Standing Up

Our undaunted resilience permeates through the racist barricades holding my people back from equality and justice. Although we have no justice nor equality to speak of, we proceed as if we are abundant with those virtues, I don't know why we were chosen to rattle the status quo and question the racist induced slumber my people wander about in this nightmare sedated by our white counterpart. What prize do they take away from our dismay? How can anything compensate for the discontentment they have knowingly breed amongst our masses? What helps them sleep at night knowing they are directly responsible for the disarray the communities of my people are forced to struggle to thrive within? Is it Jesus that justifies their relentless pursuit to bring about discrimination and injustice down upon my people, what kind of god could justify these atrocious actions? Where do these people draw their strength from to keep us bound in their web of deceit, distrust and discouragement? Why must my people pretend as if their entitled to live by these lowly standards we allowed our oppressors to set before us? Where do they find the courage to stand against us, and question our dedication to free them from these bonds of discrimination? How do they deal with this awful weight set upon our shoulders to trudge through generation after generation of this disruption of harmony we have sacrificed our children for? This is not what our ancestors had in mind when they decided to sign treaties to prevent anymore suffering upon our people, but signing those treaties only allowed not only them, but ourselves to dishonor them by allowing them to continue to take away our humanity. Today this inhumanity has become a contemporary instrument to celebrate our heritage like breading and pow wows. Why must we celebrate our discontentment by allowing this perversion of our way of life to ensue? Why must other people of my tribe question and refuse to support us as we battle our oppressors for equality and understanding, internalized oppression has consumed my people, killing Indians has gone out of style, yet my people protect this discrimination with their lives, as if their going to loose something vital to their survival if they attempt to question the racism degrading our livelihood. So they withdraw into ignorance, jealousy, anger, and resentment, why? Because they have been indoctrinated into these deplorable living conditions handed down to them by their parents whom in most cases failed to provide them with a promise of a better future. This discrimination conquers most of my people, leaving them defeated and resentful, yet my colleagues and I continue to gather medicine, to give back that strength we have been robbed of. To awake them, so we may rise out of the ashes, this is a political ghost dance we political guerrillas have initiated to bring about hope in the most racist city in American. A city they built amongst our communities, so as racism stares into the faces of all of you and mistreats your children, know that their is someone standing against these injustices denying our equality, and we cannot do this alone. We need all of us to push down these walls of discrimination, so we may return our integrity to our children before these conditions victimize them, so I ask you, I beg you. If you can not stand for yourselves, stand for them. Let their innocence give you strength, let them not be corrupted and downtrodden as this society has forced so many of our people to become, give them hope by standing up with us against the injustice, this isn't just our fight, its all you you who every suffered because of racism and discrimination, we fight for you, and those that are currently suffering. To release our children of our failure, instead of pointing blame, we need to question that blame, because a lot of my people need to own that blame for allowing these conditions to threaten their children, because they deserve better, and we can provide that for them, but only if we stand up.