Can You Hear Me?

The children have suffered greatly because of the boarding schools of genocide and it is why I write on their behalf. This is the first piece for future publication titled Can You Hear Me.


Posted Date: : Jun 11, 2008 12:02 AM
Can You Hear Me





Hi my name is Timmy White Cloud can you see me?

I'm over here ya know or have you forgotten me?

I'm really here honestly I am. I wonder why I had to come to this awful place called school, a place where you wonder if the morning light is really safe. I don't know what happened to my parents. The teachers say they don't want me and that this school is my home now. There is no one here to comfort me, no loving arms, just words of hate.

I try to go to sleep at night but fear the reprisals of being Indian, afraid of the hands that speak louder than words. Hey, can you hear me yet I'm here waiting to tell you the story of my life, a life that was lived in a constant state of sadness and remorse of a family left behind and of the grandparents I never saw again. Hey I'm not sure if you can see me but I'm over here now behind the walls of repression where there is no belief, but only in the white man's way. I wonder if I closed my eye's if I just might wake up back home in my old bed, you see I have to dream it is the only thing that can keep the demons at bay.

The night is long and cold here, but it is where in some distant room you can hear other children scream for protection from the evil ways of man. I hide you know in a crawl space right over here where I can close out the silent pleas of murder, the cries of a child left behind in the dark recesses of a shallow grave. Why I must ask Why did I have to be born Indian maybe if I was somebody else I could be home right now, can I ask you why? Why me? and Why does the color of my skin make them hate me so? Can you tell me why?

I'm over here now, over by the furnace the furnace in which they burned little children like me. Oh they screamed, and kept screaming I couldn't block it out, I tried but I could not and I cannot and will not forget that awful day. I do not think that anyone can, can you forget now that I have told you? My story is not done yet I need to show you the place where they buried me, because I would not listen, because I would not be white, and because I would not forget the many children who died behind walls of hostility. I hope I can go home now and rest my weary head and see all those who were left behind in the graves of discontent. Now that my story has been told, do you think my spirit can continue on its journey of the Red Road and join the many others in the heaven's above. Do You?


Aho Oieya