The Indigenous People of North America’s Pacific Northwest
too much has been forgotten of the people
who have lived on North America for the last 10,000 years,
so little written down, so many artifacts lost
to time, weather, rot, destruction,
here in British Columbia,
they feel both the presence of the historic injustice
and the reality of they who survive and remember,
at the University of British Columbia, in the Museum of Anthropology,
we particularly marvel at great carved logs of Western Cedar,
these posts endure and shout the stories of ancient views of the world,
where indigenous people asked questions and found answers
in their art that shout their truth at us still:
where they came from, what it’s all about,
how to decipher the language can be challenging,
like current people, they had to deal with human nature,
with bad things happening to good people,
with the sense of appreciation for what is given,
and with the sense of frustration for what is denied,
one theme I pick up on is the celebration of the unselfish:
a rock spire rises at the edge of the land by the bay,
a legend explains that one indigenous person was so unselfish
that he was transformed into rock to celebrate and remember his goodness,
he was honored with the transformation according to the story,
yet my empathy can only partly make that leap into understanding,
such a gulf exists between modern North America and its indigenous peoples,
one artifact we saw was the tusk of a marine animal,
carved with seal figures on one end
and a cribbage board on the other,
that artist worked to bridge two cultures,
I wander the museum exhibits in hope
that I can make empathic leaps
and somehow hold native truth
with what I feel to be true and lasting
in how the world appears to me now.
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