Villain Era

(This poem was previously published in the Spring 2023 issue of The Yellow Medicine Review, a journal for Indigenous literature and art.)
  
I am not seeking reconciliation,
Nor am I
            in the business of forgiveness.
You broke promises, truces,
            And treaties.
You push against boundaries
            and keep pushing:
Force marches to an invisible
            and moving finish line;
Hold us to impossible standards,
            impose assimilation
            while feigning compromise,
            without holding yourself accountable
for the pain, the anguish --
            damage incomparable
And you cry wolf
                        when we bite back
                        cornered, flayed, flesh
                        and fur
 
I am more than my skin color:
My ancestors’ wildest dream
More than blood quantum
and some mixed-race mutt.
 
More than the villains
                        of your John Ford fantasy.
More than mute savages
                        in barely-there buckskin.
 
I am the collective anger
                        and animosity,
the fear and grief
                        for elders and children,
                        Mothers, sisters and siblings
                        That never came home.
 
I am the sheer will to face a firing squad,
                        a hangman’s noose, a life without parole,
 
Because when you have lived countless lives,
died a thousand times,
 
what’s one more?