Children of Removal by Joshua Hinson, Citizen, Chickasaw Nation

The following post is offered here with permission from Joshua Hinson. He is my oldest son and a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation which means that he has an ancestor who was on the Dawes Commission Rolls. In his case, the enrollee was his maternal great grandmother. Joshua seldom wades into the waters of politics as he knows that by and large folks have already cast their political lots and will not be persuaded otherwise. The latest outbursts between the current resident of the White House and one of his sons and their racist comments toward Senator Elizabeth Warren were apparently more than he could tolerate. He, then, posted the following on his Facebook page. When Joshua speaks, I pay attention.

We are the children of Removal.

Not a day goes by that we are not reminded in some way of that fact - a memory lost, a lesson unlearned, a place never visited, bones disinterred.

We are the children of Removal.

Our conversations are all too often in conducted in English, even our gnashing of teeth is in that strained speech. The words fall clumsily out of mouths - mouths meant for another tongue.

Not a day goes by that we don’t wish the old ones were all still here to help us pick it up again.

We are the children of Removal.

You use our collective sorrow as political slings and arrows against her - you’ll meet her on the TRAIL, you said. She may not be one of us, but we too understand manipulation and coercion and being placed in seemingly impossible circumstances. But we also understand the English word ‘fight’.

We are the children of Removal.

Long after you are laid to rest, long after your bones are mouldering in the ground, when all your hubris and lies and vanity have come home to roost, we’ll still be here. We’ll be dancing on our sacred grounds, singing songs in that old language - the language that survived the terrible march over that TRAIL.

As you and Old Hickory dance a devil’s fiddle tune, we’ll holler our war calls and dance harder toward that ever-present, leftward fire.

When you are forgotten, we will still be here.

We are the children of Removal.

Lokosh
Chikashsh_i_yaakni’
11 February 2019