A Good Ancestor

Paula Alcoseba

My dear island
What has become of your heart?
It is weakening
With each passing day
Your watershed destroyed forever
Mountains laid bare
Some flattened to their very foundation
An island
Struggling to breathe
There is barely a forest left
Since they’ve cut down your ancestral trees
Your veins have been poisoned
Pollution entering your rivers and stream
Freshwater, our lifeblood, is now scarce
An island and its people
Steadily marching
Towards death

Despite this tragedy
More buildings and skyscrapers
Are erected
Towering over us
Endless vehicles on the road
Suffocating us
Whose ideals are we living up to?
Precious natural elements
Converted into money
Pocketed by a handful of people
While the rest are left
With the pieces
Trying to survive
Trying to be like them
Fighting amongst each other
Forgetting that we are the same
Forgetting our past
Forgetting our future
Forgetting what life is really about

Can we bring back what once was?
Not likely
What has been done is irreversible
But why does it hurt so much
To say goodbye to something I never knew?
This is the misfortune
Of the youth
Regrets from mistakes
We never made
From lessons that
Were never learned
I often ponder

Can my island be brought back to life?
Can my people once again thrive?
These are questions
That may be left unanswered
I may never know
But to me
My greatest regret
Would be not to try
Ever since I woke up
And became aware
Of the illusions in my life
I stopped wanting to leave
For greener pastures
Although I empathize
With those who do
Life is hard
For so many
We fear
For our lives
Our families
Our home
Our futures
Can’t blame those
Who want to escape this reality

What I seek
Is to heal my island
To heal myself
To reconnect
With the ancestral spirits of my homeland
To know
The sky
The earth
The wind
The water
As well
As I know myself

I seek
To raise myself up
As a proud native woman
To help empower those
Who have known
Nothing but oppression and marginalization
Their whole lives
To embolden
Our children
To be proud
Of who they are
Not to hide behind lies
Not to hide behind identities
That are force fed to us

I seek
To plant trees
Whose roots grow so deep
That the next seven generations
May stand beneath
The shade of a native forest
My generation never knew

I seek
To fight for life
For farms, fishponds, and forests
These things
Were so integral
To life in the past
But have now
Come second place
To the rat race
Which plagues
Our entire world

I seek
To build community
Sustainability
A chance
That our people
May never go hungry
May never be scared
That they will end up on the streets
May never feel shame
For not being able to provide
So they may never have to leave
For better opportunities
So no child
May ever grow up disconnected
From their home
From the natural world
From what makes them
Who they are

Our people were once navigators
Travelling through these islands
With deep knowledge
Of the stars and the ocean
With a deep understanding
Of who we are and
Where we came from
Now
We are
A people removed
From our traditional ways of life
From our histories and identities
Not knowing how to navigate
Through these turbulent waters
Now
We are
Lost at sea
Trying to find
Our way back home

How do we discover who we really are?
How do we know where to go from here?
It is like
Trying to solve a puzzle
With missing pieces
Pieces with the edges torn apart
Even with this uncertainty
Even with the struggles
I will do everything I can
To learn more
To protect this place
To keep fighting for life on this island
In the hopes that one day
I may have the answers
To the questions
I so desperately seek
So that one day
I can look back
With no regrets
And be hopeful for the future
Can our people continue to thrive here?
Can we bring our island back to life?
That is up to each one of us to decide.