Myth of the Vanishing Indian BY RENA PRIEST

SRC

In the archives there is a drawing
of a colonizer’s dream, never realized.
The National American Indian Memorial
was meant to testify to our existence
as a once noble people after
we’d all died, leaving behind
the entire western hemisphere.
(We’re not supposed to be here.)
We were all supposed to vanish
(be vanquished)
in the face of progress
(genocidal campaigns).
Now they call us other names,
but at one time they called us a
proud and vanishing race.

Pride. What is pride? In my language
the word for boogers is smeteqsen,
while smetsqen are brains,
and smatsqen is the word for pride.
I think in the ancestors’ eyes
they may as well all be the same,
for all the good they do
without the spirit.
Ah, the spirit—your se’li,
it sounds almost like sa’le
which is the word for heart,
or sa’les which are the hands.
Words reveal much
about a people’s beliefs.
Pride and brains are on par
with snot, while hands and heart
are the tools of the se’li. This, I think,
is why we never went extinct
according to design, why they never
got to build a memorial to our doom,
a monument, taking pride in absolute
success at genocide.

SRC