Eagle Call
By: Ruben Cu:k Ba’ak
Tribal affiliation: Tohono O’odham
Call thee thy lord,
worship thy new god.
Lost fingers,
lost hands,
lost limbs,
lost lives
in the beauty of resistance.
The coward of the unconquered.
Truth edged out within weakness.
The strength gifted generations therein.
Surges of true identity cuts through
generations of shame and guilt.
Moments of pristine water droplets
replenish
what the faithful and righteous
could not take away.
The beatings of our children
began this way,
love inflicted suffering.
Carried across new generations
like new songs from the seeing all beautiful birds.
Frightened still as the Ancestors of old
gathered Creator’s blessings not eaten
by greed and dishonor.
As beaten child adults
we walk forward,
gripped in fear,
lost in deities of shame,
think of only thy self,
save for pity and judgment.
Our beautiful women
were branded
with
religious brutality.
Twisted Spanish righteousness
enslaved
the thinking
of both Savage women and men.
Displacing our women’s place
from a powerful dignified traditional value based,
a philosophical based,
a community based,
a cultural based
civilization of honorable people
and
dispossessing
our very own definitions
of Us.
A value system replaced with the
Spaniard perspective
of
Spanish women
turned heathen.
The very church
savages today worship
refused
to considered
our ancestors human.
The shameful truth
my people deny,
too fearful
in there displaced souls.
Worship timeless,
a few generations ago,
surrendering logic,
submitted
to fear based love.
How deep the nails drove.
Through generation upon generation still,
so slickered with brutal bloody fear still.
I have wept for those of the first contact,
with such clarity,
with such wisdom,
With such purity;
my heart cracks
at the piece of imagery
my pathetic being
is able to muster
at all they realized
and understood
in this moment.
What was happening,
how big of an impact
this was going to have
on our future as a people
and all the first nations peoples
we interacted with ever.
I can only see a glimpse
of the brilliance
the intelligence
that my great Ancestor’s had,
I do know that it surpassed any and all European in that time;
As my Ancestors’ did not see the world
from greedy lens;
no they saw the connection
of all things
throughout the Universe.
Remember
we were sustainable
in love
and harmony
of all things,
even greedy enslavers.
The inculcation of depravity,
the sewage
that fills the grave dug for me
generations ago.
Yet the path must be walked,
my Ancestors’ suffrage
will not be for nothing
and I will not pass on this lie
to the next generation.
A truth,
the molestation from
Popes,
priests
and Queens,
these pieces of historical scars
help make up Our sovereignty
in the foundation of our
bestowed oligarchy.
I walked generations to get here,
on a sacred mountain
the moon came to me
And I asked,
why has this happen to my people.
The moon said,
we don’t know why.
Then the moon weep and said,
yet it will be a suffering the world has never known, and it has to be,
always the balance.
I lost everything in that moment
and filled the universe with sorrow
sitting there with the moon unable to walk, bellowing,
making reality slippery with my tears.
Ma’shan (the Moon) stood up and said
you have to keep going,
I could see my prayers ascending.
Truth,
in that moment
I knew defeat like never before,
saw it whole
then I continued to walk on.
I came to a sacred burial site
to ask my Ancestors for help
and the Sun
came to me
in the night
and prayed with me.
The Sun said,
you have lost,
yet
you must be here
at the end,
and
when you get there
you will shine brighter
than anything known.
I continue to walk on,
somewhere the Eagle is calling.
Writer bio
Ruben Cu:k Ba’ak is a Traditional Tohono O’odham member from Sells, Arizona. He has lived the American Indian dream, from a broken abusive home to violence and drug dealing to being locked in the system to changing his life around and walking his Redroad to a couple of degrees, and to a career serving his Nation. He has proven to himself and many others that change is possible. His passion is change and the progression and evolution of the Original Peoples before America. He has 15 and a half years drugs, alcohol and violence free and continues to help people struggling in addiction, alcoholism, violence, and toxic lifestyles to change and learn to live a better way. And he also writes a little poetry.
