The Thunders Came to Say Goodbye

The Thunders came to say good bye

The Thunders came to say good night

The Thunders came to say to her

See you on the other side.

The Spirit that could Never be Satisfied

 

Eagle and Hawk's "Another September" - An Indigenous Rock n Roll Classic

It has all the elements of a Canadian pop music classic. From it's folky and hummable melody with regional southern Manitoba lyrical references to it's rousing singalong chorus Eagle and Hawk’s Another September is a song that you should know but you don't.

The recent passing of Vince Fontaine founding member of Eagle and Hawk has caused me to reflect on their outstanding collection of Indigenous rock and roll. For those who know songs like Sundancer, Cowboys and Indians, I SeeRed, Indian city and their cover of Keith Secola’s Indian Car are the top songs in the Eagle and Hawk canon . And they all deserve to be heard because they are wonderful examples of contemporary Indigenous music that speak to Indigenous issues.

Another September is a song that doesn't reference Indigenous identity but is about love, regret, broken hearts and getting through one more day. It’s not for kids. It’s not someone singing about how they used to go driving back in high school. This is about a grown up who has seen some things “The Children are all married, another Soldier’s been buried.” Then the kicker, “The Jets moved to Phoenix too.”

There is no reference to sex in this song. It is all about having a partner. Having someone that just wants to be with you. “We used to drive on up to Winnipeg Beach, You used to laugh at all my bad jokes.”

Songs that work for you do so on all kinds of levels. When I first fell for this track the opening line, which does put you in a place was one that I didn’t like. “There's still a dark stain where you spilled your Pepsi that day.” I got it but I also didn’t like it. As the song grew and the images in the song and the story that was taking place within in it became clear. I began to feel that Pepsi stain. It was a fight they had. They argued about it. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe she was absolutely wrong. But he still had to be such a dick about it. It was just some goddamn spilled pepsi.

If there is a reference that I feel personally is Indigenous but is also universal it is the line. “I still wear your daddy’s old coat.”

To get the old man’s coat is a generous gift and if it is one that is still being worn after all these years it suggest something well made like a leather or buckskin jacket or a working man’s coat like a mackinaw. It speaks to the larger connection that has been lost that he was once considered worthy to walk in her father’s moccasins.

Interweaved into the song are very specific references to municipal corruption “The city's got bigger, he's got two terms go figure” in the beginning and “Another mayor's been busted, they still cant be trusted” towards the end.  It all adds up to creating a complete universe. A moment in time in a real world that is so specific in details in creates an emotional response in the listener.

The Pepsi stain isn’t just the mess in your life that you can’t clean up it represents that piece of your life that you can’t let go.

“I still stare at the stain on the floor. And your silver bracelet is still in the top drawer, Oh Hear me Know”.

*

If Indigenous artists like Eagle and Hawk would receive the kind of radio support from Canadian and Indigenous radio that they deserve more of these songs would be known. 

Native Content (NATCON)

-30-

 

Conservative Governments have been good for Indigenous Rights and Reconciliation

I remember the day that Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized for Canada’s role in operating the Indian Residential School System. The sky was overcast and ready to cry and the trees were leaning in.

We were on our way to Sundance and were now parked on the gravel shoulder of highway number 6 listening to his speech live on the car radio in the middle of Manitoba’s boreal forest.

I am travelling with a Residential School Survivor who isn’t much older than I am. I didn’t know that. Not  until I returned home to Grand Rapids and started working with Survivors at the Misipawistik Wechetowin Healing Program. I didn’t know that it happened to people in my generation.

I can tell you that my travel companion was tough and did not like Stephen Harper. It seemed that not many Indigenous peoples were fans of Stephen Harper and his Conservative Government.

Nevertheless, here we sat on the side of the highway one hundred kilometres from where we were coming from and over 400 kilometres from where we were going waiting to hear him speak. We rolled down the windows and smoked. I didn’t smoke much until I started working with Survivors but I was smoking a lot then, sometimes you needed a smoke to talk, sometimes you needed one to listen.

There were few other vehicles on the highway that morning somewhere near Devil’s Lake where the bush is thick and the only thing on the radio is CBC. The grey sky lowed and hugged the tops of the tamarack and pine.

The silence lifted that lone voice in the wilderness up to the sky with the smoke of our tobacco. It was clear that no matter what we had thought of this man the sincerity in his voice and his apology that morning was true. When his voice broke, my tough friend whispered, “he’s going to cry”.

It mattered and I will never forget that day. It is one of my “Do you remember where you were when you heard?” moments. In the days and years since people and history will say whatever and parse words but I remember where I was and what I felt when I heard Prime Minister Stephen Harper Apologize in the House of Commons to the Survivors of the Indian Residential Schools System.

It should be regarded as one of the high points in Canadian Indigenous reconciliation, but it isn’t and it is this bizzarro world called Canada in which the Conservative government’s Indigenous record is ignored or forgotten.

It is though the Conservatives can only be judged on John A. McDonald’s record despite the fact that Liberals have been running the country for the majority of its modern history and bear the responsibility for maintaining the Indian Residential School System during their time in power.

Taking a historical analysis of post war Canada shows that a Conservative government has been good for Indigenous rights and reconciliation.

The Conservatives did not get into power after World War II until 1957 after 22 years of Liberal rule. In 1960, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker granted First Nations the right to vote. Until then a First Nations person would have to enfranchise or give up their Indigenous Rights in order to vote. Diefenbaker’s defense of equality for Indigenous Peoples was something he expressed as a young lawyer defending First Nations and Metis people back home in Saskatchewan. His actions noted in the groundbreaking autobiography Halfbreed by Metis author Maria Campbell. “He would represent anyone rich or poor, red or white. If they had a case and no money he would help,” wrote Campbell about Diefenbaker adding. “He helped us and the important thing was he did so when no one else would.”

Nine years later in 1969, Pierre Elliot Trudeau and the Liberals ruling with a majority government tried a bureaucratic Genocide called the White Paper that would have enfranchised all First Nations people with a stroke of a pen.

The Conservatives would not have a chance to form a truly ruling government for decades, ignoring the brief and impotent reign of Joe Clark.  Brian Mulroney brought them back into majority rule and in 1991 Mulroney’s government launched the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples with a goal to a take an exhaustive and critical look at the relationship between Canada and Indigenous Peoples. The RCAP report is a defining document in Canada and serves as academic and legal foundation throughout the country and around the world.

In 1985, Mulroney's government passed Bill C-31 which would remove the gender bias in the Indian Act which removed First Nations status from any woman who married a non-First Nations man. This could be an Indigenous man included Metis, Inuit or a First Nations Man who had already lost his status. It was one of the most heinous means of bureaucratic genocide and it was upheld for almost a century before a majority Conservative government changed the law.

In one of Mulroney’s last official Acts he signed the Nunuvut Land Agreement on May 25, 1993 creating the largest Indigenous controlled territory in North America. The Nunuvut Territory would become official under a Liberal government but this was when it was made. It is a day, I would imagine, that some Inuit remember “where they were the day that they heard”.

On June 12, 2008, it was a Conservative Prime Minister who gave me the grandchild of a Residential survivor and a Survivor a moment of healing and reconciliation. It was that same Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper who 10 days earlier on June 2, 2008 launched the Truth and Reconciliation Commission an act that to this day defines who we are as a country.

I am not going to defend all the actions or policies of the past Conservative Governments but I do think it is important to look at these facts in their real time and historical context. The belief that a Conservative government is always bad for Indigenous rights and reconciliation is not accurate.

 

-30-

Me and the Mandalorian

Me and the Mandalorian

Were riding in a Delorian

He said you want to go Exploreean

I said Yeah

I said Yeah, Yeah, Yeah

Me and the Mandalorian

We were singing Gloria and

We picked up Van Morrison

We said La

We said La La La

It's True The Mandalorian

Is quite the historian

He'll teach everything you missed

Everything Indigenous

Heya Hey

Heya Hey Hey Ya

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah

Yeah Yeah Yeah

Yeah YEAH

La La LA

La LA la

La LA

Heya Hey

Heya Hey Hey Ya

Heya Hey

Heya Hey Hey Ya

In the service of the Lord

(Chorus)

In the service of the Lord, Lord, Lord

In the service of the Lord 

In the service of the Lord, Lord, Lord

Living in the service of the Lord

When I did not want to walk no more

I started walking in the service of the Lord

(repeat)

(Chorus)

I could not stand a life of just Me, Me, Me

I started living in the service of the Lord

(repeat )

(Chorus)

When I did not want to Live no more

I started living in the service of the Lord

(repeat )

(Chorus)

I started

Living

In

The Service of

The Lord

Amen

The Power of the Flower

I believe in the power of the flower
but it can  trip you up
when you overuse and abuse
then it's not enough
then it's on to stronger stuff

Delicate minds of all vintage
On this ground carefully tread
Use what works for the body
and not so much for the head

Big Business
Big Money
Big Industry
What grew for free
Making air clean
Now Big and Dirty

Shatter and vapes
what does it take
chasing dragons now
instead of chilling out.
Wow, man. Wow.

We have to be careful
When we use medicine
Want to be right living
Want to do the right thing

Temperance Break
is all it takes
to get it back to full power
I believe in the power of the flower

Another Decade older and What have we done?

Another Decade Older and What have we done
More pollution and waste and wars that can't be won

No one left but what we've become
Another decade older and What have we done

Songs that cannot be unsung
we are twisted and wrung
You are right and you are wrong

Take this bad mind
and put it down
Just Stop
Take a breath
Stop moving
everyone

Take a deep breath
Stop all the running
and consuming
until all is consumed.
What do you pay for those shoes?

Lets see how long it will take
When they are not using everyone
To do what they say can't be done

Lets turn away
Stop giving it power
Take one day
Take one more hour
It is all the same
We have to stop
Giving it power
This insatiable growl
It's here to devour
Yours, mine and ours
rushed into the final hour
Feed the right wolf in ourselves
and in one another

Do not feed the spirit that cannot be satisfied.
A parasite of the soul and of the mind
Pack up in the night and leave it behind

(written  January 2020)

We have to protect our Metis Nation Territories Lands Air and Water

We have to protect our Metis Nation Territories

Lands Air and Water

We have to express our Aboriginal and Indigenous Rights
We need to create our future with more than memories
Living within our lands and hunting and trade territories

1.4 Million acres
In the Manitoba Act
Respect the Canadian Constitution
and reconcile our restitution

*

Exercise your Aboriginal and Indigenous Rights
Protect the Land, Air and Water

Protect Mother Earth

Protect Mother Earth
Exercise your Aboriginal and Indigenous Responsibilities
Protect the Land, The Air, The Water 
Protect Mother Earth
Protect Mother Earth

*

I am where

I am from

Occupy the Homeland

Sunshine Sketches of the Rez

(No longer available)

Clearwater Clarity

 

I don’t know why I had to go

I had the time that day

That much I can say

I would make an offering

Place tobacco on the ice before the break

Before solid becomes liquid on Clearwater Lake

 

It is two days after spring

The transformation begins

Today I can walk on the water

Soon I will swim

 

It is my wife’s teaching

Anishinaabe ways

I carry all those good things

With me to this day

 

Tobacco on ice

Not clear crystalline

Prayers giving thanks

For my life, my wife and all our children

 

Asking strength for the sick

Sick from affliction

Sick from confliction

Sick from addiction

 

 

Still Frozen Clearwater Lake

I did what I was told

I made my offering and prayer

Now it was time to drive home

*

 

Standing on frozen sand and a sudden wave of memory

6 years old sitting in a wooden Adirondack deck chair for the first time it comes to me  

Metis families and new friends laughing and mingling about in bright colors and sunshine and the clearest water in the world and laughter and laughter

It was some kind of Metis thing.

Some kind of Metis thing.

It wasn’t just us.

Just our family.

 

It was the first time I knew that the Metis Nation was bigger than us.

It was my parents work and others in the early days of the MMF

An expression of the dreams of a dozen or so people not so many years ago

That brought us together and created that moment of sun speckled unity in a glorious pastel rainbow

I knew that I would be applying for membership

To go and speak about a Federation

That is for all of us

 

*

Without Historic Metis Communities we will have no rights

Without Land there is no Homeland

No Land No Nation.

 

*

 

That is where you are from

Said My Mom

After the hospital in The Pas

That is where we went

We were living in that unheated cabin

With ice coming through the walls

On Clearwater Lake

 

Where in our poverty

She broke from the contemporary colonial orthodoxy

That formula is best for babies

They made people believe that powder produced in the factory is the future and proper path

Mom breastfed me out of desperation like John Steinbeck’s Rose O’Sharon in Grapes of Wrath

 

I was breast fed rebellion

On Clearwater Lake

It has been half a century

I am finally awake

 

-30-

 

Marked Down and Discounted

 

One month after The Chief died

His jersey was marked down and discounted to half price

Less than half price on the official Toronto Maple Leafs' online store

George Armstrong was a Toronto Maple Leaf for 21 years

He was captain for 13 and he led the team to 4 Stanley Cups

I stole that from a Wikipedia page

And that line from the Hip

He was the greatest captain during the greatest run in the greatest franchise in English Canadian Hockey History.

He was the Chief

And when the broadcasters eulogized on his nickname they suggest it was a simpler time back then

It wasn’t meant as an insult.

It wasn’t racist.

That is the subtext to what they were really saying

Classic Canadian Erasure

It was a simpler time back then.

First Nations were still being restricted by an Apartheid like Pass system when he became a Leaf in 1950

It was a simpler time back then

Children were being dragged away to residential schools and ads in newspapers are selling 60’s scoops to rich White folks around the country and south of the border.

It was a simpler time back then

He played the first 10 years with no right to vote for First Nations across the country represented by the Maple Leaf he wore on his chest.

It was a simpler time back then

Indigenous Veterans were being neglected on the streets of the city, the gravel roads and bush trails across the country after serving in World War II.

Even Tommy Prince, Canada’s greatest Warrior would not be treated Equal as Canada’s greatest cowards.

They sold their rights to be Indian to fight for Canadian Freedom and were discounted after their service.

Marked down and discounted.

Marked down and discounted.

Marked down and discounted.

They should not have said that they called him Chief because it was a simpler time back then.

They should have said the truth.

They called him Chief

Because he was the Chief.

He had been through more than anyone in that room.

He was hardened.

Hard as flint scraping and scorching shards of steel into molten balls of fire.

He was the Man.

He was the Leader.

He was the Captain.

He was the Chief.

***

Kettle and Stoney Spring

 

I swear.

Once I heard an Oriole

Riffing with John Coltrane on a sunny day

Just outside our open window

It was the first day of spring

Equinox was the song 

 

*

Here in the swamp

Back da bush

The frogs are incessant

Incessant in their song of life

*

Sing me into this new world

I have been resurrected again

Waking up from the dream world

I rise from the frozen mud

Despite once indistinguishable

Only moments ago

One and the same

From Mother Earth

Only moments ago

Silent as death

Yet I rise and sing to the sun

I sing to the clouds

I sing to the rain

I sing for the water creatures

I sing for the land creatures

I sing for the in-betweens

I sing for the creatures in this world

I sing for the creatures in the Dream World

I sing for myself and for life

I sing the blossoms exploding

 

**

Flowers light the way to Medicine Plants and berries

Wild roses follow along the trail and then

Those myriad tiny orchid blossoms tangerine with bright red tips

The wind blows and they dance like schools of angel fish

White flowers amongst thorns promise luscious blackcaps

Ready to be picked just before Powwow song and dance

Rivulets of sweet joy run down Sugar Maple and Black Walnut

The Maple reveals golden amber delight

In the Black Walnut - decadent dark chocolate ambrosia

Molasses thick with sweet medicine and magic

Smoke fills the sugar shack

Children share memories of the Forest Fall Fair

Steam clouds filled with the aroma of cotton candy float in the air

 

***

The robins flock and boss their way around the yards

The crimson cardinal, the blue of the Jay, the yellow of finches flash

The trumpet of the swans, the whoop of the cranes beckon beyond

The revealing patterns in the drumming of the woodpecker’s version of song

The tickety tick tap tapping of little striped ones feverishly hopping from this branch to the next one

The feisty red heads that find a branch that can boom and spend the day pounding on it like the reincarnation of Keith Moon

The Pileated that is the size of a duck but rarely seen revealed only by its distinct heavy hammering knock knock

Though last spring with my 3 red headed grandchildren in truck

We saw 3 Pileated Woodpeckers all sitting together on that stump

I could practically touch the trio they were that near

Perhaps one day the legendary Ghost Bird will appear

 

***

Word will soon come that old so and so hooked some bass out where no will say

Springtime explodes in Kettle and Stoney Point in a glorious way

Explodes with color, sweetness, song, magic and life

Explodes like thousands of frogs singing after a warm spring rain

Explodes like Orioles riffing to Equinox with John Coltrane.

-30-

Alcohol is the root of it all

Alchohol
is the root of it all

It will make you crow
It will make you crawl
It will make you blow
It will make you brawl
It will make you fail
It will make you fall
It will make you feel big
It will make you small

It will make you act rich
It will make you poor

Everyday
It takes more and more

It will make you feel smart

It will empty your head

Fill it with the shameful things

That you did and you said

It will make you feel full of life

It will make you wish 

you were dead

Alcohol

The root of it all

*

When you howl
that you can't
take it
no more
It will not let you go
That is for sure

It is living on you
It is feeding on you
When you are drinking
It is drinking out of you

**

Let it go

Take it slow
Take it easy
One day at a time

You will be fine
You can do it

Let it go

Take it slow
Take it easy
One day at a time

We will get through
One day at a time

***

Skeletons of Poetic Genocide in the Closet of Canada's Literary Elite

A Chippewa woman

With her sick baby,

Crouched in the last hours

Of a great storm.

The Forsaken – Duncan Campbell Scott  

Deputy Superintendent Indian Affairs 1913-1932

I picked it up in London, Ontario at that Goodwill bookstore on Wellington near the 402 with an eclectic selection and cheap prices. It is the bookstore you love to wander into when you have a handful of minutes to spare and a couple of toonies in your pocket.

Among other scores, I purchased a scuffed but well preserved 47-year old paperback copy of Poets of Contemporary Canada 1960-1970 for 50 cents, a two-dollar saving from its 1972 price. The poets listed on the cover included Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, Michaeal Ondaatje and the legendary Al Purdy.

It was just what I was looking for, I was returning to northern Manitoba and a vintage paperback is the perfect travel companion, lightweight, well-made and small enough to fit into any bag and most pockets. New Canadian Library books have a nostalgic vibe that long time Canadian readers or readers of Canadiana will know. The iconic covers often featured inscrutable artwork with experimental color combinations.

This one is metallic blue and army green with artwork that is mostly black with the metallic blue highlighting a woman and who I thought was some kind of mountain scene until about 5 minutes ago.

I know the imprint from hours scouring bookshelves in Sally Annes, VV’s and Goodie shops. The nostalgia is real here, the look and feel of the NCL title in my hand connects me to my final year of high school. I am reading Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town late at night on my bunk in residence of the Frontier Collegiate Institute, Cranberry Portage, Manitoba in the winter of 1980. 

I skipped immediately to the contributions of Cohen, the only poet that had been included in earlier collections of The New Poetry series. It is of course, magnificent and heard in that unforgettable baritone especially on works widely known as songs such as “Suzanne Takes You Down” and “I Believe You Heard your Master Sing”.

In my perusal of the book I soon came across Al Purdy’s “Beothuk skeleton behind Glass Case” and was disturbed by poem and poet. It led me to examine all the work and reveal the skeletons of Genocide in the closet of  Canada’s most revered poets.

The collection begins with the late Purdy a touchstone of contemporary Canadian poetry and who in this slim selection has written some of the most well known poetic acknowledgements of Genocide.

In “INNUIT” Purdy describes witnessing the ancient that once existed. Purdy sees the Indigenous spirit in an Inuit carver and declares that the person is a ghost of his greater self.

An old man carving soapstone

With the race-soul of the people

THE PEOPLE

Moving somewhere

Behind his eyes

 

He returns to similar territory in “Lament for the Dorsets” but it is “Beothuk Indian Behind a Glass Case” that speaks Canada's truth. It is the cold-blooded detachment which he expresses towards a trophy of real and grotesque Genocide that reveals the hidden story within.

I ought to feel sadness here

But I can’t

Only a slight amazement

At the gawking tourists

That these specimens survived

And this man behind the glass case did not

The Purdy contribution ends fittingly with “Remains of an Indian Village” published in 1961, one year after First Nations received the right to vote.

Milton Acorn follows and his contribution “Poem for the Astronauts” is complimentary but the positive perspective is given to one who no longer exists. The sexualization of the exotic other is another trope favoured by poets on both sides of the border.

An Indian running the desert

Kept a stone under his tongue

To drink the saliva, and

His skin remembered a thousand light touches

                -the fingers of his beloved.

George Bowering’s Indian Summer includes lines that should be widely considered among the most offensive in Canadian Literature.

            The Indians I think

Are dead, you cant

Immortalize them, a

Leaf presst between

Pages becomes a

Page

John Newlove places Indigenous Peoples in some Manifest Destiny Circle of Hell in his ode to another First White Man to See tale, “Samuel Hearne in Wintertime”.

Hell smeared with manure,

Hell half-full of raw hides,

Hell of sweat, Indians, stale fat,

Meat-hell, fear-hell, hell of cold.

               

The poem ends in a brutal stanza that speaks to the inbred Canadian scourge of Murder and Missing Indigenous women and girls. Newlove describes the agonizing death of an Indigenous girl like some creature commonly hunted.

 

There was that Eskimo girl

At Bloody Falls at your feet

Samuel Hearne, with two spears in her

You helpless before your helpers

And she twisted about them like

an eel, dying, never to know

 

Newlove’s lengthy “Pride” tries to capture the romantic past of Indigenous Peoples and concludes with the spirit of Indigenous people being eaten alive. The parasitic desire to swallow another culture is lovingly expressed.

            In our mouths,

In our bodies entire, until at last

We become them

 

 Margaret Atwood follows in the footsteps of Purdy in “A Night in the Royal Ontario Museum”.

             

            And further confronting me

With a skeleton child, preserved

In the desert air, curled

beside a clay pot and some beads                                                                                                 

The younger version of the Grande Dame of Canadian Literature is suitably disturbed although one would be hard pressed to find a reflection of Canada’s true history in her work unless "A Handmaiden’s Tale" was inspired by the Indian Residential Schools System. (The schools were in full operation when the book was published.)  

Gwendolyn MacEwen is the discovery of the collection for me I can well imagine that small joy that would fill me to one day come across a collection of her works in a second-hand store. Her reference to Indigenous peoples is again complimentary but the reference is to a distant past and lingers with the sexual exotic stereotype in “The Last Breakfast”.

You think of dark men running through the earth

On their naked, splendid feet.

“Reports in These Killed” from Michael Ondaatje award winning The Collected Works of Billy the Kid again treat Indigenous men as less than other humans.

Joe Bernstain, 3 Indians

A blacksmith when I was twelve, with a knife.

5 Indians in self-defence (behind a very safe rock)

That very safe rock has always been the vantage point for many Canadians when viewing their history and the responsibility of their ancestors and governments for the Genocide of Indigenous Peoples.

It takes work to maintain the illusion of Canada versus the reality. For years Canadians have looked down their noses at their American cousins and the horrific history of Native Americans. As the true history of Canada becomes unveiled can they look at themselves with an equally critical eye. The schools, the churches and the government have been held accountable to some degree; but a hidden Genocide requires more than perpetrators perhaps it needs poets.

The Meanest Daddy in the Whole Wide World

There was a single Dad who was raising his daughter as best as he could.

And sometimes his daughter did not think her dad was doing very good.

.

When it was time to come in from play he would say.

“Time to come in, My Girl.”

She would respond,

“You the Meanest Daddy in the Whole Wide World.”

When it was supper time and the Dad would say,

“Eat all your vegetables, My Girl”

She would respond,

“You’re the Meanest Daddy in the Whole Wide World.”

When it was time to do homework the Dad would day,

"Time to study, My Girl".

She would respond,

“You’re the Meanest Daddy in the Whole Wide World.”

When the sun had gone dad, the Dad would say,

"Time to go to bed My Girl".

She would respond,

“You’re the meanest Daddy in the whole wide world."

I

n the morning, when the girl was all snug and comfy

The Dad would say,

Time to get up and go to school, My Girl

She would respond,

“You’re the Meanest Daddy in the Whole Wide World.”

Before he knew it his daughter was a young woman

And when graduating honours she did say,

"I want to give thanks to my Dad from Your Girl

To the best daddy in the Whole Wide World."

-

-30-

Indigenous Rights and Responsibilities

What are Indigenous Rights
What are Indigenous Responsibilities
There are no rights
Without land, water and territory
Dependence on the land is how it should be
It is our future not only our history

Protect our rights and protect the land
Rights and Responsibilities go hand in hand

I.M.M.I.A

Indigenous Men, MIA
Indigenous Men, What Can I Say

Are my aunties and sisters and daughters safe
Are you there for protection
Are you working for the Man
Implementing that centuries old plan
To remove us from our lands
By breaking the heart of the Nations

That's what it looks like
That's what it is

Why is there no safe place to go
When women and girls are on their own
And they can't go home
And they can't go to a brother
Who has become the other

Indigenous Men, MIA
Indigenous Men, What Can I Say

It was February 2020

It was February 2020

We were not ready

For what was happening

The Trump unleashed

The Biblical Beast

Not the least

Openly Orwellian

Fracking pipelining

Human Trafficking

Wasting Dumping

People disappearing

The price of the job

To be a small cog

In the insatiable machine

That we are feeding

Locusts unleashed

Flying and Feasting

On the green living

The green living

We all need

To eat and to drink

To keep breathing

Another virus

Divides us

Conspires inside us

Splitting us in two

Making one

me

Making one

you

Land protectors took to the land

Took to the water

To make a stand

All nations

All people

Children women and men

Reached out a hand

Round Dance

Reconciliation

When the movement

Completes a circle

It is a revolution

Australia burned

California learned

It’s us

That’s not hearing

Seeing

Not believing

What our prophets

And our scientists

Have been preaching

Stop it now

Slow it down

Stop moving around

Unless you really

have to move

Stop watching

Stop buying

Clean up

Be Clean

Plant trees

Plant that garden

The one we were born in

The one

We all want to die in

Health of Mother Earth (HOME) - Survival Apps

How can we be responsible?
What does walking in protest in the safe streets of Canada make to the overall health of the planet? It has some value in awareness and education and that could be tracked on the Health of Mother Earth (HOME) App.

HOME, an APP that tracks all our contributions to the Health of Mother Earth.
Points for recycling, reusing, reforesting and action education points and points against wasteful use of non-renewable resources.