DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FROM A SOVEREIGN NATION IN YOUR MIDST "Columbus" Day Old Oregon Territory

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

FROM A SOVEREIGN NATION IN YOUR MIDST

"Columbus" Day

Old Oregon Territory

          The world began in a scream

June 8, 1952 and it was Today until 1954.

The world became very old

          for the first time    when I was four,

standing on the banks of the Columbia.

          This is  my homeland--

Its roads and rivers my roots.

My grandmothers' stories sing in my blood.

--  My children were born in the Blues.

          I see the world through Ancient eyes and New.

I discovered America, and I discovered Columbus too !

(so did you.)

German immigrant pioneers

   murdered my grandmother's great-great grandfather.

The Church adopted his orphaned children

To Save them from Pagan hands.

-- His lands,

                   They fenced . . .

                             (and later, fetched a profit.)

My great-great-grandmother ran away from the Forced Relocation.

Hid in the hills of Tennessee.  She was 13.

Two and half years later, she married a German immigrant

pioneer, a farmer widower with kids. 

They moved to the Ozarks, homesteaded,

had, among others, twins.

They called my great grandpa "half-breed" and "hillbilly"

and made my gramma cry when she was only three.

They took our grandmothers' handmade baskets

in trade

for shoes her children didn't want to wear.

Young Conquistadors raped me for my gold,

and stole my Gods with their greed--

          --Four and half centuries AFTER Cortez.

          The world began in a scream,

I will not whimper.

Cowboys and Indians,

drummers and dreamers,

settlers and soldiers--

my ancestors

were murdering and marrying my ancestors

not so long ago;

                   mixing blood,

          -- in more ways than one.

I HEARBY DECLARE:

          This is our air,  our land along the length

          of our own Trails of Tears to today.

The New World is ours, and I claim it for the Future !

Keep your poisonous lies out of my skies,

and keep your hands OFF my heritage.

These rivers ran deep

                   long before your damning.

 Take care.

           Or beware;

                  --my outrage at broken treaties can be savage.

 -         maggie halfacre

  Walla Walla

  (the town, not the tribe.)