Whereas - Late response

The jerking of sentences in this collection forces the reader to engage with the text with more caution. It. Catches. You. At. Each. Word. Similarly to the ways unfair treaties enforced by the U.S. government on Native communities were tools created to keep native tribes in cycles of poverty and violence.

Sentences end abruptly but the poems keep going. Soldier continues to write these poems and challenge the language of these treaties and the empty apologizes that followed.

“Whereas Native Peoples are [             ] people with a deep and abiding [  ] in the [ ] , and for millennia Native Peoples have maintained a powerful

[          ] connection to this land, as evidenced by their [          ] and legends;

Whereas the Federal Government condemned the [          ], [ ], and [ ] of Native Peoples and endeavored to assimilate them by such policies as the redistribution of land under the Act of February 8, 1887 (25 U.S.C. 331; 24 Stat. 388, chapter 119) (commonly known as the “General Allotment Act”),”

The placement of brackets and space in this poem in particular brings to life the emptiness of apologize. You can feel the dismissal of these communities experiences and traumas. Even after “apology” they are not allowed to heal. So does that make it a real apology? Soldier is explicit with her writing. Explicit because she doesn't hold back anything. She creates the space and pauses to show how it is choking to have to voice histories that have been silenced an erased for centuries. Histories of her people that continue to be experienced in this way because of government intervention and neglect. Soldier does not allow you to neglect her voice and voices of her communities with her writings. She brings these narratives to life. Specify in Two, when we see a Native mother experiencing complications with her baby that later lead to a miscarriage because of government neglect to provide medical resources to Native people. Soldier does not hold back the “blood”, it seeps through the pages. Her language is saturated with this pain. It seeps through, even through the brackets.