Picketed fences claimed where once stood the frontiers’ defenses
They came.
White settlers came carrying colonial conquest
They disposed and occupied, always on the defense
The native-rooted resistance was foreign to them, for they could never understand
“The land wasn’t given to us. We were given to the land.”
They saw.
Destroyed homes and dried rivers
Their occupation through invasion created a diaspora within one’s homeland
Indigenous lands stolen, culture erased, lives spent
Their intentions echoed, “settler colonialism is a structure, not an event.”
They settled.
Farming the land and planting the seeds of colonial amnesia
Native defiance persisted through waves of senseless violence
Through tools of destruction, settlers scorched sacred spaces, leaving only silence
Indigenous belonging, identity, livelihoods, and land are constantly threatened.
They came. They saw. They settled.