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.
