I Have Not Signed a Treaty With the United States Government
Chrystos
nor has my father nor his father
nor any grandmothers
We don't recognize these names on old sorry paper

Therefore we declare the United States a crazy person
nightmare lousy food ugly clothes bad meat
nobody we know
No one wants to go there This US is theory illusion
terrible ceremony The United States can't dance can't cook
has no children no elders no relatives
They build funny houses no one lives in but papers
Everything the United States does to everybody is bad
No this US is not a good idea We declare you terminated
You've had your fun now go home we're tired We signed
no treaty WHAT are you still doing here Go somewhere else and
build a McDonalds We're going to tear all this ugly mess
down now We revoke your immigration papers

your assimilation soap suds your stories are no good
your colors hurt our feet our eyes are sore
our bellies are tied in sour knots Go Away Now
We don't know you from anybody
You must be some ghost in the wrong place wrong time
Pack up your toys garbage lies
We who are alive now
have signed no treaties
Burn down your stuck houses your sitting
in a nowhere grayglow Your spell is dead
So go far away we won't remember you ever came here
Take these words back with you
 link to www.belmont.edu
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I Walk in the History of My People
There are women locked in my joints
for refusing to speak to the police
My red blood full of those
arrested, in flight, shot
My tendons stretched brittle with anger
do not look like white roots of peace
In my marrow are hungry faces who live on land the whites don't want
In my marrow women who walk 5 miles every day for water
In my marrow the swollen faces of my people who are not allowed
to hunt
to move
to be
In the scars on my knee you can see children torn from their families
bludgeoned into government schools
You can see through the pins in my bones that we are prisoners of a long war
My knee is so badly wounded no one will look at it
The pus of the past oozes from every pore
The infection has gone on for at least 300 years
My sacred beliefs have been made pencils, names of cities, gas stations
My knee is wounded so badly that I limp constantly
Anger is my crutch
I hold myself upright with it
My knee is wounded
see
How I Am Still Walking
—Chrystos
Christos is a member of the Menominee Nation
http://www.freedomroad.org/cool/poetry/2000/week36-00.html
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Top 10 Things You Can Say
To A White Person Upon First Meeting:
10. How much white are you?
9. I'm part white myself, you know.
8. I learned all your people's ways in the Boy Scouts (Order of the Bullet).
7. My great-great-grandmother was a full-blooded white-American princess.
6. Funny, you don't look white.
5. Where's your powdered wig and knickers?
4. Do you live in a covered wagon?
3. What's the meaning behind the square dance?
2. What's your feeling about river-boat casinos? Do they really help your people, or are they just a short-term fix?
1. Oh wow, I really love your hair! Can I touch it?
André Cramblit, Operations Director-Northern California Indian Development Council
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WE CUT OFF OUR HAIR
as our children kill themselves at fourteen or seventeen
in mass explosions
one after another until ten or twenty-three
are dead
on one reservation after another
multiplied across our land
Breathing this colonized air they take poison
into their hearts listening for the message
of genocide so much easier when we do it to ourselves
& save whites the trouble
Grief cuts out our hearts & laughs
din of this cruel survival breath to breath
going on through this pain we know strips us
crushes us beneath bulldozers & booze
We pray for you our children
LIVE
Become the river of our continuing hoop
LIVE
Become the breath of our never silent drums
LIVE
Become the future red & remembered
LIVE
Become our voices singing up the sun
LIVE
Chrystos
link to www.geocities.com
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A note to readers. The symbol of AIM, American Indian Movement, is the American flag upside down.
A side not is that Rage against the Machine got banned for showing the AIM symbol from Saturday Night Live.
Anyway, now that you have taken your holiday decorations down, how about putting new ones up?
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