Our Home And Native Land
Addicted to her nectar
It runs in its own season
They long for its taste
It haunts their soul daily now
At night and at different points of passion
Her image is in their mind taking them over
I have so much wont to see pure again that beauty that she once was
But I cannot undo in my life what rapes her daily that rapes us
Only in my dreams of imagined dramas that place the goodness of a chameleon’s stasis
As my rich metaphor for so much more
In life that stasis is flux and not what was once perceived
But even that mutable body and mind is desired for its humorous mime and hard lines
Those two alien forces so opposite reside in one professed unacceptable body
That keeps changing by hands that require controlled ownership
Keeps me here pleading for restraint
Even though it’s clear that what is truly desired, wanted, needed and loved
Is not what is alive and rare and healing to body, mind, heart and spirit
But I wonder, if they deem their own lives less then the currency that never lived
No, it is the dead that keeps the living dying in money, trash, golds and goods
Our life rises and falls with hers in ancestor’s bones
And echoes that began in the beginning of unknowns
The unknowns are what sustain our stories in the great mystery, of Kitchie Manitou
But the heart’s currency was stolen in tears and raped in fears
To the highest bidder in oil, gas, gold and metals, water and trees
Poisoning our home and native land
Two sides to the same coin but it’s always the same coin
Heads, the Canadian Flag and Tails, lives in her blood and gored resources
Pushed afar onto Treaty lands they come and violate Anishinabe title
We stand on guard for thee, they break that promise
Poisoning the land, food and water, the life forces
Killing us holey in cancers and diseases into the spirit world
Jailing us for standing on guard for thee
In a responsibility that is made to the Creator at the beginning of time
Taking care of her for the seven unborn generations
Is why we stand on guard fighting for her life
"Our Home And Native Land" 24" x 48" Acrylic on Birch
That the laws have not considered her living but that a corporation is
That our home and native land is not protected by the lawmakers, but by the Anishinabe.
LauraLee K Harris