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.