AMERICAN INDIAN ADOPTEES: Strong as a Willow

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Support Info: If you are a Survivor and need emotional support, a national crisis line is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week: Residential School Survivor Support Line: 1-866-925-4419. Additional Health Support Information: Emotional, cultural, and professional support services are also available to Survivors and their families through the Indian Residential Schools Resolution Health Support Program. Services can be accessed on an individual, family, or group basis.” These & regional support phone numbers are found at https://nctr.ca/contact/survivors/ .

Friday, August 20, 2010

Strong as a Willow

My youth disappeared
under spell and dominion,
too powerless, mute, and
too weak to protest

Maid, cook, whore, child
Necessary, I believed, so
I disappeared into their idea
of what I should be

I read their desires as directions
like their force, somehow
My illusion had to be protected
with all my energy and faith

I trusted I would be safe
I told myself it was love
and that it was worth it
I was wrong, I was as good as dead

I was incapable of love
to any degree
There was no emotion
Just a numb, frozen heart

I found memories of a little princess
whose father took his piece
then a procession of narcissists
who either betrayed or enslaved

Yet even a slave is rewarded
Angels arrive, teachers, books
that open my world of silence
and give me my voice

There is no worthless left
just a force and direction
There are beliefs that allow no weakness
and no men left to dominate desire

Now, as I choose,
I am safe within my own walls,
alive in my body, strong as a willow,
as wild, as free.

© 2010 Trace A. DeMeyer

3 comments:

MplsMaryAugust 20, 2010 at 11:47 PM
This is so awesome....wonderful words to describe your feelings...Love the last paragraph..Strong as a Willow....so true.
ReplyDelete
Replies
dillweedAugust 21, 2010 at 6:04 AM
my favorite lines:
"Yet even a slave is rewarded"

and:

"My youth disappeared/
too weak to protest"

and

"I disappeared into their idea
of what I should be"

Resonate with me.
ReplyDelete
Replies
MplsMaryAugust 3, 2011 at 10:32 PM
This is so awesome....wonderful words to describe your feelings...Love the last paragraph..Strong as a Willow....so true.
ReplyDelete
Replies

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Crime Scene

The Justice Department is protecting the names of many perpetrators of abuse of Indigenous children.
We need a special independent prosecutor who can force the government and church to turn over the documents.
There can be no reconciliation without justice.@MumilaaqQaqqaq pic.twitter.com/5TL6OxKM5O
— Charlie Angus NDP (@CharlieAngusNDP) July 8, 2021

This is a map of every residential "school" site in Canada.

Every dot is a crime scene.

Only a few have been investigated so far.

Canada, do not get used to these numbers.

Do not let them become statistics.

Put yourselves in the shoes of these children in the ground. pic.twitter.com/5XJS1w1ka2
— Mumilaaq Qaqqaq (@MumilaaqQaqqaq) June 24, 2021

ADOPTION TRUTH

As the single largest unregulated industry in the United States, adoption is viewed as a benevolent action that results in the formation of “forever families.”
The truth is that it is a very lucrative business with a known sales pitch. With profits last estimated at over $1.44 billion dollars a year, mothers who consider adoption for their babies need to be very aware that all of this promotion clouds the facts and only though independent research can they get an accurate account of what life might be like for both them and their child after signing the adoption paperwork.

Why tribes do not recommend the DNA swab

Rebecca Tallbear entitled: “DNA, Blood, and Racializing the Tribe”, bearing out what I only inferred:

Detailed discussion of the Bering Strait theory and other scientific theories about the population of the modern-day Americas is beyond the scope of this essay. However, it should be noted that Indian people have expressed suspicion that DNA analysis is a tool that scientists will use to support theories about the origins of tribal people that contradict tribal oral histories and origin stories. Perhaps more important,the alternative origin stories of scientists are seen as intending to weaken tribal land and other legal claims (and even diminish a history of colonialism?) that are supported in U.S. federal and tribal law. As genetic evidence has already been used to resolve land conflicts in Asian and Eastern European countries, this is not an unfounded fear.