A POEM ON THE INDIAN ACT
The Indian Act.
It's kinda a funny name actually.
The Indian...
(Well first off it wasn't meant for Indians. India is on the other side of the world after all.)
Act.
(Not really appropriate because this piece of legislation did not let aboriginals act at all.)
A more apt title would be:
The non-Indians may not Act
It was the most unlawful law.
It was created to destroy.
It'sbirth meant the death of a culture
or I should say an attempt
because they did not succeed.
Canada tried it's best to erase those that had written it's first chapters,
but it's kind of hard to erase something written in blood.
We keep hearing of terrorism in the middle east,
but have you heard of the terrorism in ou very own government?
Torture.
Abuse.
Fear. Kidnapping. Starvation. Diseases. Inhumane living conditions.
'That... that never happened here, right?'
WRONG.
It happened here. Because of the Indian Act and the government's assimilation policy.
'But... none of that matters today, right?'
WRONG.
1 in 4 aboriginal kids live in poverty.
More than 40% of First Nation people go to jail.
They are 5 times more likely to commit suicide than other canadians.
They are likely to die 7-20 years earlier than other canadians.
'Oh. Yeah, it seems like we have a problem.'
But it's not just an abstract problem.
There are people
With there own lives, and their own stories.
The goal of the Indian Act was to rewrite aboriginal people's stories to one that fitthe European mold.
I think one of the best ways to fight back against the hurt of the Indian Act,
is to listen to Native people.
For far too long we told them their story for them.
It's time we give them back the pen and lend them our ear.
Let them write, and us listen.
A note to Mr. Katsionis:
First I wanted to make this into a spoken word poem with a video. But as I had to work on computers at the library and at school most of the time, they didn't have premier pro. Then when we got the computer back, premier pro did not work. And also the computer did not recognize when I put the camera's memory card in.
So then I was like 'Oh well I will just attach a sound file of it.' I had the hardest trouble recording it. First I did it on my ipod, but then I couldn't send it to myself, because my ipod is literally 8 years old and dying. Gmail wasn't working. Then I recorded it using a camera (at that point I still thought I could use premier pro), but as I said before hand, the computer did not recognize when I put the camera card in. Then I used my dad's tablet, but his mail app did not work for some reason. My brother's ipod also wouldn't send it to me. My mom finally found the recording some how on my dad's tablet and managed to send it to me not using the mail app but gmail from the internet.
But the recording is a m4a and apparently Wix only takes mp3. I thought it wouldn't be too hard to convert the file to mp3 so I searched up how to do that. Apparently the best way is to use itunes. We didn't have itunes on our computer, (our hard drive died) so I redownloaded it. But then I couldn't find it. I tried to click on the open with itunes button that appeared when I hovered over the recording in the folder, but nothing would open.
I am at my wits end at the moment. I am very frustrated with my computer! I am sorry that this is not what it could be.
I will try to upload the recording with my project.