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.