The next time you want to ban
brown skin from your white land ,
consider the crimson floods spilt
on burnt clay from red flesh.

You want brownfolk in this country
like we wanted pox in our quilts.
As our history is ripped to tattered patches
and replaced by a white silken sheet. 

But this is the land of the free
and this is the home of the brave.
And when I say brave
I don't mean that caricature
drawn on the front of a baseball jersey,
with buck teeth,
a bird feather
and  a tomahawk motion.

I mean the brave souls
that took a last stand
against the Custers
and the Mayflowers
and colonial white powers.
I mean the Sitting Bulls and Geronimos
who’s histories are rewritten
in Old Spaghetti Westerns.
Where John Wayne is always the hero,
and our people aren’t even cast
to play our own roles. 

Hollywood won't stoop to blackface
but red face is PC. 
Perfect Aryan models advertise American Apparel,
one authentic-looking headdress
and fifty-dollar native design
crop top tank tops
are like spoils to the victor.
It's enough to make one sick.

This is America,
where they steal your culture
and sell it back to you
at ten times the price.
Those faux hide moccasins,
**** on old tradition,
turn centuries old struggle
into a fashion faux-pas.  

I once had a conversation with a girl
whose skin was made of privilege.
She said, ”I thought Native Americans
wanted to live on reservations..?”
Let that resonate. Repeat.
as if we were getting a room
at the Four Seasons.

It was called the trail of tears
not the trail of whimsical wonder.
But in this white washed world
invasion is called settling
genocide is industry
and poverty is tax-free.

Our heritage is endangered,
our veins are *****-diluted
but at least we have those scholarships
which, I suppose, we’ll use
to cram our brains
with a history
that never belonged to us.

Perhaps, all of those centuries ago,
we should have thought to build a wall,
you know, to keep the immigrants out.
We could have stood at the border
with picket signs of self-deluded righteousness
lungs filled with hate
for a different colored human
shouting, "Go home, Alien,
your dreams are illegal here!"