Remembrance: A Musing

Takahi, Greetings 

I wish to express myself.

Our world is at a tipping point. As Indigenous people, we know this inherently. Society is volatile, our people continue to suffer. Our women, children, and two-spirit relatives disappear and are murdered at astonishing rates. Our relations live in fear of having their family/community members ripped away, or of being stolen themselves. Suicide, substance abuse, domestic violence, and other forms of violence are prevelant in and among our communities. 

Our elders and our youth fight. Those who remember serve as shields on the frontlines. In the streets, the barrios, the movements, the schools, our homes. Each of us takes up a battle, passed down through stories told in circles, at dinner tables, in passing… through each generation. We know this cycle. And in it, we break other cycles. 

This “resilience,” is romanticized by others and our own. The stoic Indian, the tortured artist, the brave youth. Resilience is a fickle term, often perpetuating this romanticizing of the struggle. 

Our strength is not garnered from anger, although it can be a jumping point. Our strength is in remembering; it is in our Mother Earth, in the Stars, our languages. It is in the cries of our newborns, the sprouts that show their faces each spring, in the awakening and sleeping of our Elder Brother the Sun. The soil, our skin. It runs thick through our blue blood. Through our tears, the Creator hears us, 

They think they took our identities away from us. But we remember.

Healing is not linear, nor is it pretty. It comes with great sacrifice, we have never been selfish. 

Do not lose hope. Can’t you see it? It is in our reclamation of the lands, our birthing rights, the seeds. We return, and it has begun with the youth, honorably raised up by the blood, sweat, and tears of our ancestors, our elders, mothers, fathers, all of our relations. 

Written by Maya Soto, Traditional Center for Indigenous Knowledge and Healing Co-Director