Alcohol devastated First Nations because it takes away the color.
The color of the earth, and connectedness to the plants, unfiltered, loving and enveloping.
It didn’t hurt the white people because they were already numb.
They already existed in black and white and were numb to the many intersecting spaces of black and white that make up all the infinite colors of the world.
The spaces First Nations knew and loved to live in.
So alcohol came, and First Nations drank the liquid down their throats.
And they closed their eyes.
They could still hear the earth singing to them.
They could still feel the earth reaching to hold them close in the disconnect.
They could still taste the earth even in the distilled, and fermented-ness of the liquid.
But they couldn’t see her anymore.
When they closed their eyes they didn’t see the colors anymore.
They saw black. And it changed their lives forever.
They were taken advantage of, raped, pillaged, and left for dead.
And then they woke up with nothing. Somehow shamed into thinking it was their fault. That they willingly gave something up by signing away treaties and agreements under false pretenses.
Now it’s the stain of white on them and what it brought into their world.
And they’re sequestered to a corner. Told to stay silent and behave because ‘we’re giving you money to appease taking everything from you’. So just shut up and take it again. Money will make it better. And it doesn’t.
Taken over by white men with privilege.
They’ll never be the same again.
We still let it happen around us everyday. We still drink the sour liquid down our throats to numb ourselves to the color of the earth and the truth of oneness.
And believing this land is our land. It isn’t.