A voice for the voiceless: a shelf of my ancestors is a cry of injustice against the dead

 

a shelf of my ancestors

By Kate Pashby

Wrong Publishing, 2023

29 pages, Ebook

Link

 

One may look at the title of this book and wonder, why are one’s ancestors on a shelf? As though they are on display? But a shelf of my ancestors by Kate Pashby shows just how their ancestors ended up on a shelf. And in drawers. And on display in museums.

 

For, you see, their ancestors were what we call today “Native American,” though theirs was a tribe in Mexico. The author uses the word “Indians,” adopting the colonial name for the natives the settlers slaughtered and stole land from. 

 

As someone with Native American heritage, words from these poems resonated with me. Like this stanza here, from the first poem:

 

“patrimony—heritage

national patrimony—the nation’s heritage

which is to say

it belongs to the nation

it belongs to the government

which is to say

not you”

 

And this line here, in another stanza: “How can a government claim the remains of the dead?”

 

Within these poems, you can feel the author’s anger towards the government for seizing, keeping and basically taking ownership up the remains of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the tribal members who died on their own land. Land that the government took away from them. Land that they lived on, grew up on and hunted on then lost their lives fighting for. There is also a bit of sarcasm as they rephrase colonial beliefs over having the right to take possession of something that is not theirs.

 

As a student of anthropological research, Pashby is aware of how the bones of their ancestors are used as instructional tools for studying the tribes that once populated so much of this country many years ago. They had to watch, without comment, as a skull was removed from a drawer and held up for all to see. Their classmates saw it as an object to study, they saw it as an affront to their ancestors yelling “give me back my fucking bones!” and an insult to their legacy.

 

Pashby also shares stories portraying the lives of their people in verse. They try to put a human face to the bones on display “like trophies in a case” so that readers can see that the bones are more than just bones. They are more than skulls. They were once real people with real lives whose bones must now be scattered throughout the confines of academic institutions curious about who they were. Instead of looking to the stories, they look to the bones. We would not be so bereft of their history if the settlers had not been so busy slaughtering them all.

 

Readers who pick up a shelf of my ancestors by Kate Pashby are in for some hard truths. This is a person descended from those natives saying “this needs to stop” and sharing how they are fighting to have the bones returned to their rightful place. This book acts as a “mission statement” of sorts sharing how the author believes that a wrong has been done and offering reasons why theirs is a mission that should not be ignored. We may have ignored the cries of the natives who were slaughtered but we cannot ignore the cries of their ghosts who want nothing more but to finally rest in peace in one piece, and in the ground of their native soil.

 

Five stars

 

 

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.