P’qalten:at
Musqueam/Squamish born
high-matriarch of P'apeyek
in shell headdress and shawl,
net and knife in hand,
now cast in bronze, stood here,
watched her people
fish freely, water lapping
at their rooted, native feet
before steamships, railroads, and Englishmen
in laced finery cut their homeland into strips
of Vancouver like a steak, fat trimmed off;
flesh roasted over open fires
that burned cedar groves of totem wood into ashes.
Photo note: In this photo (by me) she also holds 2 poetry books (Coyote in the Basket of My Ribs by Karen Pierce Gonzalez, and Enough by Damien Donnelly).
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