In Lipan Apache oral tradition (pre-colonization), Enemy Slayer figures prominently as hero/transformer/protector. "FATHER | GENOCIDE," the book in which this poem appears, draws upon Lipan memory-telling/truthing forms emplacing my father’s life (in Texas, Alaska, North and South Dakota), and his death (in Ohio) as historical fact. I situate his experiences as Lipan survival and continual struggles against Texas and US settler colonialism and violence. The horse teaching in this poem draws on the oral tradition; signifies Lipan spiritual, political and literary reclamation; and writing it gave me new understandings of my father’s struggles with his choices within his world deeply structured by White male patriarchy, domination, militarism, colonization and assimilationist policies. Enemy Slayer, like Lipans, didn’t vanish; they adapted, survived, are continuing, and persisting in healing and recovery.
Margo Tamez on "Enemy Slayer teaches the first horse laws to Lipans" |
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