In Another Place and Here
The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle
the Masters’ house was mastered
by the ones who built it up
to water the seeds they'd planted
and greased the chains in time
A Tribe Called Red’s Red Winter
Idle No More restarted the clock
Then they rocked the standing rock
Thought they could break us
Thought that we were fucked
But John Trudell remade US
Calling from the ancestors
Were always there with you
Running through and through
The Heron’s call of the Winter
Sounds so bleak and stark to us
Then Aaron Bushnell joined in
The one who fought the Nazis off
They knew just what to do
That fired the alleged gun
Defend Deny Depose they said
And now that winter is coming
And we are tied to its yoke
A rainbow tribe has arisen
Peeps who heard pachamama cry
They danced and danced and danced for years
Cause white folk are so privileged
For as long as their comfort
But winter still is coming
If they ask for help what then
Whiteness is obsolete I say
Go back to their family tree
that is rooted in kith and kind
And bonds of other statures
Bring forward all your spirits
Say they must ask for Treaty
Unpack their colonized minds
That show their heart is true
Then ask them to join the rainbow tribe
Unraveling white lies to tell a history renewed
At least that is what you've told me
Exchanging gifts along the way
breathing torment and transgressing
hidden under the preacher's veil
I'd gone there with san judas
and a lad without a father
I found the mother in the church
and as I knelt staring up at her
a revelation crept through me
the preacher's going on about
but nowhere on the planet
can he be found in flesh and blood
where the Carney's do hold away
then deciding who can stay
White boys still run this show
King and cvntry is their thing
of white supremacy endowed
Generational wealth built on the backs
of the poor and downtrodden
First their own in country of origin
workhouse debtor prisons their wealth gotten
Now they think to spin the tale
that their wealth here was earned
was the base of their rate of return
And now they want to send away
those who built more wealth
using money games played in stealth
Now they sit there elbows up
Hijacking politics from pp and his crew
with the Harper the Harper in the back
Oh Stephen you're showing through
once I entered a white room sole
blinded by light unable to see
sitting there unable to move
lightness has a heaviness
and I was caught in its beam like a deer
but I swear I had this realization
until they dreamcatcher him through
his dream a whitewashed fence
but they're glad he was shot dead
Whiteness Is Now Obsolete
It has become very clear that the fault lines upon which the modern world is built, political, social, economic, cultural, are being exposed as ready to crack at a time when the planet herself has reached the edge of her ability to dance back from the attack she has subjected to for centuries now. Those of us who wish to survive, and are oriented towards protecting everything that exists as we and she adjust to the coming days, understand that we are engaged in a battle, with a very clear enemy. Whataboutism aside, for the last several centuries, the white man has arisen as the focal point of oppressive forces in the world. First as himself, a phenotypically 'white' penis bearing human of the aristocratic order who through a series of conquests and invasions came to rule over what is now referred to as western europe, and then, through a disastrous release of his poison in the world, made possible on the backs of his 'unwashed masses', went on to conquer and colonize the rest of the mother. As he did so, his whiteness spread beyond phenotype, where in a series of campaigns of first outright rape and pillage, then rule by divide and conquer (told now as beguiling stories) he coopted and cajoled legions of the colonized to play his game, and they became white too.
This whiteness as a construct, built on genetic accident, is a category of existence with ever expanding and collapsing borders dependant on the needs of the perpetual centre, that white skinned upright ever in charge male model that usually, but not always, wields a penis. Some of the phenotypically white never are, too disabled, too female, too poor, too queer, too culturally contaminated to be comfortably collapsed within its boundary. Perpetually pushed to the periphery, doomed or blessed to never access this center pole of power, they are always of the masses, and in the coming battle, have the choice of foot soldier for empire or resistance fighter for the future.
This is not a new battle, but rather one of a series mounted against the colonizer since colonization began. A series as well of the perpetual battle of the proletariat against capital, the peasants against landholders. The stakes, however, are cataclysmically higher. The fascist tides birthed in europe have come to their fruition in her blighted offspring, the United States of America, the current ruler holding the reigns of white hegemony. And through this monstrous orifice, the weapons of war and domination are being disseminated on a scale set to further engulf the planet. Surveillance technology, drones, war planes, ai and the ever present nuclear weapons are all in play. Further militarization of the police and the on the ground evidence of the coming police states in 'democratic' countries that don't currently exist in one is obvious. And underneath it all, the threat of white supremacist christofascism holding the reigns of empire.
The key to winning the battle and what should be essential to our strategy, is an understanding that the white man doen't change. The American atrocity that was prophesised by Aimee Cesaire has come to be, and that inherent inflexibility is on display for all to see. But we, the amorphous masses, are a writhing seething bundle of change. Defenseless, unlike the white in their aura conditioned, bubbled up boxes of priviledge, never exposed to the elements, either physical or psychic, and so never having to adapt, we as a matter of survival have bent and bowed ourselves into such a shape as to slide through all manner of adverse circumstances that we come out the other side twisted and at times stunted, but all in all in alignment with an increasingly hostile environment that will bode us well in the coming times. The white man's time is almost done, rooted as it is in an imaginary ideology that he is king of all he surveys, a solitary creature of conquest through might alone, one who, through his mind alone, (severed from the body in an act of will so vast he has deluded himself into thinking he can live without it) can manifest the solution to any problem and mold the environment to his unchanging self. Instead, it meets the implacable reality that no man is an island, entire unto himself. While his gaze has been turned inward, the termites have invested his uninvestiged, not looked at crown, and are slowly eating away at everything he holds, until defenseless he will be thrust out into the mother's waiting arms, where we will be waiting as her new children, and we will watch as he dies, finally, inexorably, and we will stand over his grave to make sure he is dead.
Until this time, we hold the line, chipping away at their strongholds and the networks that sustain them. Multiplicities of meanings in motion is our message, and through our inherent diversity of tactics, we will not only hold the medicine line our ancestors created for us in the past, we will extend it out into the future. Seven generations forward.
×××÷÷÷×÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷×÷÷÷÷×××
Dedicated to the memory of John Trudell, Descendant Now Ancestor
last night I dreamt of you
lying in your dark place, silent and still
camped amongst your relics
painted delicate lines of light
masked we danced in streets
empty of movement, cavorting in rhymes
discreetly by the side of the road
I have migrated here, edged
against barbed fences hooked
while Frida sings gently in the corner
fucked the english through and through
the wasps they are a coming
those honey seeking badgerers
Black folk from Africville
that history in this land
Stolen beaten desecrated denied
still they will make a stand
And here and there the tribe of Jew
Bagels and smoked meat sandwiches
Solomon’s temple lives in them
applies the spiritual bandages
Sikh warriors keeping pace
Standing on this bountiful shore
in a manner such disgraced
that kkkanadians should bow shoulders
But they will come forward
as will all East Asians true
for in this land they found a home⁶
The waves of further peoples
Together with the peoples
³From Dididhat and Pacheedaht
To the Boethuk who are no more
John Trudell’s ghost did birth for us
a bountiful beautiful son
A Tribe Called Red’s Red Winter
Indigenous through and through
Drezus is the Warrior Chief
So gather around good people
of Turtle Island and Mestizaland
Fight back against the fascists
and their cuntbro fucking friends
First to pop was the maiden
Dance the said young maiden
So dance and dance she did that day
With the Sackeney and Shadi
Happiness and the hackey sack
Planted the seeds that set us free
Next in line were Mohawk kin
a story shared between us two
a tale of the stacked deck
That our paths had crossed before
Great Grate of the Great Beast
both times if truth is unmined
And each time he did turn away
And I was directed to salty
By a shoulder curled up cat
Stuck for 5 bloody moistly months
I left and traveled the condor
Courtesy of Elizabeth Moes
mni wiconi filled my soul
the goddess she did call to me
Of that tale I will not speak
As it is filled with pain
But a third pow wow appeared for me
Courtesy of African rains
I was broken down and beaten
White folk destroyed my pride
So invited in I was with Toto
Finally finally I could dance
For Great Spirit showed that day
So thank you very much my friends
My Indigenous friends and kin
You’ve showed the mother welcome here
Pachamama can now rebegin
silently sighing sibilant
collapse coalescing conundrums
wintertime passes and takes with it
the bones of the winter king
blankets them in hidden groves
creates carpets of colour
softly blows the trees to life
and wakes the goddess from her sleep
the goddess and the green man
silently break their shells
we are here with them on the precipice
portals open to the summerland
Crossing the Medicine Line
crossing the medicine line
crossing the medicine line
crossing the medicine line
calling past such silly things
to just sit and laugh aloud
