Balance of Power
by Michael Doyle

Your people came to my people
With all of their demands
Before we knew what coexistence meant
We had lost all our sacred lands

We were offered the peace
That can only be called brutality
As we were savagely rounded up
By your people quite capably

However, you date your people's arrival
Since then, it has been a fight for survival
You presented this as manifested destiny
As you tried to write my people out of history

You claimed your foot on the necks of my people
While you worshipped your God under the steeple
Exterminating the people of this conquered wilderness
Taking from us our last shattered wildness

As you made my people starve and bleed
You used this story as a basis to teach and read
As if this was the message to be spread
As if this was the story of a people now dead

But we will shape our own story
No different than any other people in history
We began with wampum belts to share our glory
Stories of winters spent became our oral story

Frederick Turner Jackson must have been blind
In his visions of my people being left behind
Today, the imprint of Native America is evident
And into the future, we will remain relevant

Inheritors of traumas and children of legacy
To believe us destroyed is your own dramedy
Though vast in its perceived dimensions
The true story is two-way in its precision

Purposeful actions are needed to restore our dignity
As a people in search of redeemed sovereignty
It's this recovery and in our needed revitalization
That the first peoples will restore our traditions

In recovering our proud sense of native community
We will again be part of the Great Spirit's family
Finding ourselves by pushing past a sense of conquest
To an extraordinary people who survived their test

(c) February 7, 2025   Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved