#indigenous
Sacred beast, King of the plains
Feeder of the people and protector of the herd
You are the lifeline come hard times
And through your death you give life.
Sustenance, Nutrients, Nourishment to the hunter's family.
Your skin, your hide turned clothing or shelter.
Your tendons turned sinew
Your bones turned tools to be used for a lifetime.
Your muscle, your meat turned to stew and fragrant roasts
Meals turned to memories
Of families gathered around sacred fires
Laughing, loving, living another day
All thanks to you.
Tatanka
Apr 19
Apr 19, 2026 at 2:15 PM UTC
A feather takes on great importance.
That's why I must inform for instance.
I wear them in spirit because it's said that spirit is the one who gives these feathers.
They are sacred and holy and I adorn them wholly.
I enter a palace of great mighty wings.
They flap and sweep through the glistening air.
I adorn with my mind, body, and spirit.
It glistens through the air.
They mean a lot to me.
They mean a lot to the almighty.
It is my path.
Don't laugh.
This is my sacred path.
Feb 18
Feb 18, 2026 at 11:00 PM UTC
History likes its heroes armed,
boots heavy with intention,
but sometimes survival arrives
carried in a basket.
She walked the cold road
not toward glory
but toward hunger,
toward men who did not know
how to eat what would save them.
White corn is not mercy
if taken without knowledge.
Raw, it sickens.
Prepared, it sustains.
She understood the difference,
and that understanding mattered more
than allegiance or flag.
While winter tightened its grip on Valley Forge,
she taught patience to starving soldiers,
showed them how food becomes nourishment
only when handled with respect.
This, too, is strategy.
This, too, is courage.
The coin will show her offering corn,
a simple gesture made permanent in metal.
But the deeper imprint
was already made in bodies warmed,
in lives that lasted long enough
to remember her name
and forget the cost paid by her people.
She was not promised a future in return.
Her nation lost land,
lost kin,
lost safety.
Allies do not always survive the victory.
Still, she walked.
Still, she carried.
Still, she taught.
Let history say this clearly:
the country was not only forged by muskets,
but by a woman who knew
that compassion, correctly applied,
can change the outcome of a war.
Feb 6
Feb 6, 2026 at 9:29 AM UTC
They chose a tree that had already listened,
rings full of weather, patience, and time,
a trunk that knew how rivers remember
and how fire, when honored, can be kind.
In Ashfield the park will hold its breath,
May smoke lifting slow and thin,
not the smoke of loss or taking,
but the careful burn that brings shape back in.
A mishoon is not carved by force or hurry,
it's coaxed by flame and knowing hands,
fire teaching wood how to open itself
to water, to journey, to land.
Before maps, before towns learned borders,
before grants and calendars and dates,
canoes like this traced quiet futures
through coves, through bends, through the grammar of lakes.
Now the town makes room for the old instruction,
steps aside and lets it speak,
honors the first stewards of these waters
whose care ran deeper than words could reach.
I think of all the songs for the land I've written,
not to claim it, not to own,
but to stand with fields and rivers
and say this place is not alone.
This one won't be sung from a stage or porch,
no chorus to carry the tune,
but it rhymes the way fire and water do,
each shaping the other, each knowing when to yield room.
When the boat parade drifts into September,
and the mishoon meets the light,
it will carry more than wood and flame,
it will carry a memory done right.
A reminder that land remembers who listens,
that revival doesn't shout or boast,
it arrives as fire guided gently,
as a canoe returning to the coast.
Feb 5
Feb 5, 2026 at 12:02 PM UTC
Red.
The color of my skin.
Red.
The color we wear to show the women who are no longer there.
A painted hand across my face, a mark this country tries so hard to erase.
Shadows of history
It refuses to embrace.
Hiding the shame inflicted upon us just because of our race?
Red.
The color of my face, filled with anger.
Twisting in rage.
Injustice to the people who first inhabited this place.
We The People? Which People?
We are people, too.
People with red in our hair, the blood dripping down the strands, our scalps in their hands.
We are deserving.
A shame so disgraceful, yet thrown in our face.
Red.
The color of the blood they spilled.
Red.
The color of the people they killed.
White.
The canvas they painted, to cover their blight.
White was the snow on the ground before our blood poured down.
The blood of our people
Who’s skin wasn’t.. right?
No. Wasn’t white.
White passing, but time is everlasting.
Generations pass, yet we still feel the pain inflicted in the past.
Blue.
Like the bruises marring our skin, our demeanor thin.
Shallow eyes from all the sleepless nights
Nights away from our children, the kids who hadn’t sinned.
Ripped away, while the skies were still gray.
Blue.
Like the waters they came across
Arrows thundering down, can you hear that sound?
The sound of all the cries- of the children taken in the night.
Dec 8, 2025
Dec 8, 2025 at 3:45 PM UTC
I wanna run to you in an airport
Like they do in 90s romance movies
Because I miss you and
I’ve been away from home for two years
I want to sit on the beach and explain the landscape that
You know better than I do
In the language it was originally loved in, that
You never bothered to learn
Why would you?
You dip your feet shallowly
Into the water instead of dunking yourself
Like I do, down up down up down
Because you’ll be back tomorrow
And I’ll spend fractions of me
Waiting for a call or a text
For 20 bucks to send you
To breathe plumeria-scented air
From the oil on the skin of your neck
For a picture of the freckles on the webbing
between your index and thumb, and the ring
That I bought you before I left so that in the pictures
you post with your white boyfriend
I’m there on your finger
So when he’s teaching you the ‘local’ lifestyle
I’m there on your finger
So when you island hop for a surfing class
You keep me on your finger, where I can feel the waves.
I want to come home but I can’t, not before
I buy you a new ring, out here
in the empty expanse of a Where’s Waldo puzzle
It has to be
Something expensive, something durable
That won’t tarnish in the island
humidity, something that your
San-Francisco friends will ooh and ahh at
Because I want to see you wearing it when I get home.
I’ve been away from home for fifteen years
I return in my dreams, but the soil
doesn’t feel right, and the love isn’t how
my mother’s father’s father described it
At the beach, lots of people swim, but no one else
Keeps their head under and lets the water breathe life into their hair.
Lets the water into their mouth, chokes, then does it again.
But I like the way you
Dipped your feet in when you watched me
Leave, on a boat chasing Troy
Venus my northern star
As I enter the storm
My boat floats through the violence,
against Poseidon’s abundant will
because my sail made up of duct-taped exam scores
And half-organized sermons
Is mightier than any of his sons
I’ve been away since 700 BCE
But you’ll still know me when I come home
Dec 19, 2024
Dec 19, 2024 at 1:03 AM UTC
inadequately explained
the wounds engraved
the body that rests here, that lays
he was flushed with florescence
flowered with effervescence
resting under a grey grave
he lays immersed in the earth
a shallow grave for a heart of hearth
i can still see his orange shirt
the clouds cry out grey
Dec 13, 2024
Dec 13, 2024 at 10:01 AM UTC
Simplicity
Had like a child with no forethought
Quiet, angel, thinking joy implicitly...
Is a babes dream, even where love is not?
Not the taming wind?
Severity, in the name of solemn justness?
Can a vice, be a lover's stare, to lend
The our of presence; of mind, kindred, and bless
What has my lip, for another sigh?
Of peace, the still remaining share
Of life; so many, so many mind...
Even when peace is a step forward, sensation cares
Callousness, are we a fate, in silences fury?
Of prayer; notice the shade we compel
To look one more time, a sated cause to carry
Away the copious day, that is for more than another haste of hell
Here to say, stay
Outward limits we will know
With a new solemnity, with an ear for any
Who would save me, from the mind I blow...?
Jun 12, 2024
Jun 12, 2024 at 8:01 PM UTC
Take away their power
and ignore their pain.
But culture is perennial,
and no practice is in vain.
You’ve cut the line
but the call is still coming through.
Change is coming.
With or without you.
Take away their language,
but the land will teach them the way.
Knowledge and memories,
will always stay.
Try to obstruct their knowing,
haven’t you heard?
Your graining insistence,
is quiet like the blue bird.
The river is flowing,
the sun is still stirred.
Ancient lines of wisdom,
what are you afraid they might learn?
Your resistance to beauty,
beyond absurd.
When will you let them find freedom?
Surrounded by the colonial herd.
Mar 8, 2024
Mar 8, 2024 at 3:11 PM UTC
There's not a sun that rises by
That dulls her opulence
For every day my heart beats on
I fancy I'm her prince
My ardent lust may never cease
Mind, heart and soul know this
Black rolling waves with curves so soft
Sign in winter solstice
Indigenous blood with values true
Her traits my soul extols
With duties carried both out and in
She stands firm heart, firm soled
Soiled sanctity is not my wish
For once, and just this once
Entombed in full by your embrace
Your enraptured, enamored dunce
May 2, 2023
May 2, 2023 at 2:43 AM UTC
Smoke drumrolls dance,
indigenous
verve,
observed
conserved
preserved
reserved
a shaman's stance
reduced
to an historical prance.
Apr 27, 2023
Apr 27, 2023 at 5:06 PM UTC
After
nine
I
got caught crying
mother
went straight
for
the
vernacular
her
tongue is truly
spectacular.
Jul 3, 2022
Jul 3, 2022 at 5:02 PM UTC
The world grew sick
it happened so quick
and so the people prayed
in spiritual foundations laid
the people went to see
the healers to be set free
hurt souls seek relief
and beyond belief-
~the healers got sick
songs lathered in Purell
as the death tolls swell
ringing out the Sioux band’s
cared for with gloved hands
~hands that caught rain
now wracked with pain
Standing Rock tumbles down
as fits of coughs drown
“My girl, I don’t know what to do-“
the words of a dying healer
once free to roam
in death
kept far away from her home
When they pass on
all that knowledge gone
the words and ways of old
lost as voices go cold
Breath taken away
also yesterday
is gone around the bend
ways of old set to end
-the sacred fire untended
No more secret Candy
or cherished smiles
veterans vanquished
peacemakers in pieces:
Porcupine
Bear Soldier
Running Antelope
Cheryl and Jesse Taken Alive
lovers from the start
Cheryl and Jesse died
only a month apart
holes in the Taken Alive heart
Their moccasins remain still
big shoes for others to fill
Standing Rock’s hills rolling
as graves keep filling
~the healers got sick
hands that caught rain
now wracked with pain
the sacred fire untended
... still, the fire burns
out of the ashes, Nola, a child
of those Taken Alive learns
to hear the call of the wild
Young pup’s paws will fill the boots in time
though Standing Rock’s still,
still it stands
rain to be caught by fresh hands
new ears record the tree’s chime
“We’re still here,” Nola said
Taken Alive stands still
at Standing Rock
~
NM
01/15/21
Jan 31, 2021
Jan 31, 2021 at 7:20 PM UTC
One day you left your home
Among with all you hated most;
You left old lullabies unsung
And swore you'd lose your mother tongue
As shivering, small hands still clung
To one life free of ghosts.
After your ghosts had been released
You filled up all the holes.
You lived a life of mostly ease
And never knew you paid your fees
For ghosts are mostly memories
And languages are souls.
Dec 11, 2020
Dec 11, 2020 at 11:32 AM UTC
Tell me why indigenous
seems so obsolete?
Thoughts in the genius
whose sense is up so late
Why originality
seem so fake?
And off-reality
is worth the take?
It might not seem its best
nor have the Sauce
Not in Vogue as the rest
But it's the source
-Pastorlee
Nov 26, 2020
Nov 26, 2020 at 1:53 AM UTC
when we first came to this land,
blood was shed for our entitlement.
when we first came to this land,
we took the things that were never ours
and trampled its native growth.
when we first came to this land,
we instilled in it a sickness that may never be cured;
we tarnished sacred lands with greed we call virtue,
and when we did so, we stood on the throat of humanity.
there are some people who are doomed to repeat history.
there are some people who will trample native growth,
spread sickness,
and stand on the throats of our people.
with the heavy weight of six centuries upon our shoulders
we stand,
a hobbled nation no longer able to stride,
heads held high,
through this sea of blood without meeting challenge.
with six centuries passed, we commit genocide anew.
it is not the native growth that suffers,
but the very peddlers of greed who are infected
by the sickness of consequence.
but they alone will not suffer.
as we march through this new iteration of history
wearing death masks instead of cloth,
thousands of innocents lose their lives
in a battle of which they were never a part.
the single day that we dedicate to gratitude,
the one day of the year some remember
to give thanks in between passing heavy dishes,
is not a commemoration of discovery.
it is a commemoration of consequence and greed.
and six centuries later,
it is our own people who we will massacre with the cry of freedom.
Nov 19, 2020
Nov 19, 2020 at 8:52 PM UTC
I'm silent and swift as the night.
You'll never know when I'll spring and fight.
I'll fight you in the canyons or on open ground.
While you'll look frantically all around.
I'll scream and howler to strike you with fear.
I'm the wolf, while you are the deer.
Tomahawk, bow or knife.
Are the tools I use to take your life.
The Apache
Jul 13, 2020
Jul 13, 2020 at 12:42 AM UTC
Awero
Your beauty is best described with the rising of the sun
Your smile is the antidote to a day full of stress, i cherish and admire everything about you.
The sun and the moon that illuminates my existence
Jun 16, 2020
Jun 16, 2020 at 4:57 PM UTC
how do you draw power
from your land
when it has been taken
taken
taken
and you taken from it
displaced into violence
Feb 10, 2020
Feb 10, 2020 at 8:28 PM UTC
The rage, the grace, and the ferocity in between,
This relationship promised, to be nothing but pristine,
Calling out to me desperately, yearning to meet,
Now this is a bond, to which I could always retreat.
There it goes navigating, through the undergrowth,
Creating dense and lush bonds, tied by an eternal oath,
A stream giving life, to everything in its path,
This is a land that lives, beyond the clusters’ aftermath.
The stream takes us, to the hinterlands of civilization,
Technology absent, in the face of more than one distraction,
The blood red soil, furnishing the steady stilt houses,
This is where humanity comes to life, in many disguises.
Ambition stronger, than a finely brewed espresso,
A life seeped in tradition, transcends the status-quo,
Manifesting in the coffee, that shoulders the community,
The elements convene here daily, with sincere loyalty.
Aug 23, 2019
Aug 23, 2019 at 9:20 AM UTC