Our ancestors dreamt your future
The iron rail, Angus cows slumbering in shorn prairie
The buffalo remembered only on the metal
That buys and sells on the grain exchange
There are those moments at the Mississippi when a breeze
Through the ancient cottonwoods remembers
The absent sound of well-worn leather moccasins
And the silent slide of birchbark on muddy water
The moments when even you feel memory rise on neck hairs
Our ancestors dreamt your future,
While writing our future on wiigwaasabak; petroglyphs
The Midewinini secured our future in limestone caves
Marcie Rendon , White Earth Anishinaabe, is a playwright, poet, performance artist, and author. She has published four plays, two nonfiction children’s books, and poems and short stories in numerous anthologies. Marcie is the author of two novels, Girl Gone Missing (2019) and Murder on the Red River (2017), published by Cinco Puntos Press.
Art By:
Sara Endalew is a multidisciplinary painter, photographer, graphic designer, and public artist working in the Twin Cities. She received an associate degree in sculpture and painting from Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, and moved to the United States in 2005. Her practice is influenced by her surroundings, women, childhood, and the rhythms of everyday life. Her artwork has been displayed in collaboration with local and regional institutions, businesses, and public art organizations. Sara creates art to affirm her identity as an African woman, celebrating womanhood that, at its core, holds what is beautiful and sacred around the practices of communal life.
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