Skip to main content

Fighting Undefined

Fighting Undefined...
Definitions for My Future Granddaughters
     By Lynne M Colombe
     July 23, 2018

Discrimination now is not 
defined by Webster
 - for today
it was the tears
Running down my cheeks
In the shower that I took
where I had been going 
 - to hide the pain
from my light 
 - skinned daughters.

Racism in the moment was 
the cry
of a brown mother
 - in her solitude 
Realizing that once again
 - The Wasicu wins 
at His own game.

The rules were shifting
since the Fifth of July
 - a day after His Independence
I declared, 
“Sometimes I hate 
being Native.”

Unjust is not in this year’s
National Spelling Bee
because it is too simple
 - a word
with too complex 
 - a definition
for this nation
fighting itself.

But it is you, 
 - Wincicila ki he 
yet to choose 
your parents
  - Perched from the stars above
Hurry not on your way here
as the path is still
 - rocky;
with no assurance
that you shall 
be created equal
 - either.   

For in my adult life
 - until now 
there was nobody
  No horses paid
  No Wicasa
  No clear identity
 - only memories of
being a child
a student
a Lakota woman 
who was not valued.

Granddaughters, 
I want more for you.

It is solely 
for that reason,
Unci continues
Fighting 
 - undefined 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

This is a public and often educational-read blog. Please use respect, honesty, and courtesy in your responses. Response is welcome, just keep it nice and clean!

Popular posts from this blog

Autism - a Native American Lakota Perspective

On Jan. 5th, 2009, my middle daughter (J.M.) was diagnosed with autism. "Classic Autism." The words still ring in mid-air. She was diagnosed at 2 yrs. 6 mos. As young as you can be, really, to get a true diagnosis (so I read). Recently I was asked, "How did you know?" It was a lot of different behaviors, combined with her not talking by 2 yrs to lead me to start researching. I looked and searched for countless hours... putting square pegs into round holes in my mind. I wanted something to show me, tell me, anything to point me toward NO! She DOES NOT have autism. But that answer never came. It was a long process, and is still in the works. But we are growing stronger. I think of her prognosis from when she was 10 weeks gestation. She tested positive for the blood test labeled quad screen. Which, along with a second-level sonogram, tested her positive for downsyndrome. Longer story than this, but we wanted her and she was born. She was always hard to tak...
10 comments
Read more

#NoDAPL Stop the Dakota Access Pipeline

#NoDAPL  #NoDakotaAccess #Stand4StandingRock Stand for Standing Rock By Lynne Colombe Mitakuyapi, le miye ZiZiWin.  Hello my relatives, I am Yellow Woman.  I have never used that name, "Yellow Woman," in writing.  It was a name that my great-grandmother, Carrie Roubideaux-Bordeaux, gave to me because I did not have "an Indian name."  She gave me her name because I am an identical twin; and I was born jaundiced.  And, because that was her name, so she gave it to me. There was no ceremony, no feather placed in my hair, no kiss upon my forehead.  My great-grandmother and great-grandfather on my mother's side were the only grandparents on that side I would ever really know.  My maternal grandmother passed away when my mother was only 15 years old; and my material grandfather lived out of state and had a different family. I think of my childhood as "peculiar" in many ways.  First, because I am 1/2 White and live on an Indian Reserva...
7 comments
Read more

Teach for America, and Rosebud?

Upon returning to the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation in June 2011, I was shocked to hear that there are over 75 Teach for America teachers between Rosebud and Pine Ridge.  At first, I did not form any opinion on the fact that many of these teachers are coming in from all over the United States, and that many who work in the high school do not actually have a teaching degree. Aside from the obvious problem that we have another group of government-funded teachers sent out to the Reservation with their idealistic mindsets about "saving the Indian," the larger problem seems to be that there is an actual "Native American Initiative."  This initiative, sponsored by Teach for America, has failed to inform the communities they are teaching in, that there is an initiative in the first place. From my first observations, I can see that this is another "Waiting for Superman" moment for our Tribe.  I propose that money would be better spent if Teach for America t...
4 comments
Read more