The French language to you, was little more than an inheritance
It was the promise between mother and daughter that a grandchild ought to know the language they used

In Bonnyville, they occupy the church, the Sobeys, the liquor store with that butchered accent
The hybrid between Quebecois French and rural Albertan English - ugly, and indecisive

You don’t live in Bonnyville, where the French roam free
The French in Edmonton feels lost, almost unknown
Poorly funded buildings house these Franco-albertans - children with the same inheritance as you

Immersion becomes a ***** word,
worthy of contempt and disgust
All the French kids know each other,
forced to grow up together while being deprived of options
They all go to the same university - the small francophone campus which stands unimpressive in the only neighbourhood in Edmonton where stop signs say ‘arrêt’

Oil Country, home for the right and prosperous, they don’t like you
You, you’re Francophone -
Stuck up, ******, pretentious...
Besides, there are no such things as Franco-albertans.

What could you be other than an invented term by some lost souls?
You aren’t French enough -
Alberta is an English speaking province.

The time you went to France,
someone asked if you were French-Canadian
Before you could reply, your friends spun your story - something believable, commendable...
your parents, lived in Montreal, and moved to Alberta with their wholly French children

Your father grew up in Edmonton,
memorizing the parks and malls by name
while your mother lived on a dairy farm, living in french - the ugly acadienesque french.

But, to everyone around you, it’s much more believable that you are a stranger to this province.
Maybe you are.

Because I Am Indigenous.

There’s always a brume of skepticism (of fear) that will loom like a fly,
Slightly past 9:30pm on a Friday and the twilight is taking the sky
I find myself reciting; “It’s too dangerous. It’s too dangerous.”
I feel this way because it’s another day with another alert on the news broadcast; another “missing person’s” poster hanging on the bleak walls,
The articles are increasing while the fight to battle against it is decreasing,
We attend more social gatherings where we mourn more than we celebrate;
We mourn, can’t you hear us?  
Our missing indigenous women;
Of injured sisters, mothers, Aunty’s and cousins.
Of our murdered women.

There’s so much injustice and shame in our system,
Our voices get silence and we get dismissed with one wave of your ******* palm and no second glance.
Shame.

Because I am Indigenous,
My cultural beliefs are frowned upon; my healing ceremonies that takes away the discrimination toxicity, my herbs that help heal my throat that’s yelling at you to listen,
My prayers in my two native tongues for those effected by your colonialism.
My cultural heritage that is label as witchcraft and locked away in shelves cloaked by their leatherback book that they hold so close to their sinful chests

And dangling cross.

Colonialism.
Discrimination.

Because I am Indigenous woman,
I am afraid to walk alone.

Because I am Indigenous,
I am afraid to be a victim of a hate-crime.

Because I am Indigenous.

I am also resilient.

Easy-going energy moguls at Exxon Mobil,
Insidiously sip scotch in their ivory towers,
They take no blame for the blame is ours,
We, the worker bees, were employed to **** the soil,
Little did we know it was the hallowed ground under our very own families feet,
Now we look towards our homes and see nothing but ash and hell fire,
Our collective youth and countless hours of precious life,
Traded for false abundance and counterfeit wealth,
When it all burns will you still care about your bank account?