The Story of This Land - Told by One In Moccasins

We welcomed you into our circles 

You married us for your gain 

We taught you our ways and our customs 

You deemed savage to your peril and shame 

We had yellow knives and hunted bison 

On the Manitoba plain 

The Songhees and the tundra 

Were our ancestors' domains 

We drank from the Okanagan, 

Fished Chinook off Ucluelet's shore 

These waters were places of plenty 

But not so anymore  

We traversed Malahat and Tsawwassen 

Without sirens or delays 

We paddled our own canoes 

Before the white man came  

You gifted us with blankets 

Laden with infection - 

The red death, red plague - 

We graciously accepted  

You tried to take our culture 

And force your 'civilized' ways 

We were close-knit like Cowichans 

Now unravelling and frayed 

We wanted relationship  

You turned the other way         

The earth cries out for justice 

For all the needless graves  

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Inspired by A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada by John Ralston Saul, and what I learned through participating in The Blanket Exercise, a teaching tool about the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.