My brother’s name is Mon-chu’.

But I am called nothing.

Though that may not be completely true,

Because I was once called something.


I don’t remember a lot from when I was younger.

But I will never forget, me and my cousin

With our jingle dresses on,

small footsteps and giggling,

Bouncing off the walls.


Now I don’t even know

Her name or her face.

But i remember those dresses

and the sounds of jingling,

Ringing through the halls.


I can’t help but feel jealousy and guilt

When I see the dancers

In their regalia,

And their moccasins.

When I hear them speaking

In a language I never got to learn

And cannot understand.


I wonder if this feeling

Is hundreds of years of fighting

To a keep a culture from dying

Beating violently in my chest.


I feel like pestilence,

Sent to destroy an entire city,

So the white man could make way for their

“Nation of Independence”.


I feel the weight of thousands

Of native children,

Buried beneath residential schools.

Their bodies that will never be returned.


Of thousands of cities

Built on stolen land and the graves

Of men, women, and children.


Of thousands of statues

Honoring the men

Who killed my fathers.


And if this culture is destroyed,

​It will only become more of a novelty.

A glass case in a museum

Of people that once were

And not real people that still are.


I will remember and I will learn,

And I will be called something,
​
For we are not nothing.

Writer's Statement: ​Being Native American raised by my white grandmother, I never really got to learn about my culture. Recently, I've become more aware of this fact, and started to feel guilty for not knowing things I believed I should. But doing nothing to learn is the victory of the colonizer.