Sezin Devi Koehler
I Left My Heart In Wounded Knee: An Abecedarian For Grampa Tony Black Feather
Aaaa-iiiiii, we are going on a journey dozens of miles away, the opposite direction as the
Badlands into the prairielands in Grampa Tony’s white truck to the Wounded Knee memorial
cruising through the plains with my two long braids and purple Indian vest
— dots not feathers — they think I’m from Lakota territory, they don’t know Sri Lanka
even after I explain it. I seem so much like them, Grandpa Tony could be my blood. But I’m
foreign even though this is the one place I look like I belong. I can feel the place before we
get to Wounded Knee, it has a redness around it, rawness from rage and sorrow
heavy even in its sparseness, a crushing absence. The bodies from the massacre are buried
in a mass grave elsewhere, I feel them. Sobs wrack my shoulders. Who is buried there now?
Joshing me, Grandpa Tony points to a grave with a fence around it,
“Kinfolk there worried this one would get outs.”
Laughing feels wrong in this place of hacked women and children, left in the snow
mutilated, slow deaths for some. But Grampa Tony says we laugh to prove we are alive.
“Ndns aren’t all dead yet,” he says, pronouncing my name like Season. “Laughter is
our strongest medicine.” A white family hikes through the stones and I wonder about their
people, were their ancestors responsible for the blood in the land, spilled like water?
Quit from here, I want to tell them, this isn’t your place. Begone. But it’s not mine either.
Red rage in my heart as the wind whips around loosening hairs from my braids
salt-burning face, a howl in my ear from history, children screaming, mothers begging
the Lakota men butchered like the herds of bison
under a sky so blue it could be a painting of fluffy clouds, rays of celestial sun
vans of tourists against the fields of grass in its artful green hues, Van Gogh in South Dakota.
Why is this place still so beautiful after all that blood spilled from innocent brown skin?
Explain to me how the whiteness of evil is indestructible,
yet the only mirrors here are the trails of tears down my face. Grandpa Tony catches them,
zephyrs in his creased palm stained by cigarettes, turns them into turquoise and grins.
Badlands into the prairielands in Grampa Tony’s white truck to the Wounded Knee memorial
cruising through the plains with my two long braids and purple Indian vest
— dots not feathers — they think I’m from Lakota territory, they don’t know Sri Lanka
even after I explain it. I seem so much like them, Grandpa Tony could be my blood. But I’m
foreign even though this is the one place I look like I belong. I can feel the place before we
get to Wounded Knee, it has a redness around it, rawness from rage and sorrow
heavy even in its sparseness, a crushing absence. The bodies from the massacre are buried
in a mass grave elsewhere, I feel them. Sobs wrack my shoulders. Who is buried there now?
Joshing me, Grandpa Tony points to a grave with a fence around it,
“Kinfolk there worried this one would get outs.”
Laughing feels wrong in this place of hacked women and children, left in the snow
mutilated, slow deaths for some. But Grampa Tony says we laugh to prove we are alive.
“Ndns aren’t all dead yet,” he says, pronouncing my name like Season. “Laughter is
our strongest medicine.” A white family hikes through the stones and I wonder about their
people, were their ancestors responsible for the blood in the land, spilled like water?
Quit from here, I want to tell them, this isn’t your place. Begone. But it’s not mine either.
Red rage in my heart as the wind whips around loosening hairs from my braids
salt-burning face, a howl in my ear from history, children screaming, mothers begging
the Lakota men butchered like the herds of bison
under a sky so blue it could be a painting of fluffy clouds, rays of celestial sun
vans of tourists against the fields of grass in its artful green hues, Van Gogh in South Dakota.
Why is this place still so beautiful after all that blood spilled from innocent brown skin?
Explain to me how the whiteness of evil is indestructible,
yet the only mirrors here are the trails of tears down my face. Grandpa Tony catches them,
zephyrs in his creased palm stained by cigarettes, turns them into turquoise and grins.
Sezin Devi Koehler is a multiracial Sri Lankan/Lithuanian American and author of Much Ado About Keanu: A Critical Reeves Theory (April 2025, Chicago Review Press), a sociocultural deep dive into what makes Keanu Reeves so extraordinary as a performer and artist. Sezin's bylines include Entertainment Weekly, Black Girl Nerds, The Daily Beast, Scalawag Magazine, Teen Vogue, and many more. She's a member of the San Francisco Writers Grotto, and a Rooted & Written 2024 screenwriting fellow. Sezin writes from an East Oakland historic landmark that looks uncannily like the house from Practical Magic, where she can see the San Francisco Bay from her own window.
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