ANISHINABE KWEWAG
A sun’s rays reflect upon a grandmother as she ascends weeping into the night
That Grandmother moon has moved their ebbing tides of their cycles in their lives
As mother’s and grandmother’s and families mourn tears never heard
That over thirty years can pass and sisters go missing are murdered disappear
A lost number over six hundred but no body reads about it nobody hears
Anishinabe Kwewag you were the seed from the original dream
Born into a cycle of stolen hearts Anishinabe Kwewag women are slain
Young and some troubled hunted in their weakness and pains
Daughters hunted as they look up to find their way out into a world they didn’t make
Hunted as their parents heal inside from an ache in a tortuous historical colonized quake
Broken over a history of shattered families
That splintered on that last blanket, that cloth, that robe, those weapons of mass destruction
Trying to destroy the Earth’s keepers, the Anishinabe Creators, the healers
The ones with the least rights then any other Woman living in Canada
Daughters and Mothers are hunted with a quietly discounted red racist past
Hunted in that wound that silence would mask
Perpetrated on every ancestor North and South from every sunrise East to last
Hundreds of years stolen, thousands of years now look back
A generation passes into the dust, lost, dropped into a sunset
They are not looked for, not on paper, a bandwidth, a satellite
Thirty years have come and gone and a people who still heal are left to mourn
And I wonder who hunts the young the weak the vulnerable, who does this to a lost child
And when these children are disregarded not searched for
By those in dominant places in all our son’s command
Enfranchised to own in the many fest destiny of their absolution
Who holds their debt to the powers of their irresponsibility?
For if you live in this power you live in that debt;
To the lives stolen killed and raped in all our son’s command
To the lost and broken families in all our son’s command
To the lost cultures in all our son’s command
To the history of lies in textbooks in all our sons command
A corrupt government dies in all our son’s command in the greed it was conceived in
From a true democracy stolen the day the order changed into all our son’s command
For the Anishinabe kwewag were once valued in a sovereignty that respected the women
Valued as decision makers as the heart of her nation
As wisdom keepers, negotiators, visionaries, seers, the nurturers,
Women were honoured like the waters we are born into and out of
In the life giving voice that caresses the memory of formation
Not subject or slave not sexualized or demonized not silenced or disrespected
These women will live again in the original dream remembered in this new day.
LauraLee K. Harris
"Anishinabe Kwewag " Acrylic on Fir 24"x48"
Dedicated to the over 600 Anishinabe kwewag murdered or missing in Canada in the last thirty years
And the many organizations that support and seek justice for these Aboriginal women and girls:
Stolen Sisters www.stolensisters.com and Sisters in Spirit and www.amnesty.ca