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READ INDIGENOUS: Hiraeth
In Hiraeth (Inanna Publications), novelist, poet, playwright, visual artist, and musician Carol Rose Daniels writes a collection of poems that reaches to other women to lend and share strength. The triumphant featured poem below, “Unravelling Threads,” and others in the collection continue Daniels’ literary work chronicling the Sixties Scoop, where Indigenous children were taken from their families under the guise of social services and adopted out to settlers.
From Hiraeth by Carol Rose Daniels (Inanna Publications)
Unravelling Threads Call yourself a mother?yet
could never bring yourself
to hold
this little brown hand
in public
always qualifying
with the words
she’s adopted spoken hurriedly
ashamedly
What will the neighbours think? oh they better watch out
those Indians are nothing but trouble
will probably be a hooker by the time she’s 12
don’t let your kids play with her
she probably has lice they all do you know
no childhood should know
too many fist fights
trying to erase
the shameful word of squaw
while you sit on the sidelines
years later
I hear the drum
out of your reach
you have no control
it touches that beautiful part of my soul
a place where your cracks begin to show
and all the lies you told me have to go
I am brown
a Cree and proud
I sing strong
you cover your ears
to a truth
you do not want to hear
I am tired of pretending to be
someone I am not
I have found my spirit and move forward
to the place I belong
away from your noise
and into the song
I shall dance * * *The Author
