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.)

Come Visit Our Book Dome at the Okanogan/Tonasket Barter Faire

We'll be on the North end of one of the aisles, as usual. Look for the Pirate Flag!

"Camerado, this is no book, Who touches this, touches a man..." Walt Whitman, So Long

Etude Geographique by Stoddard King

Found this awesome old piece in an old copy of Stoddard King's book What The Queen Said & Further Facetious Fragments. Someone tucked a newspaper clipping inside the book from the Spokesman Review, dated Sunday, January 3, 1965. The article features the author, and reproduces the full text of the poem:

__________________________

Out West, they say, a man's a man; the legend still persists

That he is handy with a gun and careless with his fists.

The fact is, though, you may no hear a stronger word than "Gosh!"

From Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, to Walla Walla, Wash.

In western towns 'tis many years since it was the last rage

For men to earn their daily bread by hoding up a stage,

Yet story writers sti ascribe such wild and woolly bosh

To Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, to Walla Walla, Wash.

The gents who roam the West today are manicured and meek,

They shave their features, daily and they bathe three times a week.

They tote the tame umbrella and they wear the mild galosh.

From Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, to Walla Walla, Wash.

But though the West has frowned upon its old nefarious games,

It sti embellishes the map with sweet, melodious names,

Which grow is lush profusion like the apple and the squash

From Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, to Walla Walla, Wash.