Once a Chief poem

by Anonymous

Tear down these medallions from your walls!

Destroy them!

Erase them from your proud history.

These medals that graced your fighting spirit!

Let them be no more part of who you are.

Think not of your proud heritage.

Think only what you are told to think by your new leaders.

Those who give free entry to those from foreign lands,

To wash this land clean of its character.

You will soon be swallowed up and not know from where you came.

Your children and their children will learn what we wish them to know.

Not what you wish them to know.

They shall be awoke!

They shall have no identity of their own.

Did you think yar are privileged above others?

We shall cleanse these thoughts from your mind.

We shall re-educate you.

No more honor those who settled this land.

Let their Chief, the Sachem of the Marsapagues,

Tackapausha by name,

Molder in the ground.

You shall have no memory of their sacrifice.

Of how they loved this land.

Forget their love of sport,

They who played at Lacrosse,

Football and Stickball.

Let the young not feel their spirit,

Not bear their image on their teams.

They shall no longer be Chiefs.

Perish individual accomplishment.

Perish a sense of loyalty and duty,

Taking responsibility for your tribe.

We shall banish your love of home,

Of family and faith,

As once we banished the tribes from their rich lands,

Into oblivion.

You shall no longer be indivisible,

For we will divide you,

We shall teach you to hate each other,

To look at race and not merit,

To look down at the hard-working as undeserving.

To worship and covet wealth and power

To make the poor believe you will help them,

While keeping them poor.

Though they be honorific.

Cast them down!

A community without roots,

Without a history,

We insist you become.

Cast off this adopted history or

We, your appointed leaders,

Shall impoverish your schools.

We shall give you a new symbol to post

In your children’s schools,

To wear on their jerseys.

Hail to the new thinking!

Free of the past,

Let us all be alike.

Let there be no Chiefs.

Once you were Chiefs,

Now there will be no Chiefs in your town.

And the proud profile of the Great Chief,

Of the Marsapagues,

Shall no longer be seen.