My Thoughts on NODAPL

So it’s 12:30 in the morning and I’m sitting in my room watching what went on at the NODAPL. Feeling disgusted and tired of the treatment my people have been going through. Tired of the lies and omission of truth that the government has told the people of this country. I feel as though I’m watching Wounded Knee all over again. The fact that everything they have been put through matters to no one but the people standing there and saying no, we will not leave. No you can’t have this land. No you can’t tell me this is not my land when we have a treaty saying this was where we were to be and this is all we had left and yet you take from us again. You lie to us again. How is this ok? You want us to become a part of this country. Well guess what. I sit here writing this from a part of your country. Not sitting in that protest as I wish to be but living too far away and in no condition to join my people to stand for what's right and just.

I spent my childhood life watching my father fall apart in your country before he passed. I watched my mother struggle with hate and condemnation in your country. A part of me would give everything to go back and be where my people are. To stand with them in solidarity instead of watching and waiting; hoping that something good could come of this stand they are making on mine and my childrens behalf. But I’m not there. I’m a bystander watching as you arrest the elderly and children. I watch as you fire non-lethal weapons that can do more damage than a regular bullet. (because at least if you fire a bullet the pain is over quickly)

There are no words for what I feel about this country at this moment. Do you know who these Water Protectors are fighting for. They are fighting for you and and your children; they are fighting for me and mine. They were sitting in the cold with little to no comfort from the elements to say that what you are doing is wrong. And all some of you can say is “leave and go back where you came from”. (I could say so many things about that statement)

How do we call ourselves a Great Nation? I don’t understand how this constitutes as greatness. I don’t see anything in what this country has done or become as anything that I would be proud of. Am I proud of the people in it? A few. I could name them all on the digits of both hands. Do you have any idea of how sad that is? Does anyone in this nation realize what we are losing by desecrating the land that cradles us and gives us life.

We are losing everything. We are ruining everything by not doing right by what we call home. This land is the only one we will have. This planet will not say it’s ok I have another already ready for you to screw up as soon as you’ve finished with this one. That is not how this works. We have only one. It won’t change. You won’t be able to put a bandaid on it and make it better. There is only this one and you're killing it.

I refuse to be a partied to a government that will not answer for it’s actions. I refuse to be a partied to a collective of one percent of the population dictating what is to happen on treaty land. Because when it comes down to it; your bottom line is the only thing that matters. And the lives you have to step on to make your next dollar mean nothing in the long run. So as I sit here and listen to my children sleep on my quiet street I worry. I worry for what you will do next. Where you will force my people to go next. Where you will take this next.

You already have stated by actions and words that you care little for the lives of the Indigenous in this country. You have already trampled on them in public for the sake of your progress. So my question is this. What’s next? Are we to be exterminated as the aborigines in Australia? Will you breed us out? Or will you just move us to an area not wanted again? Keep in mind there really isn’t anywhere else to put us.

But, regardless of where we go or if we just vanish; do you think the world isn’t watching? If you don’t believe they are think again. There are eyes everywhere. And I hope you feel as every eye watches you tear this country apart and for the sake of a dollar.

America the Pot of Water

This melting pot

This stew

This country that was so proud of it diversity

This land that has cradled us since we drew breath

This place is becoming nothing but a pot of water

Water that is life but water that is only water just the same

They are slowly taking everything that makes this place unique

Everything that makes us who we are

I’m reminded of the stone soup story but going backwards

Going in a direction that there is no coming back from

Taking us to a place that it's people will live in misery

The uniqueness that calls everyone here

The “American Dream” that is even refused to a certain few

Is no longer attainable for any

Not the people that were here first

Not the people who were brought here by force

Not the people who ran here for better

When they were making the advertisement they should have said

This is something you can only witness

Something you can only see being achieved

But to hell with you if you think it will be something you can gain for yourself

The systematic shutdown of all that makes us special is coming

Has been coming for quite sometime

But, only now do you see it

Only now do you feel the slow closing of the walls that are encapsulating this land

Turning us into a fortress that no one wants to be locked into

Turning us into a crying bleeding heart that longs for the love of the lives it's breathed for

And my tears

You're tears

Our childrens tears

They are the ocean

They are the water that surround us

Our turmoil the waves that wash up on shore

Slowly building and drawing more ferocity until we drown in them

Drown in our sorrows and loneliness

Drown in your hatred and mistrust

You will be alone on this continent

The earth will no longer cradle you

The water will no longer bless you

The plants will wither

The animals won't succor you

It will become nothing but a pile of dried out earth that no longer has the energy

Energy that you require to give you life and air

And us the watchers

The protectors

The healers

The lovers of all that this land has given us

Have no choice but to view it's destruction

We have no choice but to feel it's pain

As you rip that which it's cradled and nurtured from it's grasp

As you rape and pillage it's life before it's very eyes

All of us are the earth

All of us are the land

All of us were in that stew

All of us were supposed to be one

Now there is only you.

My Coloured Privilege

My coloured privilege

It's so interesting to see my privilege

The fear I see when I walk into a store

The distaste I feel from others when I went to my daughters school

The looks of disbelief when you see I can talk and say words well

Lets not forget the wonderful comments on how well my children talk

My coloured privilege

Makes me stand out in a crowd

Makes me uncomfortable in that crowd

Makes you look only at me for my difference in that crowd

Makes me the first one you come to if and when something goes missing

Sometimes can make me a party of one in that crowd

My coloured privilege

Disturbs your calm

Takes away my voice

Sucks the air out of the room till it's hard to breath

My coloured privilege

Doesn’t make me right even when I am

Doesn’t give me rights even when I should have them

Doesn’t change anything in my life it just stays the same

My coloured privilege

Wants to be ignored

Wants something better than it has received

Prays for a better world for that of myself and children

Watches with sad eyes as it seems better will never come

My coloured privilege

Is not privileged

Is not a gift

Is not something that I can throw in your face the way you do mine

Is not fun and will never be

My coloured privilege

Is nothing

Just a few words grouped together to make you feel better

Letter to my People

I've spent most of my life being a part of two different cultures. Never fully being in either but being a member. Being of mixed heritage makes things difficult for any who have had to deal with it. Makes no difference what cultures, or background they are all different to a certain extent; even if you're just from a different side of the tracks but the same color.

The difference I’m talking about has to do with something else entirely. Being African American and Native American. Two cultures that are different but with some similarities. Being indigenous to this country and having a culture that was brought here against their will makes an interesting life for a child.

My mother tells me stories sometimes of my grandparents wanting me to live with them because she couldn’t teach me everything I needed to know after my father passed. But her love for me wouldn’t let her hand me over. Honestly I’m happy she didn’t turn me over to them. This didn’t mean I felt that I belonged with them or with my mother's side of the family. After all none of them looked like me. They still don’t. The only person that I truly did look like was my father and he was gone.

I lived the life of an outsider though I was the only one that truly knew I was an outsider. Interesting isn’t it. You live but it's like being in a glass case. Life is happening on both sides of you. You belong to both but you don’t. You understand both, but they don’t understand you. It is a feeling of being incomplete but complete only when you step outside of that box for the short periods you are allowed.

It’s not that they know you feel separate. They don’t even segregate you. The problem is you have no relation to them. You're darker in color, you're lighter in color, your hair is long and straighter than theirs, your hair is kinkier than theirs, your speech is different than both. Where do you fit in with those differences. You would think it would matter but to a child and a teenager it is everything.

You have both thought processes running through your head at once, and think on both levels. So you create two personas. You become two people in one body and you bounce back and forth between the two different cultures being apart but still separate from both. There is no real way around it. It is just the way it is.

You must be wondering why I am telling all of this. It is because of everything that is happening to my people. It is because of the lives that are being lost, threatened, and stolen. It is about the land being stolen and the treaties being broken yet again. It is about the people that are hurting that I relate so much to and wish to help but have no idea how to. It is about my life that I feel being closed in on all sides. Not by the glass that I normally see through but by my people. By their tears and cries for help.

How do I do that? How do I help them? It is all so perplexing. There are no answers to these questions except to be real with myself whether I am accepted or not. So with that being said there are a few things I want to say.

The lives lost to this country is deplorable. The fact that African Americans have no place in this country's natural society unless we get there by getting famous even worse. The same goes for the Native Americans. One people that only wanted to live in the land they had claimed and another that wanted nothing to do with this country but had no choice in it.

Both sides of this fence going through similar issues, fighting similar fights yet fighting alone. Why? Don’t we all have the same claims against this country. Aren’t we fighting the same treatment. If the Black Panther’s and AIM don’t have the same goals then someone please tell me what we are all fighting for. Aren’t we all tired of living in fear and want better for ourselves as well as our children.

But, I don’t see that. I don’t see us working together to fight for what is right. To stop what is wrong with this country. We allowed them to keep us separate and in our own little boxes so we wouldn’t come together and fight together. They made it so there is no united front. We all fight our separate fights. And let me tell you; from someone who is fighting both fights because I’m both people it isn’t easy. I see where the line is drawn because the line was drawn within myself as well.

A line that I crossed last week. I crossed it when everything going on with the pipeline in south dakota took a turn for the worst. I crossed that line when I felt like Travon, Tamire, Sandra, Altin, and Philandro were happening all at once. I felt it disappear because I am not one I am both cultures and I am loosing my people. I am loosing my heritage to it all.

Gentrification isn’t just happening on one side it’s happening on both. They want to scrub this land until all you see is one not both. Forgetting that none of us asked for any of this. No one asked to be on a reservation. No one asked to be made a slave. No one asked to be treated like less than a full human being. That the constitution stated would give human beings the rights it promised.

They want us to disappear. And become a memory. They want to lie in their history books and downplay the parts we played in both making this country and what making this country made us into. They want us to get over everything like it was nothing, “Yeah you were slaves once but you're not anymore so get over it.” ; or “Yeah we took your land but we gave you a place to stay get over it.”

Does anyone see a problem with this. That it isn’t so simple. That if we don’t stand up together and say it's wrong then all we’ll be thought of is the minority that is having a problem at that time and not the majority that is having a problem with everything they are doing, everything they are taking.

In the end one voice voice means nothing but combined with more it becomes overpowering. It becomes all you can hear. All you can see. But we aren't doing it. Why?

I can’t live a life with separate sides any more. Did anyone notice that all the groups of minorities are called minorities. But we were all indigenous to a country. Some may have come by choice others were already here and others were stolen without a choice in the matter. But together we are not a minority. Together we are what makes up the majority of this country. Together we can change the face of what they want to call America and actually make it great by standing together and saying we are here!

We didn’t ask for any of this but we are here and we belong. It’s a fence I refuse to try and straddle. It’s a line that I will no longer allow to keep both sides of myself from crossing. I am who and what I am. I am both sides of this fence. I am two. Love me or leave me.

The Beginning

I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out what’s going on with me. I have two children and I’m finally living in my own spot but there is still something missing from my life. That moment when you realize that you need a man but you don’t know if you can trust him when you find him. I spent so much time waiting for the ball to drop. For whatever man that came around to show me who he truly was, a liar, a cheat, someone that would hurt me or my children.

This is the part where I say sorry to every man that may come across this page. I know you're not that man (well you could be). But I’m prejudging. I don't know if you're that person. But that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t know.

The best way to explain this would be to start at the beginning. Honestly it's all about choices. Where I begin is with a choice. I wasn’t making that choice because he was Mr. Wonderfull. I made that choice because he was Mr. Here Now.

Yes it's sad but thats the way it was. And he was a great guy in the beginning. He made me feel beautiful and I thought he loved my kids. (Zoom in on my stupid face). I went into that relationship with no expectations and no love. But I grew to love him in every way possible. It was once I loved him that he showed me his real self.

You can tell me I’m stupid so many times before I go crazy. I thought I was a real live fuck up. No lie. I had raised my children until I met him. I thought I was a horrible mother. I couldn’t clean right to save my life. I couldn’t do anything. I felt the heel of his boot every day.  Now looking at this you would think why didn’t I do anything. Why didn’t I leave. This isn’t even half of what I went through.

Then there's what he put my children through. You’d think they would tell me? We were all under the preconceived notion that the other was happy. They thought he was the love of my life so why tell me that he was being an asshole. I thought they had never had a father and were happy so how could I take that away from them. (Yes I martyred myself for my children; who else would do it?)

So when I finally left I wasn’t broken but I was damaged. My children still just looking for love from a male figure that doesn’t involve being belittled or physically abused and so am I. Now I’m in a state far away and wondering where I can find my Mr. Wright, and also wondering if I do find him will I let him stay.

So if and when he shows up... what then...

Sad part is I think I’ve found him a few times. But I’m still running. Maybe when I get tired of running and I’m laying by the side of the road holding my side from sprinting so far from the last man the real one will show up and pick my tired ass of the side of the road. It's just a thought but one I hope comes to pass soon because honestly I’m getting tired of running.

So if you know what Mr. Right looks like or sounds like. How can you tell the difference from Mr. Right and Mr. Full of Shit?

All opinions welcome.