Category: children’s issues

Ricky Baker

.Reading time 4 minutes.

roots of child neglect,

contort Ricky Baker’s feet,

strong hands cut safe paths.

(haiku inspired by Taika Waititi’s 2016 film, Hunt for the Wilderpeople)

How do the Ricky Bakers of the world keep from stumbling over the roots of child neglect? They are the refuse of an adult world that has failed them. Those young whose parents cannot care for them often end up juggled around the foster care system, their only possessions fitting in the bags they carry. Many of these children end up filling the cells in juvenile detention centers. Those who end up in child prison face suicide rates and rates of adult incarceration that dwarf those of their peers in the general population. The problem impacts minority children disproportionately. As a society, we allow them to trip over the tangled mess that grows from poverty, and then we lock them away when they fall.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople, directed and adapted by Taika Waititi from the Barry Crump novel, Wild Pork and Watercress, explores the question with the perfect mix of quirky humor, adventure in the gorgeous New Zealand bush and pointed social commentary. The movie follows Hec (Sam Neill) and Ricky (Julian Dennison) into the wilderness to flee a child welfare officer (Rachel House) determined to place Ricky in juvenile detention through a police response that escalates out of control. This is a wonderful film that gives voice to the kind of love it takes to rescue a child and change a life. It also reflects the inept and often ridiculous response we as a human family make toward those children in desperate need of our understanding and help.

In 2016, a first edition of my novel, The Legend of the Lumenstones, was selected for children in a juvenile detention center to foster creative expression and encourage them to develop their unique gifts, a theme of the book. One girl found so much inspiration in the book that she took it with her when she successfully transitioned into foster care and used it for a school presentation for her new classmates. She continues to explore her gifts in art and writing. For me, that experience served as a catalyst to pursue a project geared toward raising money to fund art programs for children in her situation. I began with a few free verse poems telling their stories, then I watched Ricky Baker.

I love the diminutive haiku. In Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Ricky Baker forms them prolifically. His 5-7-5 beat dance of words and his determined spirit to survive inspired the theme that grew into A Haiku for Ricky Baker, a compilation of my poetry dedicated to the troubled youth of this world. All the proceeds from the sales of this book go to fund art programs for at-risk children. Please consider supporting this project today.

 

ALL PROCEEDS GO TO FUND ART PROGRAMS FOR AT-RISK YOUTH

 

Words and Photography ©2017 Tanya Cliff ~ to contact me

Entry posted in haiku & film. Bookmark the permalink.

Communion of the Saints

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Weep, clouds, and join my sadness
in
clear,
melancholy
drops
that
trickle
and
channel
and
flow like rivers into puddles
with
no
warming
ray
of
sunshine
to
cause their shimmering sparkle
of
fluid
to
dance
like
a
mountain
jeweled
creek
running
on
a
cloudless, blue-skied day

No, let them drop to the ground
and
moody
stay,
flat
and
grey
mirrors
reflecting
inverted
perverted
realities
back to the sympathetic skies
that
respond
by
pouring
out
a
concurring
symphony
of
rhythmic
drops
that
vibrate the mirrors
in
continuously pulsing ripples
distorting
the
mourning
view
that
make
them/me
cry

endlesss

clear
melancholy
rivers
of
drops

I salt-season the parched ground at my feet
where
multitudes
of
bare
starving
hurting
neglected
iron-pierced
feet
tread
mingling their bleeding blood
in
my
salty
river’s
flow
making cracked-skin soothing mud
that
poor
moms
will
form
into
cakes
to
fill
the
bellies
of
their
screaming
young
ones –
a
blood/bread
communion
of
the
rag-covered
despondent
forsaken
saints

HYPOCRITES

but let the little children come to it

anyway

and
do
not
hinder
them,
for
their
bellies
rumble
empty
and
their
bones
show
that
they
need
some
mass
to
fill
them
even
if
it
be
no
more
than
the
tear
mingled
bloody
mud
at
my
feet

I
weep

and
salt-season
the
parched
ground
at
my
iron-pierced
weary
feet

Weep, clouds, and join my grief

~

Words and Photography ©2016 Tanya Cliff ~ to contact me

Posted in human need  & poetry. Bookmark the permalink.

A Poor Child’s Manna

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Why is it
that
food fit for your garbage bin
should be a poor child’s manna?

cans crushed and dented
as if they had once been
the subject
of vigorous
street kicking games
Your “donation” is insane
Ever
hear
of
botulism?
Yes, Scrooge, reduce the
surplus
population

cans missing labels
as if this is a game
of guessing
the
mystery
food being served
Your “donation” is absurd
Ever
hear
of
food allergies?
Right, Dad Bunker, ‘cuz
WASP’s sting
the poor in Queens

cans long past their date
as if antiquities
well-preserved
of
grocery stores
now gone defunct
Your “donation” will be junked
Ever
hear
of
bacteria
Fine, Uncle Vernon, leave
Harry
all the rottings

Why is it
that
food fit for your garbage bin
should be a poor child’s manna?

and

While you are at it,
please
tell me
what child wants canned
alligator
meat
for dinner?

Words and Photography ©2016 Tanya Cliff ~ to contact me

Posted in human need & poetry. Bookmark the permalink.

—

The first time my older boys helped with a post office food drive through the local food pantry, they returned indignant at the volume of waste “donations” they had to sort through and discard. Many of those cans were years past date, severely damaged and unlabeled; and, yes, canned alligator meat was on the menu. A food pantry drive isn’t the time to clean the junk out your kitchen. Real people depend on food pantries as a stop-gap measure against malnutrition and starvation. Please fill the donation bags full but only with items you yourself would consume. For those of you partial to canned alligator meat, I apologize and cringe.

HARD

.Reading time 3 minutes.

If tears become letters and days turn to pages,
then how would you read his 30 days HARD labor
for fishing
on a lake
Superior
in size, depth, clarity and stock?

30 pages: no novel, just a long chapter.
What filled his kids’ bellies? Not fish that their dad caught
by fishing
on a lake
Superior,
while he worked HARD in the chains.

30 eagles swoop down and catch fish with talons.
Carry them to high nests and fill eaglets’ bellies
through fishing
on a lake
Superior.
Bites HARD: Birds eat while children starve.

—

Dedicated to the memory of John Blackbird, an Ojibwe arrested in 1901 for fishing with nets in Bear Trap Creek deep inside reservation lands that border Lake Superior, though some state histories record that he was arrested fishing on the lake. Either way, he was within his rights established through treaties with the U.S. Government.

He served 30 days HARD labor after refusing to pay a $36.75 fine. His case was eventually heard in U.S. Federal Court, the first challenge to a long battle in Wisconsin over the recognition of Indian Nation hunting and fishing rights established through treaty with the Federal Government. The Federal Court overturned the state decision in Blackbird’s favor in a ruling that honored negotiated rights with the Ojibwe Nation. The battle for the recognition of Native American treaty rights and the protection of their lands and resources continues to be fought across America today, eating up precious dollars that would be better utilized to improve the lives of these people in some of the poorest places in this country. Bites HARD.

Words and Photography ©2016 Tanya Cliff ~ to contact me

Posted in poetry, noDAPL & human rights. Bookmark the permalink.

~

For background on the Dakota pipeline controversy, read: my post from 09/09/2016

Update: Late Friday afternoon, a Federal Court judge ruled against the Dakota tribes, allowing the bulldozing to continue. The Obama Administration quickly stepped in, blocking construction on the portions of the pipeline that cross federal lands, at least temporarily protecting the Missouri River where it enters the Standing Rock Reservation and ancient Sioux burial grounds in the area.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-pipeline-nativeamericans-idUSKCN11F2GX

Bites HARD:

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/10/breaking_arrest_warrant_issued_for_amy

img_4925

Bulldozers, Biting Dogs and Pepper Spray: Brotherly Love, American Style

.Reading time 4 minutes.

The fight is endless. Indian Nations have standing treaties with the United States Federal Government, protecting their lands and ancestral grounds and providing assurances for self-governance among other things. They are not subject to state law. Tell that to the states. For more than 100 years, the Indian Nations across America have been forced to fight costly legal battles on a multitude of fronts often against the states their reservations exist on.

Forcing a people to endlessly defend their treaty rights up to Federal Court saps funds that could otherwise be used to build desperately needed infrastructure, improved housing, education and basic human services in some of the poorest places in America. Instead of allowing them to use their resources to better ends, we force battles that put the children’s bread in the hands of lawyers.

The latest front in this ongoing war is the development of a pipeline from the Bakken Oil fields in North Dakota southeast to Illinois. Indian Nations have already successfully fought to keep this pipeline off their lands in Minnesota. Tribes in North and South Dakota are now taking up the fight to protect their treaty rights and precious resources. Impacting this case directly are environmental threats to the Missouri River, the only supply of water feeding the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota. The original proposed route of the pipeline would have crossed the Missouri River 10 miles north of Bismark, the capital of the state of North Dakota. It was rejected on the grounds of potential threats to that area’s water supply. The current dig is occurring just one half mile from the Standing Rock Reservation. The hypocrisy is staggering. An oil spill here would devastate this group of people. The current dig also traverses ancestral burial grounds of the Sioux, threatening destruction of an area that has deep spiritual and archaeological significance.

If you take the time to watch the videos below and are put off by the protests, ask yourself what you would do if someone showed up threatening your property or resources with a bulldozer, biting dogs and pepper spray. These protests aim to stop work until the cases have a chance to be heard in Federal Court.

Unfortunately, the battle over the Dakota Pipeline is simply another of the myriad of variations of endlessly and pointlessly convoluted muck indigenous groups must trudge through to protect their rights and interests in America. The lawyers are happy. The children go hungry.

Words and Photography ©2016 Tanya Cliff ~ to contact me

Posted in human rights & noDAPL. Bookmark the permalink.

~

partial restraining order against North Dakota pipeline issued 9/6/16

because calling in the National Guard is going to calm everyone down…(bitter sarcasm here)

Iowa landowner’s suing to block eminent domain seizure of their properties against the Dakota pipeline

Note: Thanks to Dermott Hayes for drawing my attention to this story. I’ll be updating this on Monday. A decision regarding this case is scheduled for later today (9/9/16) in Federal Court.