Who Speaks For The Indian? Poem by david lessard

Who speaks for the Indian?
The Indian himself is not allowed to speak.
The white man attempts to do that for him.
How can one race speak for that of another?
Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Red Cloud, Geronimo, Chief Pontiac...
They all spoke for their race, but hey were ignored and
silenced forever.
Who speaks for the Indian now?
Those that died at Sand Creek, Little Big Horn, on the Plains, and in the Florida swamplands did not perish because of less skilled warriors.
But because the whites had superior arms and there were so many of them.
The Indians were just as valiant, their hearts were just as strong, thier wills, just as determined and their souls just as noble.
Anything that the whites could take away from them, to de-moralize them, they took away.
Their land, their religious views, their way of life. Nothing was left untouched.
They slaughtered them, as surely as they did the buffalo, as they did their hunting grounds, as they are doing even now.
Do you wonder why the Indians don't like us?
If you were a red man, would you trust them?
Would you trust a people that can't even get along with each other?
That make empty promises?
The record, as they say, speaks for itself.
They first brought us food...we gave them back smallpox and a host of other deadly diseases. When their population diminished, we finished them off with rifles, cannon and swords. With knifes, pistols and forced religion.
We gave them what we thought they should have...and they died from it and they die from it today.
Now they suffer from alcohol. drugs, diabetes, cigarettes and malnutrition. The Indians don't exist because we refuse to see them. They are non-people (like some blacks and Mexicans) .
Their way of life is gone foever. We did that to them.
And so it is, that I ask once again...

Who speaks for the Indian?