Voices From The Prairies - Part Two

By Ginikachi Obah, 1st year MDP student

As my field placement at Blue Quills First Nations College draws to an end, I would love to say that it has been an amazing learning experience that has inspired and added a lot to my thought process. I would love to share this poem that centres on issues such as climate change, environmental sustainability and Indigenous knowledge.

Environmental Stewards

The sea rises as my mind is flooded with thought

The polar ice dissolves in human desires

The atmosphere is caught on the verge by human technology

The earth is entangled in the threshold of environmental degradation

 Development and prosperity leaves me at the mercy of climate change

I feel swept away by the tide of human development as tar sands and mercury cast shadows in my palace

I am gradually withering away in the oven of green house emission

I am ripped apart and I need compassion

I miss the nation of the buffalo because they built their consciousness round my interest

I am a seeker of life and spirituality but now must battle for survival in the hands of globalisation

I settle like dust in the mouths of human activists but my muscles are weak to human separatists

Hunters resort to mental gymnastics as they sing the hymns of ecological variation

The next generation is denied access to culture as the weather changes like clothes and keeps us on the edge

 The world needs an ethic of continued sustainability but the minds of men focus on continuous wealth

The willingness of humanity to tend to the earth is laid bare by the strings of environmental conquest

I run to the comforting arms of environmental stewards who nourishes my body and soul with ceremonies

Contemporary thoughts have not been able to put asunder where disembodied minds have continued to plunder

 

Kachi with members of the Indigenous Knowledge Senate