Living the Dream

Don’t weigh this blood and wonder at percentages and degrees
of ‘Nativeness’ or naturalization and connections
to some select Tribe or belonging to one Band.

I am all of this and more, for I was a captured child
trying to cling to steeples and podiums
that left slivers and shards of someone else’s truth
festering beneath my skin.

Don’t ask me what my Treaty Number is.
It simply disappeared or fell to fire,
or fluttered in some ill wind
when someone was burning crosses.

I have felt the dying ash of faith’s flame
sputter at the words and demands,
cruel criticisms and commandments
carving name on some box
I was supposed to fit into.

Don’t ask me what resources I have rights too.
I have been rowing upstream all my life,
trying to get to some slow Heli
where I can rest from the near-drowning
while learning to swim in a baptismal font.

When I dipped into the Great Slave Lake,
I felt new and connected to my ancestors.
No dipping could have renewed my faith,
no swelling of the bosom has billowed so
as when I held my breath and ducked
under the memory of having been here before.

Don’t ask where my green eyes and red hair came from,
nor how I came to have blond children,
nor how odd I must feel looking out
upon a sea of brown faces and black braided hair,
how strange it is to listen to what should be
a foreign tongue wrap around my history.

It is not the color of my skin,
but the color of my soul.
I can tell you what they say, you know,
my heart translates the words of my mother-tongue.

Don’t presume to wonder that I do not wear
feathers and beads and demand proof by asking
the wrong questions or seek the paper gods’
positive identification, nor ask how it is
I got so educated and know the things I know.

I know when to wear a skirt, an amulet,
and what to say to identify myself
when I enter the dark round of the sweat.
I know my lineage as far as I can discover it
but know more about my spiritual ancestors
who come to teach me and to try me.

Don’t tell me what I should believe and when,
nor tell me what words must be said and what way.
I am Native American, I take my teachings
from the trees, the winds, the moon, the dreams,
the elders who have taken my soul under their wing
and kept them safe from predators who would choke
me with their thou shalts and thou shalt nots.

I know I am here to take care of the Garden
and the garden will take care of me.  My family
is the whole family of Creator; four colors,
four gifts, four ways to express spirit.
I have not need for four squares.  The Universe
is my chapel.  My angels are the feathered ones.
My prophets are my elders.  My soul is safe
from fetters of an unfolding world.  I am a gift
to the world as you are a gift to me.  Creator
has no checks or balances, no tithes or recompense
for simply sending out our souls to vibrate
each other with care and compassion
so that care and compassion can ripple back
on the ocean of return from the Great Father of it all.

I walk the Good Red Road as I know it.  Sometimes
I am drug along, sometimes a call will lead me onward,
but never am I alone.  A soul afraid of being abandoned
can not see the beauty for eyes that are darting
like sparrows on a wicked wild west wind.  The mouth
can not speak truths for fear of hypocrisy.   My truth
is found in the sweat lodge, in dreams in color,
in the birthing an dying of things that need to live and die.
I am Native American.  Visit my soul on this path
and you can not help but know.

Tags: Native Culture, Poems //