Red, White, and Blue

Sarah Kate Murphy

I would like to dedicate this poem to my parents. My dad, for reading the famous Chief Seattle oration to me when I was young; and my mom, for instilling the creativity of a writer within me.

Keywords: Native American Rhetoric, History, War, Ownership, Pathos


The Chief, He speaks

The Earth is not ours to own, He begs

We heard it, but were we actually listening?

Are we listening now?

Neglecting this truth for centuries

How can we understand each other without protecting our communal home?

Love is misunderstood when we hate each other.

We were made to be linked to one another like a bridge

Not to skate past each other in disregard.

But how can we truly live without the freedom of wholeness and understanding?

Centuries wasted of war and competing over one another for a land that was never ours

This land now so embittered with greed

Challenging the original Americans to a war they would never win.

And I am ashamed of my country’s beginnings

The Colonies against Britain.

Is that really the beginning? Or was it the end.

And they were never considered to be a contestant in the race for America, their own home

It was never ours to fight for.

The Chief speaks still.

In my mind, and I can hear Him in the wind

I am not Native American.

But I can see the colors of His fate everywhere I am.

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Feeling Rhetoric Copyright © 2022 by Sarah Kate Murphy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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