Let's play a mental exercise game here. This should be good.

You are you, relatively well adjusted, maybe your life was good, maybe it was meh, but it was tolerable and produced a relatively ok adult, going about your adult life and having at least a bit of fun. Its pretty decent all things considered. You know how to adult because you watched your parents and grandparents do their own adulting and learned from them. If they were less than perfect you probably learned what mistakes not to make. So even that was ok in the end. Good for you! So take a mental picture of that version of you. We will use that later when we compare it to this next version of you.

For this version of adult you, strip away all the stuff from your past, so we can rebuild you. You dont really remember your family life now, because they took you away when you were 4. You remember that, because your mother was screaming and crying and you were scared and confused. The people taking you didnt even speak your language so you couldnt know where you were going to. You would see your parents again now and then, but they would keep their distance from you a bit and look at you sadly, because when you were allowed to go home for a few days you were so different. The people that took you changed you, cut your hair, made you wear their clothes. You had scars on your face and body that made your parent cry. They watched you eat like a wild animal and knew it was because you had been to the point of starving. The ribs sticking out of your back told them that too. You would wake screaming in the night from nightmares.


The place you went to became your new life, because you almost never got to leave. You were pushed around like a dirty animal, scolded, beaten, starved. At night you lay awake as long as you could to try to protect the youngest children around you from the man that would come to the dorm. You were tougher, you could take what they were going to do better than the littlest boys or girls. Every time you said a word in your language, you were beaten. You could not sing or dance. You had to pretend like your old life was not real. And after a few years you even started to believe it. You forgot most of your own language by then anyway. You would look in the mirror trying to find that dirty filthy animal they were always telling you you were. after a while you started to see it. You would go home again but this time you would see the dirty animals in your parents and grandparents. They would speak your language but it would disgust you. They would sing and you would go away and hide in shame.

Not everyone left the new place when they got old enough. Some were left in the ground. in fact you yourself had to dig a lot of the graves they were left in. But you behaved, you conformed, you survived, and one day they opened the gate and told you to just leave. You went home, your mind full of beatings and rapings and dead childrens bodies that you carried to the ground or the river. Your mental health isnt the best, one too many knocks in the head i guess. You get home where you hate them for being savages and they hate you for being white. Alcohol helps. You find a gal, have some children, but you have zero idea what to do. You never once witnessed your father being a parent, you have no family unit role models. You know that you beat and slap disobedience. but other than that you have nothing. Your soul is empty. You hate yourself because you were raised to believe you were to be hated. you hide from the world. You cant face your own people, you dont belong there nay more. You cant go among the others, you really arent one of them anyway. And they look at you as though you were still a savage anyway. So now there you are: all grown up again, but this time you are confused, lost and broken.

So compare this version of you to the first one. Can you blame this new version for not being so well adjusted? Can you condemn yourself for having turned to alcohol? Can you blame yourself for not knowing how to be a better parent or spouse, considering you never really were taught how to be those things? Can you understand what it feels like to look in a mirror everyday and feel shame at what you see? Can you imagine the way it hurts when you try to go out int he real world and still have white people point at you and call you a savage, uneducated, dirty, drunk? And your poor children. Man, you didnt do a good job raising them. Not your fault of course, but you hurt them so much, now they are adult and carrying their own dysfunctions. It just keeps going. The government broke you. You broke your children. You're all still here though, still fighting. Telling your stories, demanding some form of justice. Bringing your language and culture back to life. Maybe your great grandchildren will finally be free to be who they were created to be.