Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples Day, which is it?

This day, the morning of October 9th is dedicated equally to each of these dimensions of our American past, which is also our present.  A day to remember our ancestors attempts to enslave the communities that lived on this continent prior to our arrival from Europe and elsewhere.  They were ill suited for slavery, so “we” decided that we’d incrementally take the land upon which they lived, utilizing treaties made under duress.  Then we broke the promises that we made, forcibly removing “the Indians” to reservations, confinement in places our people did not desire to possess.  The Trail of Tears.  Imagine that you are Cherokee living in the Appalachian mountains, then forcibly marched to Oklahoma…  That’s 5,035 miles over various land and water routes.  Today is a day of remembrance for the some 5,000 who died of hunger, exhaustion, cold, or disease.

What of the Potawatome people who once lived along the Fox River Valley?  Oh, there is a Potawatome Trail of Tears.  They were removed at gunpoint to Kansas.  The journey took two months and 42 are reported to have died.

That was yesterday, and today similar policies are executed under American sponsorship by our allies.  I am thinking of the policy of Israel toward the Palestinians.  For a look at the New York Times story, CLICK HERE.

How about a poem?  This one seems suited to our occasion.

Decolonialish Self-Portrait

by Sara Borjas

I remember myself;
—a chair, turning—
a desperate blue tunnel
crossing the mirror
in the lavender hour.
I remember myself;
a corner of sunlight
on the bed sheet rotating
a violence, words that die
before meaning:
relentless shredded threads.
I remember myself;
sky chained to torture,
futurity chokes:
an ancient throat melts
in my posing.
I remember myself;
a swipe in the dust
on my dresser, a drawer full
of rotten Christian teeth.

Copyright © 2023 by Sara Borjas. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 9, 2023, by the ACADEMY OF AMERICAN POETS..

ABOUT THIS POEM
“As a colonized person, I struggle with the feeling that I was never meant to exist. It is hard to feel real or true or good when you are aware you have been raped, over centuries, into existence. So, in my effort to feel valid, I look to return in some way, but I get lost when I think: to what? To whom? To decolonize would mean to return land and resources. When I try to remember some spirit or place I could return to, I find myself searching for memories I don’t have. I always disappear at Christianity.”
—Sara Borjas