Sahtúot’ı̨nę Yatı̨́

You speak in tongues, a language traced 300 years up the Deh Cho,
much like your birth name.
A story passed from father to son for generations.

Your blood belongs to this ground,
Sacred, like the taiga meeting the sunset.
The absolute point on the horizon where bedrock crashes into the sky.

This land has bled into the ocean for as long as the spoken traditions go back,
wars fought in ways I will never know.
But yet fires still rage, this battle never won

Moose meat, beaver pelt and command start.
A generational limbo between your father's alcoholism
and your mother's abondonment.

Iceroads keep you from a land that you've never seen,
Land owed to your family by a power unknown.
A traditional way of life you'll never learn.

A warrior today; a chief in another life,
hands callused from a life of back breaking work.
Your love, my sun in the deadest winter.

Fog rolls over the frigid lake, 20 hours of darkness.
And I'd walk into the tundra to feel your heat,
I'd freeze to death to be closer to you.

In awe I stand under the dancing northern lights,
gazing into a life that isn't my own,
and yet one I can almost feel.

A past, a love letter to a history I am not a part of.
A dene story I don't know how to tell;
A language I will never know how to speak.