I was a feminist in the eighties - Anne Kennedy
have your consciousness raised
To be a feminist you need to have
a good night’s sleep.
To be a feminist you need to
have your consciousness raised
and have a good night’s sleep.
To be a feminist you need to
have regard for your personal well-being
have your consciousness raised
and have a good night’s sleep.
To be a feminist you need to
have a crack at financial independence
have regard for your personal well-being
have your consciousness raised
and have a good night’s sleep.
To be a feminist you need to
champion women, have a crack at
financial independence, have regard
for your personal well-being
have your consciousness raised and
have a good night’s sleep.
To be a feminist you need to do the
childminding, washing, shopping, cooking and cleaning
while your mind is on higher matters
and champion women, have a crack
at financial independence, have regard
for your personal well-being
and have a good
night’s sleep.
To be a feminist you need to button
your coat thoughtfully, do the childminding
washing, shopping, cooking and cleaning
while your mind is on higher matters
and champion women, have a crack at
financial independence, have regard for
your personal well-being, have your
consciousness raised and have
a good night’s
sleep.
To be a feminist you need to
engage in mature dialogue with
your spouse on matters of domestic
equality, button your coat thoughtfully
do the childminding, washing, shopping, cooking and cleaning
while your mind is on higher matters
and champion women, have a crack at
financial independence, have regard
for your personal well-being, have
your consciousness raised and
have a good
night’s
sleep.
Then a lion came prowling out of the jungle
and ate the feminist all up.
Song - Peter Bland My Breath - Inuit Orpingalik

The old Chinese lady I will sing a song,

who lives next door A little song of myself.
Sick I have lain since (Autumn)
lays out her washing
And have turned weak as a child.
on a red-tiled roof Unaya, Unaya.
as if she were back
in her childhood home. Sorrowful, I would that
My wife were gone to another house
To a man who could be her refuge,
She sings to herself
Secure and firm as the thick (Winter) ice.
a song with long pauses, Sorrowful, I would she were gone
a song passed on To a better protector,
full of comings and goings Now that I have no strength myself
To rise from my bed.
like the sea on
Unaya, Unaya.
a calm day when
it drifts in exhausted. Do you know your fate?
So little you know of yourself.
It's a song with no real Now I lie faint and cannot rise,
And only my memories are strong.
end or beginning. One
Unaya. Unaya.
we still hear
even in the pauses Beasts of the hunt! Big game!
as she stoops Oft the fleeing quarry I chased!
to water her money-tree Let me live it again and remember,
Forgetting my weakness.
or reaches heavenwards
Unaya. Unaya.
to collect her washing.
Let me recall the great white polar bear,
High up its back body,
Snout in the snow, it came! How long shall I lie here?
He (Truly) believed How long?
He alone was a male And how long must she go a-begging
And ran towards me. For fat for her lamp,
Unaya. Unaya. For skins for clothing
And meat for a meal?
It threw me down again and again, A helpless thing – a defenceless woman.
Then breathless departed and lay down to rest, Unaya. Unaya.
Hid by a mound on a floe. Heedless it was, and unknowing
That I was to be its fate. Do you know yourself?
Deluding itself that he alone was a male, So little you know of yourself!
And unthinking, that I too was a man! (Whilst) dawn gives place to dawn,
Unaya. Unaya. And (Spring) is upon the village.
Unaya. Unaya.
I shall (neVer) forget that great blubber-beast, a fjord seal
I killed from the sea ice early, long before dawn,
(Whilst) my companions at home still lay like the dead,
Faint from failure and hunger, sleeping.
With meat and with swelling blubber I returned so quickly
As if merely running (oVer) ice to view a breathing hole there.
And yet it was an old and cunning male seal.
But before he had even breathed
My harpoon head was fast, (fatally) deep in his neck.

That was the manner of me then.

Now I lie feeble on my bench
Unable even to get a little blubber
For my wife’s stone lamp.
The time, the time will not pass,
(Whilst) dawn gives place to dawn
And (Spring) is upon the village.
Unaya. Unaya.
Lament for the Dorsets - A L Purdy
Animal bones and some mossy tent rings
scrapers and spearheads
carved ivory swans
all that remains of the Dorset giants1
who drove the Vikings back to their long ships 2
talked to spirits of earth and water
—a picture of terrifying old men
so large they broke the backs of bears
so small they lurk behind bone rafters
in the brain of modern hunters
among good thoughts and warm things
and come out at night
to spit on the stars
The big men with clever fingers
who had no dogs and hauled their sleds
over the frozen northern oceans
awkward giants
killers of seals
they couldn’t compete with little men
who came from the west with dogs3
Or else in a warm climatic cycle
the seals went back to cold waters
and the puzzled Dorsets scratched their heads
with hairy thumbs around 1350 A.D.
—couldn’t figure it out
went around saying to each other 25
plaintively
‘What’s wrong? What happened?
Where are the seals gone?’
#And died
5 Twentieth century people 30
apartment dwellers
executives of neon death4
warmakers with things that explode
—they have never imagined us in their future
how could we imagine them in the past 35
10 squatting among the moving glaciers
six hundred years ago
with glowing lamps?5
As remote or nearly
as the trilobites and swamps 40
15 when coal became
or the last great reptile hissed
at a mammal the size of a mouse
that squeaked and fled
Did they ever realize at all 45
20 what was happening to them?
Some old hunter with one lame leg
a bear had chewed
sitting in a caribou skin tent
—the last Dorset?
Let’s say his name was Kudluk
carving 2-inch ivory swans
for a dead grand-daughter
taking them out of his mind
the places in his mind
where pictures are
He selects a sharp stone tool
to gouge a parallel pattern of lines
on both sides of the swan
holding it with his left hand
bearing down and transmitting
his body’s weight
from brain to arm and right hand
and one of his thoughts
turns to ivory
The carving is laid aside
in beginning darkness
at the end of hunger
after a while wind
blows down the tent and snow
begins to cover him
After 600 years
the ivory thought
is still warm
50 I’M Getting Old Now - Robert Kroetsch
I'am getting old now, I can tell I dream
a lot of my mothers. In my dream last night
she was in the garden, over the hill,
behind our house she was standig. I was
55 playing in pea vines. We were both happy.
Neither of us would move,in the dream.perhaps
I wasn't playing. I was kneeling to pick peas.
my mother held in her apron the peas.
We had picked togher. she was standing still
60 I knew she was watching me.She was watching me grow.
like a bad weed,she liked to say that pleased her.
I'm getting old now . I wouldn't say I'm happy.
Serene is an adequate word.Death is not quite.
The enemy it was. It is a kind of watching.
Death begins to seem a friend that one has almost
65 forgotten, then remembers again. in my dream,
Last night i was playing in the garden.
70
I Lost My Talk - Rita Joe
I lost my talk
The talk you took away.
When I was a little girl
At Shubenacadie school.
You snatched it away:
I speak like you
I think like you
I create like you
The scrambled ballad, about my word.
Two ways I talk
Both ways I say,
Your way is more powerful.
So gently I offer my hand and ask,
Let me find my talk
So I can teach you about me.
The Cattle Thief - E. Pauline Johnson
They were coming across the prairie, they were galloping hard and fast;
For the eyes of those desperate riders had sighted their man at last—
Sighted him off to Eastward, where the Cree encampment lay,
Where the cotton woods fringed the river, miles and miles away.
Mistake him? Never!—Mistake him? the famous Eagle Chief!
That terror to all the settlers, that desperate Cattle Thief—
That monstrous, fearless Indian, who lorded it over the plain,
Who thieved and raided, and scouted, who rode like a hurricane!
But they’ve tracked him across the prairie; they’ve followed him hard and
fast;
For those desperate English settlers have sighted their man at last.
Up they wheeled to the tepees, all their British blood aflame,
Bent on bullets and bloodshed, bent on bringing down their game;
But they searched in vain for the Cattle Thief: that lion had left his lair,
And they cursed like a troop of demons—for the women alone were there.
The sneaking Indian coward, they hissed; he hides while yet he can;
He’ll come in the night for cattle, but he’s scared to face a man.
Never! and up from the cotton woods rang the voice of the Eagle Chief;
And right out into the open stepped, unarmed, the Cattle Thief.
Was that the game they had coveted? Scarce fifty years had rolled
Over that fleshless, hungry frame, starved to the bone and old;
Over that wrinkled, tawny skin, unfed by the warmth of blood.
Over those hungry, hollow eyes that glared for the sight of food.
He turned, like a hunted lion: I know not fear, said he;
And the words outleapt from his shrunken lips in the language of the Cree.
I’ll fight you, white-skins, one by one, till I kill you all, he said;
But the threat was scarcely uttered, ere a dozen balls of lead By a book, to save our souls from the sins you brought in your other hand!
Whizzed through the air about him like a shower of metal rain, Go back with your new religion, we never have understood
And the gaunt old Indian Cattle Thief dropped dead on the open plain. Your robbing an Indian’s body, and mocking his soul with food!
And that band of cursing settlers gave one triumphant yell, Go back with your new religion, and find—if find you can—
And rushed like a pack of demons on the body that writhed and fell. The honest man you have ever made from out a starving man.
Cut the fiend up into inches, throw his carcass on the plain; You say your cattle are not ours, your meat is not our meat;
Let the wolves eat the cursed Indian, he’d have treated us the same! When you pay for the land you live in, we’ll pay for the meat we eat!
A dozen hands responded, a dozen knives gleamed high, Give back our land and our country, give back our herds of game;
But the first stroke was arrested by a woman’s strange, wild cry. Give back the furs and the forests that were ours before you came;
And out into the open, with a courage past belief, Give back the peace and the plenty. Then come with your new belief,
She dashed, and spread her blanket o’er the corpse of the Cattle Thief; And blame, if you dare, the hunger that drove him to be a thief.
And the words outleapt from her shrunken lips in the language of the Cree,
If you mean to touch that body, you must cut your way through me.
And that band of cursing settlers dropped backward one by one,
For they knew that an Indian woman roused, was a woman to let alone.
And then she raved in a frenzy that they scarcely understood,
Raved of the wrongs she had suffered since her earliest babyhood:
Stand back, stand back, you white-skins, touch that dead man to your
shame;
You have stolen my father’s spirit, but his body I only claim.
You have killed him, but you shall not dare to touch him now he’s dead.
You have cursed, and called him a Cattle Thief, though you robbed him
first of bread—
Robbed him and robbed my people—look there, at that shrunken face,
Starved with a hollow hunger, we owe to you and your race!
What have you left to us of land, what have you left of game,
What have you brought but evil, and curses since you came?
How have you paid us for our game? how paid us for our land?