'They came'
First they came for the tribes' land,
said it was empty and stole it,
but we did not speak up because we were not tribesmen,
and our laws encouraged it.
Then they came for what was under the tribes' land,
said it was rich and dug it up,
but we did not speak up because we were not tribesmen,
and our economy needed it.
Then they came for the tribes' culture,
said it was primitive and destroyed it,
but we did not speak up because we were not tribesmen,
and our own culture confirmed it.
Finally, they came for the tribes themselves,
said they weren’t real people and killed them,
but still we did not speak up because we were not tribesmen,
and our science proved it.
There was no need to come for us
because we were on their side.
No longer!
Now we will speak up!
James Pliny 2009.
Note:
This poem is published to mark the violence in the Peruvian Amazon earlier this month when peaceful indigenous protests were violently broken up by Peruvian special forces.
The poem criticises the failure of people in my part of the world - that's to say, western Europe - to speak out against the genocide of indigenous peoples around the world over the last 500 years. It is an acknowledgment of what has happened in the past, and a call to thought and action for doing what we can to stop it from happening in the future.
It is a re-working of a poem with the same title, attributed to the German pastor Martin Niemoller.
