Becoming Human

[Anna @akrasko97]

Becoming Human
BY SIMON J. ORTIZ

We are given permission
by the responsibility we accept
and carry out. Nothing more,
nothing less.
People are not born.
They are made when they become
human beings within ritual,
tradition, purpose, responsibility.

Therefore, as humans, this we do:
Sun Father begins red
in the east.
Stand and be humble.
Red through trees,
moments changing each instant
into the next change,
each change tied to the next.
To be human is to have
a sense of being within self.

Sun. Red. Trees.
Our hearts’ eyes seeing
inward and outward, accepting:
Stand and be humble.
The more names you have the more of a person you become. That’s what I’ve heard. I was telling Tom yesterday afternoon. Values, education, social change, cultural corruption, what is and what isn’t. I have to dispute him at moments. I tell him, The knowledge we derive from the education we get is our own. Knowledge is determined by our cultural, spiritual, linguistic, political environment. The knowledge from the community and context here cannot be anything but the people’s own. This is not Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas, or Rapid City. This is Rosebud, the Lakota homeland.

Our names are both Indian and American. We have so many names now we don’t know them all. In a sense, we have become more of a people than ever before.

 

Simon Ortiz, “Becoming Human” from After and Before the Lightning. Copyright ©  by Simon Ortiz.

 

Source: Poetry Foundation https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/154284/becoming-human

Photo: Sunrise by Capella Boltiador on Flickr

[Auteur]

Berichten