George Elliott Clarke

My paternal great grandmother was Mi’kmaq from Mill Village and my maternal great grandmother was Cherokee, who represented the Cherokee who came to Nova Scotia after the war of 1812 along with the African Americans who were sent to Nova Scotia by British forces during that war.

Someone’s guilty of a million crimes!
Blood on his hands, Death on his mind!
To send my sister away, away;
To put my mama in a distant grave.

Why she gotta be murdered?
Why she gotta go missing?
This land is hers, so I heard!
All the saints are insisting!

Someone’s gotta sink in Hell and rot!
Dumped bones in bush or parking lot.
Disappeared my auntie, saw her die;
Exiled my daughter, served her Misery!

Why she gotta be missing?
Why she gotta be murdered?
Why I hear Justice hissing
Like a viper in a graveyard?

Someone’s papa mapped a Trail of Tears!
Someone’s son paved a Highway of Tears!
Why my sister gotta stumble down?
Why my mama gotta tumble down?

Why she gotta go missing?
Why she gotta be martyred?
Indigenous insisting,
“Justice for our massacred!”

Someone’s flag looks like blood on snow!
Someone’s History’s a damn crime show!
To hurt my daughter so she weep;
To wound my auntie while she sleep.

Why she gotta be murdered?
Why she gotta go missing?
Martyred in mud, slush, merde—
From The Pas to Nipissing.

Someone’s guilty of a million crimes—
From five centuries back, down to next time!
Ain’t sorry to lil sister rape—
Or put my mama in her too-soon grave!

Why she gotta be murdered?
Why she gotta go missing?
Ain’t all government alert
To crimes of commission?

Why don’t Parliament just wail?
How can this Parliament fail?
Gotta have Justice insisting,
“No more murdered, no more missing!

“No more homicide, suicide, genocide—
Those screaming words that none can hide!
No more Trails and Highways of Tears!
No more families cramming each a hearse!

“Time to put the guilty where they belong—
On trial, in jail, by the end of this song!”