Another one lost, took their own life, leaving us behind, quick to meet so many ahead, love took flight, just ran out the door, love lost again, empty place gets bigger, tears rolling, moments turn into years, gone, way too early, but age don’t dictate results, sorrow slams my face, sadness don’t want happy to win…Someone asked me to write about happy, but that will have to wait, for heard that another youth committed sucide on my reservation in South Dakota. Seems most don’t know or don’t care that the sucide rate of native youth is way out of hand, a cruel epidemic, funds are diminishing, and whatever that is available is not enough to stop the onslaught of death amongst the indigenous world, I’m no expert, although i have worked in child protection and youth health on my reservation, the numbers keep growing, the trauma of centuries, the depression of hopelessness grows, yes, i’m aware of drug and drinking, the devastation results of mass incarceration, the economic poverty, the marginalization of reservation and rural life, the difficulties of living in two worlds, the alienation, disenfranchising of indian world, with outside forces seeking to deny and withdraw, internal forces crumbling, but, i am one who wonders if we can do something, i pray we can, can you not hear the screams of the indian youth, i do, lets us do something, what I’m not quite sure of, we who have lost some, seem to be only able to pray and cry, i want them to live, to have a good life and have happiness and dreams that can can make our world healthy again, so tired of hearing, another one lost…
This is Our Law
Oh, Grandfather God,
Pity us, for we are a
Confused and lost people,
We ask, only, that our
Young and Unborn,
Be allowed to grow strong
Within the winds of their own directions,
For, we look all around us and we see,
Children of all Colors,
Being abused, neglected, missing, and denied,
This we do not want amongst our own, so,
This is our Mind,
This is our Prayer,
This is our Law.
Strong Buffalo,
Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota