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Red

Beside the gravel driveway

are a grove of trees.

My husband has hung

four red dresses.

I watch them sway and dance

sleeves uplifted in the branches.

Red.

Valentines, Anniversaries.

Birthdays, Christmas.

Red lipstick, nail polish.

Shoes, dresses, purses

accessories matched

for love.

My father butchering

deer, rabbit, duck, beaver

muskrat, moose, [or] elk

Nohkom's headkerchief.

Nimosoom's neck bandana.

Smouldering hot embers

smoking dried meat.

An infant's birth blood gushing

from the tunnel of life.

Its placenta buried

in the root of a tree.

The red hand paintings

on a river's cliffs, caves

Fire bolts

where people meditated

their vision.

Four fires tended by the oskapewisuk

[for] four days mourning the truth

at reconciliation gatherings.

They return to the hearth.

Prayer cloth offerings to the south

where thunder and lightning

rip the heavens.

racing through the tree

it's arms bursting with flames.

Red dresses hanging

in the Canadian Human Rights Museum.

The people's blood

coursing through our veins.

I think what's really important in this particular poem is that

it does address the Missing and Murdered aboriginal woman, right

and, uh, red has become associated with, uh, that, that terrible, those terrible things that have happened to our woman

and I'm terribly, I feel terrible, terrible about that.

But, um, we come from blood, right? And we return, we, uh, our, our, our birth canal when a child is born is filled with, uh, blood

and, um, and, we also come from a very, very long history of cave paintings where our ancestors left their story. The pictographs, right?

So, yeah. And we also, um, when we're talking about, uh, survival as aboriginal woman, we have, we face so much, and people don't recognize it

and increasingly, is I read about black woman stories and I see a lot of para-, parallels,

it, it's really important to find this balance between what happened to our women and what, what happened, that, that, that, life-giving blood that is still coursing through our veins.

We must understand, I think, that, um, all, all, everything and anything that has ever had a, um, breathing apparatus here on Earth

to has left their breath in the wind, so they're never, ever far from us. They are in the wind, and that is one of the teachings of our Elders.