocide.
And of our own
strengths as the first people of this land.
To build strong
allies and bond with each other as brothers and sisters.
Turtle Island is big.
This is our
home.
Our native land.
And we need to
express ourselves on any platform that we
choose to tell our stories past, present and future.
We can do this.
We can work
together and learn from yesterday and look forward to tomorrow.
Not with oppression but with hope.
And not with
tape but with our voices.