This is going to come across to you as a piece of information,
but it's a piece of a poem or something
I'm working on that in a way has been working on me.
And this is a piece of information
I found when I was doing research on letters
and journals that had been written
about the Mojaves both at Parker and at Fort Mojave, what
became Fort Mojave.
"When Mojave children were taken from their mothers,
roped like cows or beasts," because that verb
is used often, and it's the verb for roping.
It's not the verb for arresting.
It's not the verb for taking or removing.
It's the verb for roping an animal.
"When Mojave children were taken from their mothers,
roped like cows or beasts, and led to the school
to learn less of themselves, the mothers
followed, pressed their breasts through holes in the fence
to feed their little ones."
And that image is just an image that's
haunted me for the last probably eight years,
like that a mother would have to press
her breasts through a fence and her child being
held on the other side of it in order
to breastfeed their child.