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Made by Teresa Marrin
© 2010-2012

Red Lake

It was not about color or culture
In the end
We are all family
This was about wakanheza kin hena
For our children, our sacred beings
I can’t pronounce it
But I understand it
In any language
This was about our babies
Whatever we have or haven’t done
To leave them so bereft
That they kill one another
These are our children
We killed them
Our greed, our neglect
Our blindness
It was no coincidence that weekend
That I sat in a parking lot
Outside Penn Best Steakhouse
Where two black men were shot the week before
And Terry Schiavo was slowly dying
People demonstrated to keep her from going home
But no one demonstrated at the steakhouse
Or at Red Lake
No one expressed outrage
That such a thing could happen
It took the President a week to call
The same President who got up in his pajamas
To grandstand one death instead of many

It is our job to care for them
No one else’s
When we ask whom to blame
We can look at ourselves
Every child lost belongs to all of us
Let us go then
And gather up all the children
And be good parents to the world