Last Updated: 21 years Deidra Suwanee Dees, Muscogee Nation, recently won the First Place Award for her creative verse “Celebrate” by The People’s Poet in the United Kingdom. “Celebrate” addresses an indigenous viewpoint on Christopher Columbus’s impact on the western hemisphere exploring residual effects of colonization. Her writing incites mixed emotions of anger and sadness over conquests of indigenous peoples exploring the way that it shaped American holidays that are celebrated today.
Dees has been publishing her research on Native American education for many years and is currently working on her doctorate in cross-cultural Education at Harvard.
“Celebrate” will be published in the Autumn Journal this fall by The People’s Poet.
Click the “Read More” link to read her poem.
Celebrate
AUTHOR: Deidra Suwanee Dees
they celebrate
a day off from work and school
—swaddled in patriotism,
the heralded navigator
and renowned explorer;
sitting alone
I know your exploits of
countless christian sins—
stealer of land and children,
cold slave owner,
building your house on the
blood of natives,
filling your hunger on the
nectar of virgins—
clumsy navigator,
crucible murderer—
come close to me
and smell my nectar,
rub your hand
against my nipple,
cast your
finger below my navel,
mr. columbus, let me whisper,
come closer to me;
my breath like fire
erases your existence
when I whisper
GENOCIDE