Monday, January 9, 2023

Decolonizing Our Minds

Image by Longwalker on facebook


Ancestors, you who walked gently
on Mother Earth, in soft moccasins,
please forgive our heavy steps, our boots
that trample tender green and growing things
and never see them wilting underfoot.

My Tla-o-qui-aht neighbours,
can you,
who lived for millennia in harmony
with nature, then watched silently
as we settlers damaged
land and sea and air
in two hundred years,
teach us all you know about how to
be a good creature on this earth?

I believe, out there somewhere,
countering the dark-hearted of humanity,
are the bright hearts of the awakened ones,
the Rainbow Warriors, who have come
to heal and restore to Mother Earth
some of what has been lost.

Ancestors, you tell us
we have come to earth
at this moment in time
to shift the paradigm.
But we are slow
in answering your call.

I raise my eyes to the starry sky that
illuminates our darkening world,
and send a plea: may we
transform our consciousness
and our way of being
from sea to warming, rising sea,

illuminate our vision,
decolonize our minds.
May our light outshine
our darkness
while there's still time.

for my challenge at earthweal: Decolonizing Our Minds

6 comments:

  1. transformation from sea to warming, rising sea... Indeed, that is exactly the need of the hour.

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  2. A beautiful, heartfelt prayer/poem. I can only add - Amen. Suzanne - Mapping Uncertainty

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  3. Decolonizing is a twofold process -- first of reconciliation with the dispossessed, second a seeping and deepening of the colonizing Western mind into reconciled lands in a native way. It's a very poltical act in that it can't have any real meaning until it has been accomplished as policy. The environmental transformations yet to come will demand this. You've shown the intent forcefully and clearly with great beauty!

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  4. Hoping that light will outshine darkness, hoping it is still possible to achieve.

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  5. Sherry, you write with a powerful pen, may your words be heard. I think the earth is fighting back and there will be a day when
    earthlings say we must stop this process that is killing the earth and us. We need to get back to the basics of survival. May the light find a way.

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  6. Yes. How we need the kindness of "the bright hearts of the awakened ones." How we need to accept our chance to transform the input of our foreignness. How we need to use our 5 senses to learn and follow.

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