10/31/2021
Persistence
You have to hand it to them: they tried. They tried everything in their power to wipe us out. They bombed our villages with cannon fire and bombarded our immune systems with disease. They outlawed our ceremonies and confiscated our regalia. They delivered priests into our communities to indoctrinate us. They sent the military and the militarized police in to intimidate us. They purloined our lands in the name of a foreign crown encrusted with stolen riches. They absconded our traditional rights. They removed many of our women from our villages and forcibly relocated many of our villages from our people. They yarded our children off to distant residential schools and culturally devoid foster homes. They shot, kicked, tortured, tricked, dragged, beat, r***d, hanged, abused, imprisoned, and ridiculed us. You have to hand it to them: they were persistent. Yet, they failed.
They failed because today we are still here and each year our numbers grow. Yes, we continue to feel the hurt inflicted upon us so we still mourn and we still carry our wounds. In turn, lateral violence and addiction remains all too common in our communities. Each season, however, our people bravely traverse that intergenerational trauma to unveil the beauty that is their ancestral culture. Each day, more and more of our people are becoming healed. We are more persistent than they can ever imagine.
The truth of the matter is that for every child whose body is found, for every tap that is filled with polluted water, for every old growth tree being cut down, for every pipeline being shoved through our lands, for every salmon that fails to return, we become more and more unified. We build strength from one another.
We look around and see that’s it’s not just us that feel that way. We see allies stepping up and locking arms with our people. We see them willing to actually listen. In turn, we become allies ourselves because injustice is injustice no matter who you are. Together we will persistently fight it at all levels. Like the protectors of our bighouse, we are grizzly bears ready to defend what is right. Displaying the crest of my Tlingit ancestor Chief Andáa, we are akin to the brown bear waking from a long winter’s slumber. We are hungry for justice and will persist until it has been met….
