“Why can’t we be just people?”
"Why can't we be just people?" Do you hear what you say? When did we ever question your right to be considered people? Do you question mine? I know what you think you say. You want me to consider myself not Native, not Cree, not Salish, but a person, absent of nationality or racial heritage. All of us just people, without difference. You fail to see your own hypocrisy. In the same breath, you pick up a guitar and teach European modern folk songs to all the children, but nowhere do European children learn the folk music of my children or any other nationality. Such sameness amounts to everyone's obliteration but your own. I know we were supposed to have vanished by now. We do not apologize for our inability to do that. Not only are we still here, but some of us are amazingly intact. One hundred years ago General Custer's edict was to kill every man, woman, child and dog at Wounded Knee. To re-word this edict from physical oblivian to cultural banishment wil...