The Logo

I am not the only one

It begins with youth,

We were children when we were taken

When we were stolen
In the fires of the East
Where life begins
From those lush fertile forests we were stolen

And into the South where life blooms is renewed
We were drowned in the sorrows of all life had to offer
Under the blood red sky of the death of our youth
Under the silver gleaming seas we lost our innocence
When stolen were we

Into the West where the spirits sing and roam
We fell into that world of woe
For none of us are meant to dwell there in this life
And there we lived our spirits shredded
Our spirits worn down and beaten underfoot
It is cold in those moments of our lives
The wind whispers chill through our hair
And scratches like a million feathers roughly
Across our faces
For we are now old, and grey for the wisdom won
From pain, suffering and misery
From lamentations born of never knowing our ancestors song

Because we were stolen

And now in the North we come home
Under the medicines we have found
In these cities, in these walls of where we grew up
In these cities of the thieves we learned all that we are
In these cities of the usurper of our voices we found ourselves
IN THESE CITIES OF OUR CULTURAL RAPISTS . . . we won free
And now in these cities with eyes wide and spirits vigilant, but free
Do we come together

To at last find our feet walking us home
Where we gather now
In the Fires of the Horizon we gather
The stolen children now grown up
Now grown to want and need healing
The stolen generations now grown up
Wanting to be seen
Wanting to be heard
By all of you who let us go
By all of you who watched as we were stolen
By all of you who ripped us from our peoples
By all of you who were the stolen
By you

We will be seen

We will be heard

And so we come home
Together
Some of us broken, some of us not,
Survivors one and all
Because we learned to live and we learned to breathe

This symbol is us
Looking inward and finding the truth
That each of us stands within the center of the Four Sacred Directions
And it represents all the elements of this day and age
All of the children now grown up
We see each other
And we declare loudly with one voice of many
And long will our cry be across the world
And wide is our call to our brothers and sisters stolen

 

Neal Shannacappo designed the logo for the Indigenous Adoptee Gathering 2014 Ottawa and is the author of the poem.