Tò Onen Towa Akwekon Ohwaton Entesteñne "We Will Continue to Rise"
An Indigenous Kanien'kehá:ka woman is yelling for justice with her fist up, to display urgency, power, resistance, and pain. She is fighting for her rights, for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Residential school survivors, etc. For so long our Indigenous heritage, history language, traditional ceremonies, and clothing were forbidden. She is standing up for the ones without a voice and honoring her ancestors that fought for the children of the next generation so that they would never forget where they come from, their history, and their identity.
This painting is a collage of myself, embracing my Indigenous features and identity. While incorporating symbolic elements from my hometown, traditional ceremonies, the stories I was told as a young child (like the myth of the blue tree), photos from protests, and historic movements. To bring awareness to Indigenous movements in North America, and the impact of intergenerational trauma. Around the collage of printed images, I painted naturistic elements with movement like the water, trees, the sky, etc. To embrace the land that we live on and express how important nature and nature-based healing is to my family and I. There are also two Indigenous women in traditional regalia for Pow wows and Sundances dancing in nature to the beat of drums (Earths heart in the creation story of the sky woman) I added a quote of self-love that embraces the acceptance of my culture, and the roots which I come from.
 |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |
Inflated Identity, "I am a poet"
I am like an eyelash floating into a thousand galaxies waiting to be found like abnormal aliens.
I make people wonder how I still smile, and what it's like to be a delicate feather in the life of natural disasters, filled with dysfunctional people.
Sometimes, I feel like a blue rose, mysterious, and secretive. The kinds you never find at a flower shop, the kind of rose you have to search for. That has grown from dried up roots but has still managed to survive, and my skin is turning into ashes like burning houses that were never really homes.
I write so much that I could become the biggest voice this world has ever had, like written papers shaping the sky into birds that have never flown in their lives.
I imagine dancing under the streetlights, while I free my shadow from my body, barefoot on the grass with the world upside down, lift the weight off my shoulders so I can grasp a gentle hand and breathe like sweetgrass without gravity at midnight.
My mind ponders curiosity. what would happen if I sang the world a lullaby? Would we all fall asleep? Would our tragedies follow us into our slumber? When we wake, would we be at ease with being ourselves? Would we all cry at once? I wonder if I’d lose my oxygen or would every word that I say show up on my warm-hearted body and turn into clothes that I'd never imagined wearing?
Sometimes, I wonder when I die, will someone read my poems that I keep tucked away? Will someone discover my poems that are buried in my backyard? I wonder if the one who is reading them will think I was a chaotic mess on paper or think I was having an identity crisis? Will they think I somehow tried to harmonize my tragedies so much that my words would bleed through the paper? Maybe they'll think I was an old soul, that lived and saw too many things in one lifetime. I wonder if my words will live on even after I pass away.
But if they don't, or if they do... tell them, I was a poet. Even if no poem of mine gets published, even if my poems disintegrate into the ground before anyone gets a chance to dig them up... tell them, I was a poet. Even if it's too late, even if people don't care.
If I sleep and never wake up, take a risk, or sacrifice myself for someone who wouldn't sacrifice themselves for me...Tell them, I was a poet.
To the people who never got the chance to meet me, don't tell them what I was passionate about, don't describe my Indigenous features to them, don't tell them that I loved to sing, don't tell them what colour I like to dye my hair to feel confident...tell them, I was a poet.
If no one cares that I am gone, they did not deserve to know me anyways.
So do not bother diving into my strange personality, or how I felt about my parents.
Do not talk about why I left home at a young age.
Do not talk about my life on the rez.
Do not tell them that I broke the cycle of intergenerational trauma.
Do not tell them I was resilient.
Do not tell them what I regret...tell them, I was a poet.
No more and no less. Do not tell them if I was a good person or a bad one.
Do not tell them what I wanted to be in life.
Do not tell them about my difficulties, and do not even mention my strengths.
Inexcusably and Unapologetically human, and out of all the things that you could tell them... Just say I was a poet and walk away.
So many things that I'm afraid to be; a burden, a mother, a friend, a lover, shameful, an intruder, a drunken Indian, a myth, speechless, unheard, forgotten, uncaring, selfish, foolish, weak, undefinable.
I invite you to say..to simply say, that I am a poet.