Painting the Ivory Tower Red
By Tarene Thomas
A POEM FOR WHITE LIBERALS
you want me to say
I have reconciled
you want me to absorb your shame
but I am not a vessel
for all of the dirty things you feel inside
this is not reconciliation
this is you
trying to pass your workload
on to me,
even after I called you out on your repetitive bullshit
recognize the word has become dirty
used inside the mouths of those
who want us to eradicate
their infamy
once again
we have proved impossible to disappear so,
after 530 years of oppression
you want us to take away the guilt
you are experiencing as a by-product of our pain
you want us to help you feel like
a better human
has it ever even occurred to you
that we don’t care about your tears?
I will not allow you to use me
remember this
it is not my job
to make you feel better about benefiting
from a system
that gave my people generational curses
but still,
you want us to say
we have reconciled
you speak of it
in classrooms, meetings,
on stage
awaiting my approval,
like I’m your little red pupil
you look at me with hungry eyes
expecting me to applaud you
after you tell a room full of NDNs
“we are on stolen land”
Did you think we didn’t know?
Do you think land back is a metaphor?
Perhaps in ways it is, perhaps in ways it is not
you want me to say
great job colonizer,
thank you for doing the bear fucking minimum
not a chance!
I am not your dog
reconciliation is not your bone
to throw at me
you wave my wounds in my face
like they’re shiny new toys you’ve discovered
just like your ancestors
discovered
these lands
and you want me to notice you,
noticing them
as if you can validate my scars
and make them fade any quicker
keep your shame,
I will keep my pain
A GOOD NDN
They tell me to stop saying fuck so much, hold my tongue. “you listen, they speak.” Study how they move, sit, eat. Mirror them. They tell me to be a good NDN. What the fuck is a good NDN? They ask me to teach my oppressors about the pain they gave me so I can get a seat at their tables. Because that will make me a good NDN. They ask me to pimp out my traumas so I can break into their walls. Like their systems tried to break me. My culture never belonged to the academy. Not to any dissertation that’s won awards, or the checkbox that asks me if I’d like to self-identify as Indigenous. My culture does not belong in dusty basement museums echoing matriarchal wisdom to every other thing these institutions think they own. When I die, my NDN blood will spill onto birch bark. Telling the stories of seven billion stars, where our ancestors sing to us sweetly. They sing to me now. I have 100 000 ancestors by my side. The warmth of my family. A love my body alone cannot contain, love becomes my blood, my bones have stories even I have not yet heard. They cannot be locked inside the walls of the ivory tower labelled “stories from a good NDN.” These stories have homes inside of our blood memory, that you can never find in their history books.
TO PRACTICE DEATH
we’ve marked our own graves
with trauma-love
ancient ones
ocehtowin niyanân manitew iskotew
every time we’re almost dead
I can hear ancestors singing
ahkameyimo
but I can’t
but it hurts
2024
532 years
môya atôya nimêschikohnânâhk
but this still feels like breaking
we’ve trained our children how to die
before we’ve
nehiyawe
they’ve cut our tongues
spilt our blood
we called it
NDN art
once again
we tell the creator
just fucking unmake us
kihci pikiskwewin awâsis
let them know
what it feels like to be us
to mark your own grave
with trauma-love
to practice death
to let out
7 generations of war cries
with one sâkway
blacked out drunk
off our own genocide
in ôtenahk streets
POLICE ARREST 57 WET’SUWET’EN SOLIDARITY PROTESTORS AT PORT OF SO CALLED VANCOUVER
Except we were not protestors. We were the land defending itself. When the police approach the sacred circle, I am reminded, of our people being dragged out of sweat lodge and ceremony. Thrown into prisons and insane asylums. When two armed policemen grab the back of my unarmed wrists I am reminded, of the cops and RC’s who raped and murdered our women. They sprained my wrist and for a moment I am afraid they will kill me. Then I remember I am never alone. Then I remember I am stronger than they are. When the cops twist my wrists and drag me across the intersection of Heatley and Hastings while I am not resisting arrest, I am reminded of a winter 7 years ago. Two male cops beat me so badly they had to bring me to the hospital. I was a child. I spat in that cops’ face as it was my only form of self-defence. If I had to relive that night, I’d do it again. When they throw me into the back of the paddy wagon, I am reminded of a February quite like this. 32 years ago Saskatoon police took our people to the outskirts of the city to abandon them. We know of three who froze to death. Rodney Naistus, Lawrence Wegner, and Neil Stonechild. Do not forget their names. These were not isolated incidents. These became known as the starlight tours. They tried to do this to my father. When they put me in the pissy holding cell, I am reminded of the cops who beat my grandfather to death in the terrace jail. They tried to make it look like a suicide. I’m sitting in the cell, and I try to cry but I can’t. This is kkkanada’s legacy. I am reminded they will never stop fighting us.
YOU’LL NEVER LOSE ME
sun leaks
through clouds
trickle down the seven sisters
mâskwa metawe
before a great sleep
you turn to me
kanâci-air
away from ôtenahk
we suck in pine fresh
nimihto mighty skeena
when you turn to me
kiya pikiskwew
there is no pain
like the loss of land
there is no pain
like the death of language
when i turn to you
all i can do
is sing to you
with my broken cree
i will tell you this land can never lose us
as many times as it takes
RESURRECTION, A SACRIFICE
to be sprung from my shadow
back into the light
âpisisinowin
you tell me you want
ghost dance
ceremony
kinohte niya mihko
just a moment
you will wait for my flesh
to cling back around my bones
bloodstained bodies remind us
death is a consequence
i told them they will all die eventually
not even the children cried
all they could do was
laugh and laugh
before they drained every ounce of my
spirit, and drank
next, they cut open my womb
they eat everything inside
they think this will make them immortal
but, i
rise to death
an occasion
a party
i will do this
kawih
kawih
kawih
WEHKISKISOW ASKÎY
I remember prairie sky
how the crunch of half frozen
grass feels under
my hardened feet
run up the side of
sand hills in the summertime
waiting for medicine to
harvest, sage
smell askîy
while she cleans your lungs
I remember smoking tobacco
pawacakinasîs prarie wind kisses
my face until it stings from ice
crunched under my mukluks
while i watched the ancestors
dance above me
some call them
northern lights but we know better
I remember stealing a kiss
underneath the powwow bleachers
under nêhiyaw summer moon
we had nothing in common
but you weren’t my cousin
and for rez kids that’s enough
you tasted like ketchup chips and i tasted like cigarette butts
together we tasted like prairie summer
SALMON AND BERRIES
pink salmon
purple berries smeared
on my naked body I was hungry
for my culture my own guts
my own blood the salmon told me stories
of gitxsan women in the smoke house
smelt like kinosêw
ekwa honey ekwa fire
dancing on my tongue
reminded me of powwows
nêhiyaw country summers
laced with skeena river stories
take me
to where the berries
are darker than my pupils
smear this maskihkiy
into my blood deliver me to my people
half smoked and bleeding
Tarene Thomas is a Cree, Gitxsan, Tahltan, and Haisla scholar and writer from Enoch Cree Nation, Treaty 6 territory and the Northwest Coast of B.C. She currently lives on stolen unceded Coast Salish territory. Tarene holds a BA from the University of Alberta, and an MFA in creative writing from UBC. Tarene is working on her PhD in the social justice institute at the University of British Columbia. Her project is looking at Indigenous gender and sexuality and using storytelling and poetry as a way to share her research with the community.
