Offered with humility to people whose suffering I can't begin to comprehend, whose history I am only just learning, whose ancestors mine harmed and benefited from the harming of.
****
Unceded But seeded With colonizer men building brick homes Raping the land Rapeseed, precious naming Blocking, trapping, Wrapping the First Peoples in swaths of settlement
Unceded
But seeded
With Bibles flung into the wild,
Relentlessly paced, chased, erased
(Rendered unchaste by word or deed)
Mother Earth needs become Mother Mary
Jesus Glooscap
Trickster Lucifer
Unceded
But seeded
With others brought from other lands,
Brought in chains, bonds, ties and obligations,
Come from the South, free but
Cast out. Neglected, detested,
Rewarded for loyalty
With mud and rocks,
Sticks and stones.
Unceded
But seeded
With “moral” men molding minds
with whips, women withholding water and food,
Cutting hair, cutting off ties,
Cutting out words
Bleaching souls and
Bending knees
And burying mistakes.
Unceded
But seeded
With generations of hate,
Denial, violence and defiling,
Women missing, children dead
Shrugs and crosses,
Shaking heads
Praying hands
Preying beds.
Unceded,
But seeded.
Unseen now seen.
Alienation turned to
Reconciliation?
