This Land

(acknowledgement + vows)

These words come to you, unless I’ve stated otherwise, from somewhere on Turtle Island. This part of Turtle Island is currently most-widely called, The United States of America. I hold a complex and deep Love Relationship with this land that my 3rd Grandmothers, Harriet Starks and Julia Walker worked––enslaved and “freed”––that my Big Daddy worked with his axe and my Papa Ed worked with his mules, Stella and Cora; the land on which my Grandmother, who is still living, picked cotton with her small-girl hands during pickin’ season; and on which Beloved Ones, whose names I may never learn––are buried in unmarked graves I may never find. I search for them always on this Land: underneath Home Depots and Jefferson Davis monuments.

This land is Home: To me, and to my Ancestors, named and unnamed.

I acknowledge that, in my life and in my body––there is no simple way to acknowledge this land. I hold and work with this complexity.

I seek to remember, always, that I am here because of Blood, that I remain here due to Blood, for Blood; and, that I am made each day by the silences that continue to keep the original stewards of this gorgeous place, the Native Peoples of This Land; the Hundreds and Thousands and Millions of People who were here and Are Here First; in a state of erasure and dispossession that is atrocious and unacceptable.

I acknowledge, as well, the beauty, joy and wisdoms of Native Peoples that keep us held. That keep the world turning. I thank you.

I vow to remain a part of actions that correct continued lies: taking sharpies to the small town signs that read, “settled in 1729” and changing them to “unsettled in 1729″––their truer form. I vow to share my monies and wisdom with Native Peoples; to continue the fight to protect the Waters, and to listen to the varieties of their desires for repair. I vow to keep meeting the elders while awake and while in Dreamtime. I vow to heed their advice.

With my Blood all over this Place, and with the indigenous awareness that any dominance over this Land is a most-dangerous mirage; I vow to keep breathing, living and acting; reanimating the Archive with the Truth of what actually happened and continues to Happen, here. I vow to keep asking what I can do Now. And now. And now. Knowing what I know. About this land.