Introduction
"Why do you want my children?" No matter what I do, no matter where I go, you will come in your fancy car, fancy suit and bring those worn yellow papers. We can hear you coming miles away, we can see you driving as you create a track of dust, recklessly you drive, with no regard to the land, the animals, the plants my livestock eat. You've knocked on my door before, and I said no then so you left with your fist in the air and unknown words you spat. You burned my home to the ground, you destroyed my crops, my food and set them to flames, you shot all of my livestock so that not one stood anymore. You left me homeless and hungry but I still held my head up high. Then you killed my husband, my father, my grandfather. Our provider, our medicine men and some of our leaders. Can't you see that my eyes are weary? I have walked far to do as you asked, I have walked over the barren hot land, through waters, over mountains covered in snow. I have walked till my shoes no longer had soles beneath them, I've walked past pregnant women whom you've shot and our sick elders whom you left behind to die, I have walked past death. You said that I would be protected if I followed the others, you said that I would be given a home, yet you lied. You said I would be provided food for my family, my relatives ,yet you lied. You brought us to a place far from the sacred mountains, far from the sacred sites where the holy ones live. To a place where there were no homes to give us shelter, no water to nourish us, no food to regain strength. We ate from the feces of your livestock, we were so hungry. We built our homes under ground, we were so cold. You raped my mother, my sister and still you let them die. You have given us nothing but broken promises and broken treaties.
I silently sit here, waiting, hearing, the voices still linger within me, the cries, the gun shots, the mourning. I was told stories, stories of other tribes who were not our own but who suffered the same walk we did. What can I do and what shall I say when another blue coat comes to my door? Should I run and leave my people behind? No. Shall I take out my weapons and prepare them for war? No. Then what must I do, and why again does he want my children? You have taken many children in your metal wagons. You have taken them far from our homelands telling us that you will educate them to be strong men. Yet you cut their hair, their spiritual knowledge. You take away their sacred name and call them some unknown word called, Tom. You've made them weak, impatient and disrespectful that they no longer know what needs to be done. You've made them so that they no longer understand what I say. Ashamed they lower their heads and they turn away unable to utter a word, lost and unable to identify me, to find their way home, you've left them with empty spirits.
Why do you want my children? My child is born from the Water That Flows Together clan, he holds the cultural songs of the Red House clan, he carries the cane of wisdom of the Salt Clan and is the protector of the Waters Edge people. My child is the child of the holy ones, they have given him the wind of life and with that he is marked as a sacred being. Tell me again, why do you want my children after you have taken all that I am? I stand before you now with nothing in my hand, but my language, my culture and my children. You have taken, destroyed and killed everything else.
I continue to build my fire, all that is sacred and holy, all that I need to sustain life to what it once was, is all within me. I look to my children and Beauty is within them, above them, below them. Beauty is before them, behind them and all around them. In beauty I want them to live. My children hold our way of life, our language, our culture. Again I ask, "Why do you want my children?"
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