3 Alaska

(Written May 6, 1974, prior to National Hearings to determine the outcome of Native Land Claims and the proposed Alaska Oil Pipeline connection Prudhoe Bay with Valdez Alaska)

You came first with your wooden ships,
you traders and you’re whalers and you’re wantings…
You left with your hatches full
and a memory of things to be had.

You came again with your liquor and your longings
and took what had to be had.

And still your numbers came
with your syphilis and gonorrhea and wantings,
Spreading your rot with your wrongings…

Your contributions
were mindless souls
and rotting bodies
And villages emptied by the Pox.

And now you come again– with talks…
impact talks you say…
Impact, indeed!

What, I wonder?
What, pray heaven?
What more do you need?
What could you have possibly missed?

Where the Arctic winds whisper over the tundra willows…
Where the forever cold is only a finger away…
And where the willow warbler sings its tune…
We cherish our own…
Our families,
Our land,
Our home.

Our land is a harsh land
But we know it well…
From our wanderings
And from stories our fathers tell.

We know the Kuskokwim and Tanana
And the Noatak and Koyukuk,
These, our fathers’ fathers knew.

We have not had your learning,
We know little of your history,
But name seeped through…
Santa Rita, Sand Creek, Washita, Powder River and Wounded Knee,

These are names belonging to native people,
Men, women children people…
These are names of broken promises and treaties,
of massacres and butcheries…
And the shame lives on.

No longer, I think, do you come at the ready
with your Colts, your Henry’s and your Winchesters,
You come instead with your highways,
your railroads and your investors.
You come with your pens, your pencils and erasers…
Ah, the erasers!

No longer does your cavalry
charge down out of the dawn
With your Fettermans’, your Bakers’,
your Chivingtons’ and your Custers
taking advantage of the shock…
But the maneuvering is the same,
You get us in a pocket
and flank us with your talk.

You have the body,
You have claimed the soul…
Would you leave us, please,
With what little our Fathers knew…
Peace!

And, if indeed, you are doing this for me…
I’d just as soon
You leave us be.