Final Project - "What We've Done" Poem - Janet

~content warning~ 
This poem was written to call out a white, middle/upper-class audience, and the language reflects that. I'm hesitant to post this on here because it might cause more pain in this space than anything else... but seeing as it's my final project here it is. I'm going to somehow transmit this to my family over Winter Break, whether that's reading this aloud at the dinner table and facilitating a real conversation about how our family has affected native and indigenous folks or posting this somewhere or something else. Here it is:

What We've Done

Hey middle and upper class White Western folks

I come at this from a place of love.

Please listen.

We’ve used science and test-tubes and pills and prescriptions

To compensate for the fact we’re breaking our souls

We discovered this new thing, pushed it till we bled

Scratched a scab we didn’t even know was trying to scar

When we stepped foot here we brought disease and we brought pain

We brought guns and syphilis and death

We claimed what our feet touched because our greed tells us we can

We would grab the air if we could hold it, but you can’t hold air

So we took the ground instead.

We brought a religion that we told people would save them

Took their kindness and repurposed it for ourselves

We took and we have taken and we continue to take

Hoping that what we take will fill our hollow souls.

We took language and we took colors

Made our color mean “good” and other colors mean “bad”

Made ourselves the normal and encouraged our kids to be colorblind.

But our kids can see and so can we

How dare we appropriate a different ability to make ourselves feel better

Especially when our actions still see color.

We celebrate a day that smooths over our past of genocide

Call it “Thanksgiving” because we’re apparently grateful

But our “thanks” is empty because what the hell have we done for the people who have given us so much.

They have land, you say, searching for an explanation because you feel a need to defend yourself and your color.

Because I'm entitled to this land, you think.

My ancestors earned this land, you think.

The only land we’ve given we keep pushing inwards.

We keep taking and taking

Relying on folks to explain to us that we have caused so much pain

It’s not my fault I’m White, you say.

True, and there’s no use feeling guilt about that.

But when our thoughts and our words and our actions

Keep slamming people who have given us so much,

We’ve got to fix ourselves and start working with other White folks to fix themselves, too.

Stop saying people are angry.

You’d be angry too if you and your family had been murdered and sterilized 

Because a Stanford professor published unsubstantiated lies and called them facts

And what's worse: people believed him

Now that our medicine

Is coming around

Becoming more “holistic” and using “alternative treatments”

Y’all, this knowledge isn’t new

We’re proving it with data and figures and graphs

Researchers bent over computers, pushing glasses up to the bridge of their noses

Shouting “Our hypothesis is correct!” and publishing the obvious in JAMA

Native and indigenous and POC folks have known this for thousands of years

Living as a whole person in harmony and balance with mind, body, heart, and spirit

With the Earth, not on it

People have been Walking in Beauty for centuries.

Where did the ideas come to White folks to start this new medical framework?

Acupuncture, deep-breathing, herbs, medicine men, massage, movement.

Even vegetarian diets. Self-care. Mindfulness.

I swear by it, you say.

Great! So when did you thank the people who saved you?

Because the person who came up with that wasn’t the white acupuncturist who stuck needles in your face

Or the shaman you saw because you had the money to pay

Taking culture for yourself and not doing anything to say thanks other than throwing a 15% tip at the individual.

We throw doctors at the IHS

Use incentives like “loan forgiveness”

Because that’ll help “give back”

But for some reason after swearing in a white coat to serve humanity

Some of those folks don’t give a shit

Just biding time before they can apply for money and leave

White people are good at throwing band-aids at oozing systemic gashes

Healing practices work

As has been clear to so many people for so long

And now us white folks who love data so much have the numbers to back it up.

I think we should listen to the people who have known this for thousands of years.

BUT.

We need to know

When we study, we take.

It’s more than just the bioethics and “working with human subjects” module for investigators

These are people we are talking about.

We, white folks who benefit from this research, are taking from native, indigenous and POC people.

If we don’t put in work

Back to beautiful people who have and continue to give us so much

Then we’re just as bad as the people who tell us that we are say we are.

They benefit from the research, you say.

Yeah? Not as much as you do.

Show me the numbers to back up that claim.

Show me that money and socioeconomic status isn’t tied into race.

Look at yourself in the mirror.

Look at your face that is White

And at your soul through your eyes that has shriveled from neglect and ignorance.

Of the people who have and continue to give to you.

You want to be a good person, I’m sure you do.

But in order to actually be good people, we’ve got to recognize how we personally have hurt people so we can do something about it.

I think we can work to heal ourselves,

But for that we have got to stop saying, This doesn’t apply to me.

I don’t want to think about this.

I’m forgetting.

I’ve forgotten.

Stop forgetting. Because the people we take from will never forget. 

Remember. Remember every time you go to the doctor and they do more than just write you something for medication. Remember every time someone in the medical profession treats you like a whole person. Remember every time you self-care.

And then fight like hell for the people who taught us that. It’s the least we can do.