#DearNativeYouth by Marlon Footracer

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In the First World, there was sleep and darkness and dreaming. Female and male clouds hoovered over your breath, your beating heart, a strange blood machine for good. You slowly stretched your dream over the dark, carefully tucking the corners, East, South, West, North. Radiant and full of love, you greeted your spirit, calling it by its first, ancestral sound.

Together, you and your spirit ventured into something like a day, luminous and blue, but entirely your own. You gathered your songs from your mother and father, your grandparents, and even older ancestors. You sang sweet blood harmonies until the world took shape. A holy mountain there, a sacred canyon here, a scattering of rivers flowing to the sea. You unstitched sand to reveal plants, birds and gravity.

But there was something else, monsters muttering at the edges, calling your spirit away from you. They still call – loneliness, drunkenness, blue-black violence. But that spirit belongs to you. Never send it away in times of fear or hurt. Remember how you created this world, your medicine bundle of dreams.

The fight was hard, you ventured so far away from your mountains. Your rivers are home, waiting for your cloud breath to release the ghosts.  You slayed giants in cities, shiny scaly things full of empty. You call out in your dreamtime for those first songs tucked behind your lungs.

You are so brave, you carry so much weight. You see so many new things we have not seen. Keep reaching in your dreamtime, together we spin something glittering and magical and beautiful – we will call it love – the name of your spirit.

Remember you must keep walking, keep coming back home. Your language loves you. Your ceremonies are waiting.  Your ancestors are waiting for their names to be said. They are waiting for you to see the medicine you have carried on your own.

There is so much beauty in this world, so much love and goodness for you to feel and see and give. In beauty it becomes. In beauty you became, In beauty we will make it.

We will always wait for you.

Love,
Your People

*Marlon will be performing at the 1st Annual REZILIENCE Indigenous Arts Experience which will be taking place on April 30th at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. More info and tickets here.

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Marlon Footracer is Diné, Water-Flows-Together, born for One-Who-Walks-Around-You clan. He grew up in Tsé Síaní (Lupton, AZ). He attended Stanford University where he majored in Creative Writing with an emphasis in poetry. He was also a member of the Stanford Spoken Word Collective. Read more about Mr. Footracer.

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