Poetry as Activism and Healing

Featured below are poems written by three Indigenous women writing to raise awareness about the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s Movement. Their work is produced to shed light on the ongoing cycle of violence against Indigenous women, and to provide solidarity and healing for indigenous women and family members whose loved ones are missing and murdered.

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

To listen to a podcast Sewell is featured in, click here

Anna Marie Sewell is of Mi’kmaq heritage. From 2011 to 2013 she was the poet laureate of Edmonton, Alberta and part of her work in this position included curating ‘The Poem Catcher’, an interactive art installation in Edmonton. Sewell’s art is multidisciplinary, as she uses poetry, theatre and music as mediums, and she is currently working on a new multimedia and multi- language work. Sewell has published two full works, a poetry collection published in 2009 entitled Fifth World Drum, and a poetry and song collection published in 2018 entitled For the Changing Moon: Poems & Songs.    

 Excerpts from”Washing the World” by Anna Marie Sewell 

“once a year, in the dark of the year we wash
the whole world in a day—for one day, we cry
until they’re home, until they all are home “
“these things we gather in this blanket
bone and sand and sage
we wash the world, between us
hold this blanket, fill it with our tears
and when we have cried
from one dawn to the next
then we will rise, and we will dance
until they’re home, until they all are home 
lay your hands upon the truth of beauty’s loss
heavy, soft as moss, this blanket
full of tears and dust and dying
becomes ocean cradle, healing, dark
the promise, washed clean by our sorrow
today crying out, as we’re birthing tomorrow
not so much redemption
as the law of moon and season
calls for justice
one day, the lawmakers must
exit their echoing halls, fall in
with the grandmothers dancing
carry it                 cry it clean
until they’re home, until they are all home” 
This poem is an ode to Missing and Murdered Indigenous women, pledging to constantly remember those who have been murdered while not ceasing to fight for all the Indigenous women who are still missing and need to be found. An iteration of the line “until they’re home, until they are all home” appears several times throughout the piece at the end of stanzas, and this line signifies the fight of Indigenous women to find their missing sisters, and signifies a promise not to rest “until they are all home”. The poem’s title “Washing the World” represents the tears of pain shed by Indigenous women over their missing sisters, tears that are fully let out, then wrapped in a blanket, and as Sewell writes “this blanket full of tears and dust and dying becomes ocean cradle, healing, dark the promise, washed clean by our sorrow today crying out, as we’re birthing tomorrow”. This poem is a call for justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous women.

To view the full poem, click here

 

 

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

Tanaya Winder is a member of the Duckwater Shoshone Tribe. She is a poet, educator, writer, and artist who writes primarily about love and the various expressions of love. Winder’s many accolades include being the director of the ‘Upward Bound’ program at the University of Colorado at Boulder – which serves 103 Indigenous youth across America – , co-founding the Sing Our Rivers Red traveling exhibit raising awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous women, and her poetry collection published in 2015 entitled Words Like Love.

 

To learn more about Tanaya Winder, visit her website here .

 

“Sonnet MCLXXXI: for the murdered and missing Indigenous women on Turtle Island” by Tanaya Winder

“Not when or where but how, did we lose you,
in between Last Seen _____ the words become elegy
echoing sidewalks and streets. Hand out your picture to
strangers. Post it on Post Office bulletin boards: Missing
as if it were destination, a place one goes
to disappear in invisible cities. Except there’s no hero like
in the movies. No ads, mainstream coverage, or TV shows
to show our story. Are we invisible if no one knows, why?
When 1,181 women were taken, did eyes cease to have vision
or pay attention to a body being swallowed up?
Those left behind who remember you continue on a mission,
an endless search of the cities in which we loved
(and love) you. We will never forget. We demand for you
action, words, even a poem that ends: your lives matter, too.”

 

This poem is from Winder’s poetry collection Words Like Love, and is dedicated to Missing and Murdered Indigenous women. The opening line, “not when or where but how, did we lose you” signifies the longing to know why Indigenous women are murdered and go missing at such high rates, a topic that is not focused on enough in the media. As the sonnet notes, there are little to no ads or mainstream coverage about Missing and Murdered Indigenous women, and the ads that are placed imply a finality in the fact that Indigenous women are missing, an underlying tone that they should not be looked for. As stated in the line, “Missing as if it were a destination, a place one goes to disappear in invisible cities”, the media portrays missing Indigenous women as being at a final, inevitable destination.

“A Lament for Laura and the Disappeared” by Tanaya Winder

“I am not murdered. I am not missing
And so I will speak even to those who won’t listen.
I will speak because
I am not murdered. I am not missing
I am one part of a thread of voices
Of bodies or women standing up to speak for those who are murdered
Those who are missing
Those whose families are missing them
We are here to support our stolen sisters
Young native girls and aboriginal women
Aboriginal Canadian women are 5 times more likely to be violently attacked than non-aboriginal women”

 

Winder’s lament is a passionate declaration of solidarity with Missing and Murdered Indigenous women and their families, and a promise to always support them in finding their loved ones. Winder states, “I am one part of a thread of voices Of bodies or women standing up to speak for those who are murdered Those who are missing”, a powerful proclamation of the thread of voices who will not be silenced.

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

Marilyn Dumont is of Cree and Métis ancestry. She is a poet and writer whose poetry collections include A Really Good Brown Girl published in 1996, that tongued belonging published in 2007, and The Pemmican Eaters published in 2015. Dumont is a professor in the University of Alberta’s Arts and Native Studies program, and has previously been a mentor in the Aboriginal Emerging Writers program at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Her work explores the ever present racism and colonialism experienced by First Nations communities in Canada.

To read an interview discussing Dumont’s poetry collection, A Really Good Brown Girl, click here

“Helen Betty Osborne” by Marilyn Dumont

    “Betty, if I set out to write this poem about you
it might turn out instead
to be about me
or any one of
my female relatives
it might turn out to be
about this young native girl
growing up in rural Alberta
in a town with fewer Indians
than ideas about Indians,
in a town just south of the ‘Aryan Nations’
     it might turn out to be
about Anna Mae Aquash, Donald Marshall or Richard Cardinal,
it might even turn out to be
about our grandmothers,
beasts of burden in the fur trade
skinning, scraping, pounding, packing,
left behind for ‘British Standards of Womanhood,’
left for white-melting-skinned women,
not bits-of-brown women
left here in this wilderness, this colony.
     Betty, if I start to write a poem about you
it might turn out to be
about hunting season instead,
about ‘open season’ on native women
it might turn out to be
about your face       young and hopeful
staring back at me      hollow now
from a black and white page
it might be about the ‘townsfolk’    (gentle word)
townsfolk who ‘believed native girls were easy’
and ‘less likely to complain if a sexual proposition led to violence.’
     Betty, if I write this poem.”

 

This poem is from Dumont’s poetry collection A Really Good Brown Girl, and was written as a letter to Helen Betty Osborne, a Cree woman who was sexually assaulted and murdered by white men when she was 19 years old. The poem shines a light on violence against Indigenous women by non-Native people, illustrated by the line “townsfolk who ‘believed native girls were easy’ and ‘less likely to complain if a sexual proposition led to violence’”, which portrays the way that non-Native men prey on Indigenous women and girls. Dumont illustrates the racism that leads non-Natives to sexually assault and murder Indigenous women and girls, and the way this racism pervades into all aspects of life for Indigenous women.

Poetry not only raises awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous women, but also provides a place for solidarity and strength among family members of missing and murdered Indigenous women and those who have experienced sexual violence and assault.

WORKS CITED