Feed me at Sandy Lake
This poem is dedicated to the hundreds of Anishinaabe people whose lives were taken due to starvation, disease, and exposure during the fall and winter of 1850. In the present day, we bear witness to these same starvation tactics inflicted by the hand of the United States Government and its allies on innocent civilians in the name of “spreading democracy” to “uncivilized animals.” May there come a day where Indigenous people worldwide are liberated from oppressive, colonial forces. May we witness that liberation in our lifetimes.
coarse woolen blankets striped with muddy saffron / kermes / inky walnut swaddled
fickle
promises of annuities & spoiled rations
jaspilite / fleshy granite limbs trudged through blinding opalescent fields
dreaming of dense boreal
moss blanketed forests teeming
with whitefish
blueberries and manoomin
sinew faces / iron soaked moccasins / children’s willowed bodies flecked with rosehip seeds
my sister returned to the earth with her coarse woolen blanket
& birchbark basket as her companion
two / four / eight
relatives join her each night to dance amongst the stars
those of us left here at Sandy Lake
wait another day for the delayed annuities
we wait another week another month
I boiled my moccasins to share
& we dreamed
of bellies warm with smoked whitefish
cranberry stained fingers
& the intricate ridges of bulrush mats which lined our wigwams back home
we dreamed
bodies fusing with the moss
swaddle me in cedar
i want clean water god dammit
when was the last time–I saw a firefly humming their love poem, weaving through blueberry
brush
when was the last time–I woke to a cacophony of: twiney chickadees, jovial robins, mocking
blue jays, the chattering loon, or a ravens throaty call cutting through morning dew
leaded smog in place of hazy fog–dimming mornings light
deafening screams from the R46–piss and shit (is it human or dog) overwhelm the senses, my
eyes burn I long for the home that was swept away by murky waters
when was the last time–I swam downstream with the bluegills, sifting through algae coated
rocks for crawfish and clams as my nephew laughed and screamed in the sandbar
when was the last time when did it happen
it was gradual ignored happen(ed)
it started with the fish, washed ashore, coated in iridescence
then came hushed evergreen sprigs rattled only by wind, ardent calls absent within boreal
songs of solace overrode by dozers a deafening silence is sweeping the land
i don’t want concrete I want clean water
Anangookwe Wolf is a visual artist and poet currently based in Lenapehoking. They have performed at The Poetry Project, Kinstillatory Mappings in Light and Dark Matter, and you may find their poems in Yellow Medicine Review.