Someone Said Today
Someone said today
That I belong to the
“Cree Race”
Well, madam,
Allow me to educate
As well as disseminate
That which I wish to illuminate
What one they tried to eradicate
Permit me to
Elucidate….
There is no “race.”
It is the common shared experience
The unbroken line of
Fifteen thousand years
of my relations
my family
my ancestors
living, thriving, surviving
in the land between
those Great Lakes
and those Rocky Mountains
you see, madam,
it is
Generation after Generation
Surviving these winters
While hunting in those forests
Fishing in those waters
Hunkered down against
Anything the prairie
Or the woodlands
Could throw at us
If there is such a thing as a
“Cree Race”, madam,
It would be the race to eliminate
The historical, allegorical and colonial way of thinking
That placed those words into your mind
Upon your tongue
And past your teeth.
“Someone Said Today”, excerpted from What Shade of Brown. © 2025 by John Brady McDonald. Reprinted by permission of Radiant Press.
What Shade of Brown. © 2025 by John Brady McDonald. Published by Radiant Press.
More about What Shade of Brown:
Passionate poetry and prose exploring the experience of an Indigenous person who feels like a stranger in a strange land, not quite accepted because of his light skin but also undermined by a settler-colonial society. Lyrical and heartfelt, bewildered and shaken, the poet struggles to find a connection to his family and lost culture.
John Brady McDonald
More about John Brady McDonald:
John Brady McDonald is a Nêhiyawak-Métis writer, artist, historian, musician, playwright, actor and activist born and raised in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. He is from the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation and the Mistawasis Nêhiyawak. He is the author of several books, and his written works have been published and presented around the globe. Kitotam, a poetry collection, was published by Radiant Press in 2021, and Carrying It Forward, a book of essays, was published in 2022 and won the Saskatchewan Book Award for Non-fiction and the Indigenous Peoples’ Writing Award. He is also an acclaimed public speaker, who has presented in venues across the globe, such as the Ânskohk Aboriginal Literature Festival, the Black Hills Seminars on Reclaiming Youth, the Appalachian Mountain Seminars, the Edmonton and Fort McMurray Literary Festival, the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival and the Ottawa International Writers Festival. A noted polymath, John lives in Northern Saskatchewan.