Holy Beings

on the day the chief of kâ-awâsis announces they have confirmed 751

bodies in unmarked graves outside the residential “school” in their

community, i google things like:

when will the sun run out of fuel?

at what point will we run out of drinkable water?

is a nation without a language spiritually stateless?

next week, jason kenney is fully “post-pandemic” reopening the prov-

ince for july 1, so i call a bakery and ask them to write “êkîsâkihitakok”

on a fifty-dollar cake and book myself a massage covered by my city

health benefits.

    the matriarchal line of my family tree reads like: prairie bourgeois,

   smallpox, residential school, day school, child welfare, middle class

i wear an orange shirt to work as some kind of balm to my being,

                       but i’ve sat in the sun enough this summer,

          that i get sympathetic looks from settlers that walk by me

                  they are bombarded by the reality they maintain

consider this:

         i can see right through your entire bodily facade and i know

             the difference between white guilt and you pitying me

                                          for being a prairie ndn

i am so blessed to be born who i am and

i want every urban nêhiyaw baby to feel that too, to know that they are

                                                   holy beings

                                   walking on land full of prayers for their well-being

and it is not their fault they

                                                                                               don’t know that