I wrote this controversial poem about the residential schools of Canada because like many others in my generation, we weren't told anything about them. I was almost 40 when a neighbor who was Metis/Inuit told me about them. My mother never heard about these schools either, until I told her. I even attended junior high school and high school with First Nation people who were bused into our school, learned native crafts, like bead work, yet never heard of it.
To the Blackfoot, Ojibwe, Sioux and Cree,
I bow my head, ashamed of me.
For judging a culture for so many years,
all because of misguided fears.
I did not know what they went through,
only ill tempered drunks is what I knew.
They didn't teach the truth in school,
oh, how I feel like a stupid fool.
Instead of giving them a helping hand,
we took their children, stole their land.
Forced them into residential school,
so they would bend to white man's rule.
The children back, their spirits broke,
the past they knew, but never spoke.
A foreign stranger to their people's way,
it still haunts them to this day.
We created a cultural genocide,
the native way of life has died.
When I think of our superior race,
I hide my now uncolored face.
ESTÁS LEYENDO
If Only Love
PoesíaI wrote this poem in 1987 during the time of the Ethiopian famine. Last year I changed a couple lines, and this is my updated version. When I first wrote this poem I was only 18 years old and hadn't had children yet. Now after nursing 7 children, I...
