Spirits

I think this was the first poem I ever wrote. I was writing my family history for a College History class and as I learned about the history of my family, who moved from Walnut Grove, Minnesota to DeSmet, South Dakota, I thought about the people who came before my family. In South Dakota, whites and Native Americans have not always got along and in some ways, still don't get along. I was a child of the 70's when AIM (American Indian Movement) took over Wounded Knee, which had once been the site of a massacre of Native Americans by the US Calvery. Since I grew up in South Dakota where the prairie was a part of my life every day and in many ways, still is in this concrete prairie. My grandfather was the first white child born 1880 in Kingsberry County of Dakota Territory so this poem honors the Native Americans who came before him.

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