Thanks

Her eyes were the color of freshly turned dirt, rich. Deep. Fertile. Green spouts of envy broke through the soil of her iris and bloomed into trees. The leaves cast her eyes into a dark obsidian that almost looked like coal. 

Her coal eyes fueled the fire inside her heart and turned her vocal chords into chimneys. When she opened her mouth the only thing that could escape was her passion. Her deep gray tobacco smoke puffs wove through her decaying teeth like baskets in her ancestors hands. 

But her ancestors had been gone for a while now. All they'd left her was a family tree, branches torn off and replaced with glass bottles, her grandpa too drunk to notice. Leaves crumbling and fallen attached with the white mans string. The sturdy truck riddled with scratches and bloody marls from all that had tried to tear them down. That's all they left her. But it wasn't like they had much of a choice. 

Her ancestors were long gone now. They'd fought and lost like many other wild animals. Like cornered prey. Like the buffalo the white men hunted and piled onto their fields. Like the bones mending together like clay. Like the piles leaving imprints of blood and ashes on the grass. Like they were grave markers. Not just for the buffalo, but for all cornered prey. Like for all Indians. 

And the white men, they call it history. Don't recognize our slaughter as a genocide like how Hitler was cleansing the land. Like how Hotel Rwanda looked so much like a field of piled bodies and children. Like how our fields looked like piled bodies and children. Like how 8 million of us died and it's history. Our suffering to them is history. 

But I want to remind you it's not. Like how infants are 3x more likely to die from SIDS on reservations. Like how more than 50% of people on prison camps are diabetic. But like how 90% of them fall below the national poverty line. Like how so many of them turn to alcohol. Like how so many of them turn their backs on their children. Like how we can watch them starve and still call ourselves hungry. Like how the genocide is still happening today and we say they're doing it to themselves. Like the white man didn't give them alcohol. Didn't give us treaties to cover our eyes and snakes to take our land away. Like the white man didn't turn our land into a prison, forcing us to stay here in isolation. Like how the white man didn't shame our culture, call us savages and turn our suicide rates into memoirs. Like the white man didn't kill us. Like he didn't deny us. Like he still isn't.

Like how they gave us a holiday and called it thanks giving. Like, thanks for giving us your land. Like thanks for giving us your blood. Like. Thanks for giving us your bountiful lands and taking the bones. Like thanks for giving us innocence and taking addiction. Like, hey, thanks. Thanks for accepting the shit we give you because you know you won't get any better. Like thanks for understanding. Or like thanks for not understanding but being forced to take it anyways. 

Like thanks I guess. Thanks.