Tribal Sovereignty: Washed Faces
As the children are fed along a river, they find gratitude in the heart of the land. From one corn stalk to the next, the seed grows and the root stretches into the underworld, grasping the soul of their ancestors. A mother's sovereignty.
Before the cracks had tied her daughter to the boarding school chair, the child could watch the fish swim in small schools. There was no dam, only the horizon in which the water flowed past. Before the gun wounds, severed feet, and slits to the throat had muddied the water with a rush of red hope, the river flowed with the blues in hopes of carrying on the offerings from the mother's hand. Though her banks are scarred with cracks that shed light on the bloodied hands of the Colonists, the water will always be there to wash it away. Forever, the mother's hands wash over the skin of her daughter, running her fingers through her hair readying for the morning of anew.
Sovereignty– "the authority of a state to govern itself.'
Forever, the mother's hands wash over the skin of her son, running her palms across his roseate cheeks readying him for sleep into the night.
The skin of the two children glowed in the face of the night sky; her embers and stars.
