[Poetry Friday] The White Man Wants The Indian’s Home

Myra here.

Thank you to the lovely Tabatha Yeatts @ The Opposite Of Indifference for hosting this week.

When The Light Of The World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through

Edited by Joy Harjo with Leanne Howe, Jennifer Elise Foerster, and Contributing Editors (Amazon | Book Depository)

Around a month ago, I shared this poetry collection for our reading theme on joy and peace. Once again, I dip into this massive repository of Native Nations poetry to find a title that would fit our current theme on stories of the dispossessed. This particular poem by James Harris Guy (unknown – 1885), Chickasaw, called out to me.

I love how our #SurvivalStories2021 – decolonizing our bookshelves annual reading theme – is truly stretching my boundaries, and providing me the opportunity to surface more silenced voices and rediscover history from the lens of the oppressed and the vanquished, but continually resisting, fighting, surviving.