Take me back to Erwin, Tennessee 1916 The good old days Hard-working folks The salt of the earth Husbands and wives and a whole lotta Jesus Jesus
Two thousand five hundred Men, women, and children At her hanging Like a day at the circus
The day before The White man Her master Hit her behind the ear Used a metal hook Smashed her infected tooth Because she stopped Reached for Food A Watermelon rind
And so she killed him
The local blacksmith Shot her five times But she lived long enough To be lynched the next day
The chain snapped On the first attempt And she broke her hip when she Fell Little White boys and Little White girls Screaming and Running and Laughing
The second time The chain held And she died Buried Beside the tracks In the Clinchfield Railroad Yard September 13th It was a Wednesday
Better late than never, right? Discussed in this post: 13 books (Mothers and Others; Neoliberal Legality; The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism; The Birth of Biopolitics; The Ku Klux Klan in Canada; Just Us; The Cunning of Recognition; White Magic; A History of My Brief Body; Embers; Parallel Stories; A Swim in the Pond in the Rain; and Before the Next Bomb Drops); 3 movies (Identifying Features; Riders of Justice; and Vitalina Varela); and 2 documentaries (Feels Good Man; and The Rise of Jordan Peterson).
We come into the world scarred and full of wonder. We bring with us the unhealed wounds, anxieties, and traumas of our ancestors. Already in the womb, our DNA is methylated by whatever discomfort, discord, or distress existed in the environment of and around our mothers. We are born afraid of things that we have not yet encountered because our ancestors were afraid of these things. We are born predisposed to certain kinds of illnesses and dis-ease. Our deaths are already recorded in the roots of our genealogies. So we come into the world scarred. Marked. De-formed. And yet. And yet we come so full of wonder. We don’t come seeking specific answers or solutions to specific questions or problems, we come with an open curiosity. We come to the world playfully. We come predisposed to awe and laughter. And love. We come into the world scarred but full of wonder and loving unconditionally. This is the stage of childhood. Especially early childhood. Although some children are given no opportunity at all to have a childhood.
I slapped the mosquito on my elbow and watched her die on the palm of my hand. Not knowing what to say, I recited a bastardized version of Raymond Carver’s “Late Fragment” to her:
Did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? To call yourself Beloved To feel yourself Beloved on this earth
Well, did you? I asked, as I flicked her dead body away. What does a mosquito want from life? Do other creatures go through life haunted by a desire to matter? To be loved? To be understood so well that their wrongs are not held against them? To experience the ineffable “something more”?
Before the bombs fell on Berlin In the course of 363 air raids The British dropping 45,517 tons of bombs The Americans dropping 23,000 tons of bombs While the Soviets Managed to drop 40,000 tons of bombs In a mere two weeks As they advanced on the city Before all of this 3,715 animals Lived At the zoo Afterwards 91 animals Were left
Eight out of nine Elephants Died The first elephant killed Was the first casualty Of the first bombing raid August 26, 1940 Six of fifty bombers crashed Two Berliners were lightly injured A woodshed in the suburbs destroyed And one dead elephant
The Allies improved Killed seven elephants in a single raid November, 1944 When 753 British aircraft Dropped 2,500 tons of bombs In twenty-two minutes And a human-induced firestorm Raged through the city Reminiscent of Operation Gomorrah (34,000-42,000 killed) Foreshadowing Operation Thunderclap (25,000 killed) And Operation Meeting House (90,000-100,000 killed)
Siam The ninth elephant Went mad With terror and grief And survived Until Like the rest of us He didn’t anymore
Testimony of Irene Favel, 75, attended the Muskowekwan Indian Residential School from 1941-1949[1]
I had a very very rough life I was mistreated in every way There was a young girl She was seven year old She was pregnant And what they did She had her baby Yet they took the baby Wrapped it up in nice pink outfit Took it downstairs I was in the kitchen with the nuns Where [we’re?] cooking super They took the baby into the What do you call that Where they make a fire and all that To heat up the school [Another voice calls: Furnace room] They threw that little baby in there And burned it alive All you could hear was
*Short, sharp, truncated breath, somewhere between a hiccup and a cry that is instantly cut-off*
That was it You could smell the them You know The flesh cooking It’s a big mistake when people say we’re treated good No way There’s a lot of things that happened in those boarding schools
PostScript: After May 27, 2021, when an announcement was made that an unmarked mass grave of 215 Indigenous children was found at the Kamloops Indian Residential school, action was taken on decades-old survivor testimonies about unmarked graves at the Muskowekwan Indian Residential School. On June 1, 2021, it was reported that the bodies of 35 children were found in unmarked graves at the Muskowekwan Indian Residential School. We do not how many babies were thrown into the school furnace. According to the Eurocentric standards of proof deployed by Canadian historians, that kind of grave leaves no mark. Is an empty hole a grave? An empty room? An empty furnace? If there is no trace of the body, how can it be found? If it cannot be found, how can it be counted? If it cannot be counted, how can it count?
Irene Favel is the mark. Her people are the body. Her word is the trace. Canada is the grave. And in just one month, 1,148 dead Indigenous children have been found in unmarked graves at Indian Residential School locations across Canadian-occupied territories. According to The Economist, this confirms “what many indigenous [sic] groups have long suspected.”[2] But this is not true. It confirms what many Indigenous groups have long known. And it also confirms what Indigenous groups have long reported to us, Canadians, occupiers, killers, who have always walked away with a smirk or perhaps even a tear, saying, with all of our Eurocentric certainty and relief:
“Maybe. But you can’t prove that.”
Irene Favel died on January 21, 2021, four months prior to the report about the mass grave at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. She was 8 years old when she arrived at the Muskowekwan Indian Residential School. She lived there until she was 16. But that doesn’t mean she ever left it. Or, rather, that it ever left her. Canada, after all, is simply the Indian Residential School system writ large. Irene was 87 years old when she died. Canada just turned 152.
My son Please I want you to stop crying Only When you have been comforted And not Because you feel ashamed Of your tears Feel through Your sadness Follow it All the way To the end That is only sometimes A cessation And other times A telos A revelation
My son Whether or not you look for it You will discover much Sadness Please remember The everything else The joy The playfulness The gentleness The wonder
My son I will never forget you Right now Beside me Curled up in the space Between my body And the back of the couch I will never forget How you smelled so much Like a boy Nestled into His father And how This comforted me
My Neighbour An Anti-Vaxxer Told me Justin Trudeau Is the most hated person who Has ever lived He saw the study These are facts Facts! We’re like sheep to the slaughter But he’ll take A bullet to the back of the head Before they force him To take An illegal vaccine No way man He remembers This is the land of the free And they won’t fool him No sirree
My Neighbour Grew up starving Drinking vinegar From bottles Left out at diners Just to change The way his stomach Ached Hunger like that He tells me Is something different Something all-encompassing To be famished Is to be ravished By absence and lack The only time he was arrested He was fifteen Stole a bag-full of chocolate bars From the cornerstore Spent a few weeks In EMDC Thought he was gonna get murdered But met some pretty nice Gs Who shared their canteen His case thrown out He promised To never do it again And he didn’t
My neighbor Only has what he has Because his mother died And because a lady driver pulled out Without looking Fucking bitch He woke up in the hospital Both legs shattered A helluva lot richer So he bought all his friends Flatscreen TVs When flatscreen TVs Only belonged To rich people And he got himself a bike A nice little crotch rocket And a car And an old lady And smokes from the rez on the regular And food for the raccoons the skunks and the possums Who come to his window at night Because nobody and nothing Should ever go hungry The raccoons steal his hat and Last night The Skunks allowed him to touch their Noses For the first time
My neighbor is going to Run out of money next year He will sell First his car Then his bike And then he will look For another place to live But he doesn’t regret anything He’s felt like a millionaire Lived a dozen good years With more than he ever ever imagined Ever ever having
My neighbour Misses his mom Especially during the holidays And he tells me To enjoy every moment Of every day With my children Before they grow And go And I remain
And when my neighbour dies And stands before the throne of God And God says What the fuck were you thinking That was some bullshit about freedom And vaccine conspiracies And what’s your beef with women anyway And my neighbour has nothing to say In his own defense The racoons the skunks the possums Will say Excuse us Lord We’ll vouch for him And everyone who got a flatscreen Better nod along And fuck it I will too I might as well be neighbourly Besides I think I’m going down not up So it’s about time Someone else listened To that bullshit
